Juxtaposition of Cross-Modal Emotions

How do we understand emotions when presented with incongruent emotional content through multiple modalities? Examining emotions conveyed through the pairing of music and images gives insight into how one prioritises emotional content between each source and how they interact. An experiment was conducted to investigate the relationship between film music and emotionally evocative photographs. The results showed that outside of a narrative context, we average the presented emotions and experience the event as a combination of the music and the photographs. Some participants found that the musical stimulus was more influential to their emotional experiences, while others expressed that the photographs guided their emotions. Narrative creation allowed participants to place seemingly incongruent scene in a more appropriate context and rate their emotions differently from others who did not utilise this technique.