The bouba/kiki effect is a non-arbitrary mapping between speech sounds and the visual shape of objects.

It was first documented by Wolfgang Köhler in 1929 using nonsense words. The image above was used for a test to demonstrate that people may not attach sounds to shapes arbitrarily. American college undergraduates and Tamil speakers in India labelled the more curved, round shape "bouba" and the sharp-edged counterpart "kiki" when given the two options.

At the beginning of this project, I intended to recreate the original bouba/kiki test and collect data on a list of nonsense words from my friends. That all changed when I opened TikTok and saw a video on my timeline about the bouba/kiki effect in relation to humans. The woman in the video was saying how she "only dates bouba men" which she defines as those with softer, less defined facial and physical features.

Intrigued by this whole idea and wanting to take it a step further, I decided to conduct my own test around how the bouba/kiki effect can be used to categorize people. More specifically, I wanted to apply this to a set of individuals that are widely recognized by the public with polarised opinions about them.

After some thinking, I found the perfect genre of people: celebrities!