How do the sounds of retail environments make people feel?
A short piece of phenomenological research
The Arndale Centre in Manchester one Saturday afternoon
Introduction
Soundscape research goes beyond more traditional forms of acoustic research concerned with noise control, seeking to understand not only the acoustic characteristics of a space, but the way people experience that space. Kang et al. (2016) explain how a ‘soundscape’ is a perceptual construct, rather than a purely physical phenomenon, citing the International Organization for Standardisation’s definition of a soundscape as an “acoustic environment as perceived or experienced and/or understood by a person or people, in context.” (ISO, 2014, cited in Kang et al. 2016, p.285)
A number of studies have sought to evaluate the soundscapes of various built environments so as to determine their quality, and gather information to aid planning and design of future urban spaces e.g. Yang & Kang (2005), Kang & Zhang (2010). In such studies a variety of methods are used to elicit people’s responses (Defra, 2009). These include:
Semantic descriptors, whereby antonymous adjectives such as ‘noisy - quiet’, are placed at either end of a numerical scale and a respondent picks a point on the scale.
Likert scales, whereby a single descriptor or adjective such as ‘pleasant’, or ‘exciting’ is rated on a scale from high to low.
Fully, semi or un-structured interviews.
Participants may be exposed in situ to the soundscape, for example by undertaking a soundwalk, and / or they may make assessments under ‘laboratory’ conditions, for example by listening and responding to recorded material.
Cain, Jennings and Poxon (2013, p.233 ) note that when surveying participants in such studies, two types of descriptors are often used in combination: Those “which describe the sound (e.g. loud, harshness, clarity, spatiality) and descriptors which are more emotional, and allude to how the listener feels from hearing the sound”. They consider that from a planner or designer’s perspective understanding how a place makes someone feel emotionally is more useful than understanding how the inherent acoustic properties of a space are perceived. They go on to comment however that at the time of writing (2013) little research focussing specifically on this emotional aspect exists.
This current study investigates the experience of retail soundscapes, taking a shopping mall as its focus, and using a phenomenological approach. It aims to offer a fuller exploration of the emotional dimension highlighted by Cain et al. (2013). Its primary concern is to explore how the soundscape imposes itself on the listener, in terms of the emotional responses it triggers. Hence its investigational focus is on the humans and the phenomenon of their experience of the shopping mall soundscape.
Of those researchers who have focused their urban soundscape investigations on emotions rather than psycho-acoustic parameters Cain et al. (2013) chose to do so through a set of semantic descriptors covering five dimensions. These are reproduced in Table 1 below.
Table 1 Semantic Descriptors used by Cain et al. (2013, p.236)
Hall, Irwin, Edmonson-Jones, Phililips and Poxon (2013) explored affective responses to urban sounds using the same semantic descriptors with the addition of a sixth one: pleasantness.
Table 2 Additional Semantic Descriptor used by Hall et al. (2013)
This research project diverges from those identified above by employing semi-structured interviews. This method of data collection is favoured within phenomenological research (Creswell & Poth, 2018, p.73) because one can potentially gain a deeper understanding of human experience than possible with the use of scales or standardised questionnaires.
Juslin’s (2013) BRECVEMA framework is used as the basis from which to structure a short set of interview questions. The framework was developed as a way of understanding the mechanisms via which music can evoke emotions, and as far as is known it has not been used before within soundscape research. This study tests its applicability to soundscape research, and degree to which this works.
Whilst seeking to identify the over-arching emotional themes that emerge, the study also differentiates between two groups of participants, those who are practicing experimental musicians, and those with no involvement in experimental music. It investigates whether these two groups have noticeably different emotional responses to the soundscape, and if so why?
The study does not consider how the findings could be used to inform decision-making by designers of urban spaces. However, it is hoped the phenomenological approach used and dataset collected may be of interest to these designers, as well as those with a more general interest in how sound can affect the human psyche.
