I have found three studies based on sounds affect on emotion/immersion that have been adapted to suit my project, as well as one hypothesis gathered from my stage one testing which I will discuss below.
1. Hypothesis - Soundtracks with more low end content will increase emotional immersion (based on the SEIT where low ends scored higher).
This hypothesis will by applied by layering in a sine wave between 40-80Hz to sounds, as well as boosting the low end when EQing certain sounds (explosions etc)
2. Study - Valence (negative/positive emotions) is affected by a sounds loudness/intensity. Activation (arousal/attention) is affected by a sounds sharpness/high frequency content.
Västfjäll, D. (2012). Emotional Reactions to Sounds without Meaning. Psychology, 03(08), pp.606-609.
Loueness/intensity: When applied to film, it will obviously not work just increasing the volume of the soundtrack overall as this is not something that could be applied within post production, (being broadcasting limits for sound levels within film & tv). Therefore making use of psychoacoustic principles will be a better approach.
‘You can make an explosion appear louder by actually shutting down the sound artificially following the initial transient: the brain will interpret this as the ear responding naturally to an extremely loud sound – perceiving it as louder and more intense than the sound actually, is.’
http://getthatprosound.com/hacking-your-listeners-ears-9-psychoacoustic-sound-design-tricks-to-improve-your-music/
Use of silence and then a loud sound can also make the sound appear louder. As well as this, general sounds could be enhanced to be slightly louder (if it works).
Sharpness (3kHz+): This will be slightly simpler to apply, sounds already used could have their high frequency content increased with EQ as well as implementation of tones and sounds with high frequency content. These could be part of the atmos of the soundtrack, or even used more creatively as Surreal/expressive fx.
3. Rising sounds (in intensity) induce higher emotional response than static/receding sounds).
Tajadura-Jiménez, A., Väljamäe, A., Asutay, E. and Västfjäll, D. (2010). Embodied auditory perception: The emotional impact of approaching and receding sound sources. Emotion, 10(2), pp.216-229.
Loudness of the sound and loudness change duration are key factors in this theory. This can be applied to a variety of sounds as long as they are long enough to accommodate a raise in volume.
4. The interest, attention caused, and familiarity of sound induces higher emotional response.
Lewis, C., Fretwell, C. and Ryan, J. (2012). An Empirical Study of Emotional Response to Sounds in Advertising. American Journal of Management, 12(1).
Bradley, M. M. & Lang, P. J. (2007). The International Affective Digitized Sounds (2nd Edition; IADS-2): Affectiveratings of sounds and instruction manual. Technical report B-3. University of Florida, Gainesville, Fl.
Here two studies have been applied. Use of sounds found in the IADS will be applied, as well as use of the research by C. Lewis Et. al (intersting & attention provoking sounds).
In terms of interesting sounds, it will have to go by what I feel/my piers/tutors would agree to be interesting. It would have been a good idea to test a set of sounds on the amount of interest they raised to possibly gain some form of understanding on what makes a sound ‘interesting’.
