Graphic Designers Should Never Show Up Psychologists, but This One Did
Orlagh O’Brien, a British graphic designer, decided to find out about how people feel different emotions. So he gave people from all different cultures basic outlines of the human form and asked them to draw, among other things, where they feel joy, sadness, anger, and fear. Then he layered all the drawings on top of each other to find an aggregate of where people feel emotions in their body.
Brilliant.
Jump to see where people feel these four emotions in their bodies, and then go to the site, Emotionally Vague, to see other things like colors associated with different emotions and whether or not emotions move, and if so, how. Really really fascinating stuff.
Joy was mainly felt in the heart and in the head
Sadness was felt most in the heart, but also the head and stomach. Also it appears to be the emotion most felt inside the body.
Fear was mostly felt in the stomach, but also a bit in the heart, head, and hands, which I found interesting.
A lot of anger was in the head and directly outside of the head, but also in the heart and hands. I like these hand emotions.
This is truly one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in my life and I live for research like this. I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t thinking about getting the “joy” drawing tattooed on myself.