Methodology
(i) Capturing the shopping mall soundscape
A binaural recording, when played back on headphones, offers a more convincing impression of the sound-field than a conventional stereo recording (Kadis, 2015, p.95). A 96Hz, 24bit binaural recording of Manchester’s Arndale shopping centre was made on the afternoon of Saturday 30th April 2019 by securing a DPA 4060 omni-directional microphone in each ear and walking slowly around the concourse. An eight-minute section of the recording was extracted for participants to listen to. This was considered a suitable amount of time for participants to immerse themselves in the soundscape, whilst being short enough for them not to lose interest.
ii) Participant interviews
Polkinghorne (1989) (cited in Creswell & Poth, 2018, p.79) recommend phenomenological studies include five to 25 individuals. In this study, six participants were interviewed, and ranged from 19 to 55 years; three (two female and one male) were practising experimental musicians, and three (two female and one male) had no involvement in experimental music.
Each participant was interviewed individually in a quiet, low stimulus environment. An opening question established each participants’ general relationship with shopping, after which each person listened to the shopping mall soundscape on a pair of KRK KNN-6400 headphones, and then answered a series of further questions. Before listening they were informed the recording was of a ‘generic shopping mall’, the exercise was not a test, and they did not need to remember anything, but just to immerse themselves in the space. They were permitted to change the recording’s volume, and could stop listening at any point if they needed to.
Table 3 shows the interview structure. Questions were formulated using Juslin’s (2013) BRECVEMA framework which seeks to explain the mechanisms via which music evokes emotion. Further detail on the framework is provided in Appendix 1. Having introduced each question follow up questions and prompts were used to elicit more detail.
Table 3 Interview structure - a set of questions designed using Juslin's (2013) BRECVEMA model
(iii) Analysis of data
Each interview was transcribed (see Appendix 2) and read several times to identify significant sentences or phrases describing participants’ emotional reactions. Similar statements representing experiences common to several or all participants were clustered together to make themes. From this a description of the ‘essence’ of the phenomenon of how the sounds of the shopping mall made people feel was developed. Observations were also made on how well the questions worked in revealing people’s emotions, and thus whether Juslin’s BRECVEMA framework has potential for greater use within soundscape research.
Results
Six themes were identified and are set out below. Appendix 3 provides detail on the clusters of sentences and phrases that were discovered, and the themes they were assigned to.
The opening question revealed that for four of the six participants, including two men and two women, and all three experimental musicians, shopping was not normally considered to be a particularly enjoyable activity. These people tended to describe shopping in a utilitarian way, although two also citied browsing in a charity shop as a specific circumstance which could be enjoyable for them.
Conversely, two participants (two women) described shopping as enjoyable past-time, although one caveated this, noting that she preferred particular shopping environments, and disliked shopping malls.
Theme 1: The noisiness of the soundscape was aversive, prompting a desire to leave, and thoughts of coping strategies (see Appendix 3a)
Participants described the soundscape using a range of descriptors include hectic, busy, loud, chaotic, aggressive, and having a “manic-ness” to it. For four of the six participants the resulting emotional impact was negative. These people described themselves as feeling irritated, annoyed, stressed, anxious and claustrophobic. Three used very similar terms; “wasn’t pleasant”; “wasn’t a pleasant experience”; “wouldn’t be a very pleasant situation”. Hall et al. (2013) use ‘Pleasantness’ (see Table 2) in their semantic scale and the findings in this study, whereby the emotional term was freely chosen by the participants (rather than given to them) suggests it is a valid descriptor to use in retail environment research.
Three of the four also expressed the desire to leave or “flee” the shopping mall, and identified coping strategies they would adopt in reality, including wearing headphones, having a cigarette, and checking where the fire exits were.
