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2025 Max H
Modern Design and its Impact on Emotions
Modern Design's Origins
• Born out of a desire to abandon 19th-century European ornamentation.
• Favors clean, angular lines, neutral colors, bare materials, and a sense of minimalism.
• Despite its intention to create tranquility, modern design often leads to melancholy isolation.
Color's Influence on Emotions
• Color has powerful effects on mood and mental functioning.
• Warm colors like red induce better performance, while cool colors like blue have the opposite effect.
• Cool, desaturated colors like grays mute our autonomic nervous system, making us less energetic and aroused.
Emotional Effects of Form
• An angular form triggers activation in the amygdala, a small almond-shaped structure in our brains associated with emotional memory, specifically fear.
• Too many angles in our homes set us on edge, contributing to the negative affect we feel towards modern design.
Modernism's Tension with Delight
• Modernism's restrained quality is fundamentally in tension with the idea of delight, an emotion of abundance and richness.
• Modernists' matte, bare surfaces signal something else entirely, causing us to perceive them as inhospitable.
Potential Future Research
• Emerging findings from psychology disciplines may shed more light on what spaces feel good to us and why.
• The notion that there are intrinsic aesthetic preferences built into our human nature is provocative but intriguing.
Unhappy Hipsters: Does Modern Architecture Make Us Gloomy? | Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/design-and-the-mind/201002/unhappy-hipsters-does-modern-architecture-make-us-gloomy. Accessed 11 Feb. 2025.
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