Bouba/kiki effect
Efecto bouba/kiki
- Date
- 1929 · confidence medium
- Place
- Berlin, Germany
- Credited to
- Wolfgang Köhler
- Field
- Communication
What was discovered
A non-arbitrary mental association between certain speech sounds and certain visual shapes: people tend to link soft sounds like "bouba" to rounded figures and hard sounds like "kiki" to spiky ones. It has been confirmed across most cultures and languages studied.
Köhler documented it in the 1920s using the words "takete" and "maluma"; the experiment became popular under the names "bouba" and "kiki" in a 2001 study by Ramachandran and Hubbard.
What it led to
- A challenge to the full arbitrariness of the linguistic sign
- A modern research line on sound symbolism and synaesthesia