Theme 2: The soundscape was not uncomfortable and the experience was not negative (see Appendix 3b)
In contrast to the above, two participants did not feel uncomfortable and had positive emotional reactions. One of these participants liked going to shopping malls. She described feeling comfortable, and the experience as “a bit cathartic”– a place where she could imagine happily having a cup of coffee, people-watching, or doing some shopping. The second participant described how once she had got used to the sounds she was able to relax, “calm down and take it in” and “didn’t feel tense or anything”. Interestingly this second participant did not like shopping, but was one of the three experimental musicians interviewed and it is considered her emotional response related to her ability to listen to sound for it aesthetic qualities. This is discussed more fully under Theme 6.
Theme 3: Voices in the soundscape provoked thoughts and emotions (see Appendix 3c)
Question 8 (see Table 4 above) revealed that hearing voices in a soundscape acted in several ways: as a cue for assessing the nature of the environment (e.g., “I didn’t feel like anyone was being aggressive”); as sparking curiosity (e.g., “they were generally chattier as they went past and it piqued curiosity” and “I was trying to identify what some of the languages were”); and as a positive distraction from other noise (for example, reflections on passer-by comments - “I thought it was funny”, and reflections on the range of languages - “that’s something of the sweetness of being in a public place”). Whilst one participant experienced sympathy with crying babies, most participants did not report experiencing what Juslin (2013) describes as ‘emotional contagion’ whereby recognition of an emotion in a sound triggers that same emotion in the listener.
Theme 4: The soundscape triggered visual imagery which was felt to contribute to, or reinforce an existing emotional state (see Appendix 3d)
All participants conjured up visual images congruent with the soundscape. Despite the recording’s location having been kept anonymous three people specifically visualised the Arndale Centre. Interestingly four people also visualised the lift – the reasons why are not clear, but possibly its sonic contrast to the rest of soundscape made it stand out.
Juslin (2013) identifies that music can generate visual imagery, which can in turn trigger emotion. The experience in this study seemed to be that the images consolidated the participant’s existing emotional state rather than introducing new, different emotions. For example, visual imagery was felt to have “built on” current feelings and made the experience “more personal”, or accentuated it, for example “made the experience more uncomfortable”.
Theme 5: The soundscape triggered memories of specific events which in turn affected a person’s emotional state (see Appendix 3e)
Three participants experienced flashbacks to previous occasions in their life and the attendant emotions associated with these events. In one case these were happy recollections of non-shopping related activities, which momentarily distracted the participant from an otherwise aversive soundscape. In the second case pleasant memories of visiting a local shopping mall came to mind, reinforcing an already positive emotional state. In the third case, the memories were of being “dragged around shops for a long time” by a parent and this heightened the participant’s feeling of irritation.
Theme 4: The soundscape triggered visual imagery which was felt to contribute to, or reinforce an existing emotional state (see Appendix 3d)
All participants conjured up visual images congruent with the soundscape. Despite the recording’s location having been kept anonymous three people specifically visualised the Arndale Centre. Interestingly four people also visualised the lift – the reasons why are not clear, but possibly its sonic contrast to the rest of soundscape made it stand out.
Juslin (2013) identifies that music can generate visual imagery, which can in turn trigger emotion. The experience in this study seemed to be that the images consolidated the participant’s existing emotional state rather than introducing new, different emotions. For example, visual imagery was felt to have “built on” current feelings and made the experience “more personal”, or accentuated it, for example “made the experience more uncomfortable”.
Theme 5: The soundscape triggered memories of specific events which in turn affected a person’s emotional state (see Appendix 3e)
Three participants experienced flashbacks to previous occasions in their life and the attendant emotions associated with these events. In one case these were happy recollections of non-shopping related activities, which momentarily distracted the participant from an otherwise aversive soundscape. In the second case pleasant memories of visiting a local shopping mall came to mind, reinforcing an already positive emotional state. In the third case, the memories were of being “dragged around shops for a long time” by a parent and this heightened the participant’s feeling of irritation.
