The power of paintings: Continuing to explore art and emotions (Year 2)
Human Health and Behavior- Grade:
- 6
- Teacher:
- Kelly Smith
This project studied the positive and negative feelings that painted art causes in humans and what factors influence people’s reactions. We created 4 original paintings that contain different color scales and genres. Then, we made an online questionnaire (4 questions) that 45 students from a middle school in Tucson, AZ, answered. They were choosing from a list of 9 feelings that each painting provoked in them. We analyzed their answers both individually and summed up for each painting. From the results, we learned that nature themes caused the most positive emotions, which had already been an outcome of our previous (Year 1) study with younger kids. We also found that grayscale art can make people uncomfortable. Finally, we found that the genre and color scale are much more important factors than who created the painting when it comes to people’s responses. We hope that what we learned can help people with managing mental health issues or other challenges.
This is a very creative and well-designed project exploring how art influences human emotions. I liked how the study used multiple paintings and collected responses from many students to analyze emotional reactions. The results clearly show that nature-themed and colored paintings produced the most positive responses. Excellent work connecting art, psychology, and data analysis.