Theme 6: Experimental musicians can extract themselves from the situation and ‘listen in’ analytically and musically for sonic qualities (see Appendix 3f)
Aspects of the experimental musicians’ responses were distinct from other participants, often being more analytical in nature. They included technical considerations about how the recording was made, and comments on the acoustic quality of the space and structural nature of the building, for example: “I’m used to listening to recordings and field recordings and I think I was too busy….I spent too much time kind of thinking about the size of the space and whether the recording was composite.”
They also listened to sounds for the quality of the sounds themselves, for example “the sort of beeping…I really like those types of sound signals and thought that was a particularly good one.” In one case it seems as if the participant went so far as to use her experience as an experimental musician to re-frame her listening: “I think I was listening to it as a piece”. In doing so she turned what might otherwise have been an aversive experience into an acceptable one: “At the beginning I found it really chaotic and then I was like ‘oh no, it’s fine you can just listen to it this way, and it’ll be ok’.”
These findings indicate that because of their particular relationship with sound it was harder for the experimental musicians to do what the researcher had asked and ‘just immerse themselves in the space’, as if they were shopping. The real-life emotional experience of being in a shopping mall might also be different for an experimental musician, compared with a person not involved in experimental music, their thoughts and emotions being triggered in different ways.
Discussion
Aletta, Van Renterghem and Botteldooren (2018) demonstrated how personal factors can influence people’s perception of an urban green soundscape, finding that participants’ tolerance to noise, attitude towards greenery, and visual attentiveness all influenced how they perceived the soundscape of a cycle path. In study of Sheffield’s soundscape Liu and Kang (2016, p.28) found that “to some extent, the value people place on sounds does not lie in the sound itself, or its physical properties but in the positive or negative behaviors associated with the sounds.” Similarly, Hall et al. (2013, p248) state;
“We surmise that the perceived quality of the soundscape is very much an individual subjective experience that is likely to be embedded within contextual domain and that it probably relates to personal preference, past history and other social and cultural factors.”
The findings of this soundscape study concur with the research above: there was no single experience. Instead, the essence of the phenomenon is that everyone brings their individual experiences, knowledge and memories to the exercise, and this results in different emotional outcomes. Broadly speaking, three classes of emotional response to the soundscape were identified:
Those participants (four) who disliked shopping in shopping malls and whose emotional response was more negative than positive;
One participant who liked shopping in shopping malls and had a positive emotional response;
One participant who disliked shopping in shopping malls but had a largely positive emotional response, as she was able to re-frame the listening experience.
With more participants it is likely additional classes of response would be identified.
In terms of the general applicability of the BRECVEM framework, it was found that questions were not always interpreted as intended. For example, questions seeking information on one category of response (e.g. Brain Stem Reflex) were sometimes answered with responses related to an alternative category (e.g. Evaluative Conditioning). Little evidence of Rhythmic Entrainment or Emotional Contagion was found. BRECVEM-based questions did however reveal how previous experiences of shopping malls (Evaluative Conditioning), visual imagery, and episodic memories could all be triggered by hearing a soundscape, and that this could contribute to a participant’s emotional state. Taken in its entirety each transcript was rich with information on a person’s emotional experience and combined, the six transcripts provided plenty of material for the identification of themes.
Of the semantic scales used by Cain et al. (2013) and Hall et al. (2013), (see above) Table 4 below highlights (in orange) which of their descriptors were also words mentioned by this study’s participants. Only a few words overlap, but the descriptors are considered relevant to this study - i.e. from review of the transcripts there is a sense that the descriptors generally fit with the types of responses made, even if the exact words are not present. However, use only of semantic descriptor scales would not have revealed the range of emotions and why emotions were being triggered. In addition, it would not have been possible to discover that experimental musicians’ emotional experience was different from those not involved in experimental music, and the reasons why.
Table 4 Semantic descriptors used by Cain et al.(2013) & Hall et al. (2013), with words also used by participants highlighted in orange
Conclusions
In this study a phenomenological approach was used to explore the emotional response of participants to a shopping mall soundscape. Six themes emerged relating to the sounds heard and participants associations with those sounds. Visual imagery and episodic memories were evoked and found to contribute to participants’ emotional states. Whilst each experience was individual in its nature, it was possible to identify three broad categories of emotional response. Distinctions were found in the way experimental musicians responded, further revealing how a person’s background context can influence their experience.
Overall use of BRECVEM-based interview questions worked well, and with further refinement the questions could successfully be employed in future soundscape studies of a similar nature.
For soundscape studies aiming to specifically investigate emotional dimensions it is highly recommended that phenomenological, narrative (e.g. Gilboa & Vilnai-Yavetz, 2013) or grounded theory (e.g. Liu and Kang, 2016) research methods are employed. It is only through these qualitative research methodologies that the complexities and individuality of human emotional response can be fully revealed and understood.
References
Aletta, F., Van Renterghem, T., & Botteldooren, D. (2018). Influence of personal factors on sound perception and overall experience in urban green areas. A case study of a cycling path highly exposed to road traffic noise. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 15(6), 1118. doi:10.3390/ijerph15061118
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Appendices
Appendix 1. BRECVEM mechanisms – summarised from Juslin (2013, pp.241-244). Seven mechanisms through which music might induce emotions, based on a number of distinct brain functions, ranging from simple sensations to syntactical processing.
All mechanisms take music as their ‘object’, treating the music as if it features information that, in some way, warrants an emotional response.
This research used the first six of these mechanisms as a basis from which to structure its interview.
1.Brain Stem Reflex: Refers to a process whereby an emotion is induced by music because one or more fundamental acoustical characteristics of the music are taken by the brain stem to signal a potentially important and urgent event. All other things being equal, sounds that are sudden, loud, dissonant, or that feature fast temporal pattern, induce arousal in the listener. Such responses reflect the impact of simple auditory sensations (i.e. music as sound in the most basic sense).
2. Rhythmic entrainment: Refers to a process whereby an emotion is induced by a piece of music because the powerful, external rhythm of the music interacts with an internal body rhythm of the listener such as heart rate, such that the later rhythm adjusts towards and eventually ‘locks in’ to a common periodicity. The adjusted heart rate may then spread to other components of emotion (e.g. feeling) through proprioceptive feedback, thereby producing increased arousal in the listener.
3. Evaluative conditioning: Refers to ta process whereby an emotion is induced by a piece of music simply because this stimulus has often been paired with other positive or negative stimuli. For example, a particular piece of music may have occurred repeatedly together in time with a specific event that always makes you happy, such as meeting one of your friends. Over time the music itself will eventually evoke happiness even in the absence of the friendly interaction.
4. Emotional Contagion: Refers to a process whereby an emotion is induced by a piece of music because the listener perceives the emotional expression of the music and then ‘mimics’ this expression internally. Because music may often feature sound patterns similar to those that occur in emotional speech, it has been proposed that we get aroused by voice-like aspects of music via a process in which a neural ‘module’ responds quickly and automatically to certain stimulus features, which leads us to mimic the perceived emotion internally.
5. Visual Imagery: Refers to a process whereby an emotion is induced in a listener because he or she conjures up visual images (e.g. of a beautiful landscape) while listening to the music. The emotions experiences are the result of an interaction between the music and these images.
6. Episodic memory: Refers to a process whereby an emotion is induced in a listener because the music evokes a personal memory of a special event in the listener’s life. When memory is evoked, so also is the emotion associated with the memory. Such emotions may be intense- perhaps because the physiological response patterns to the original events are stored in memory along with experiential contents.
7. Musical expectancy (not used in this study as the basis for any questions): Refers to a process whereby an emotion is induced in a listener because a specific feature of the music violates, delays, or confirms the listener’s expectations about continuation of the music.
Appendix 2 – Interview Transcripts - downloadable as pdf
Appendix 3 – interview sentences and phrases assigned to each Theme - downloadable as pdf
This study was carried out as part of a B Mus (Hons) degree at Huddersfield University.