They say "Here's why", but they never explain why. They just found a correlation in what people think. No reason as to why we think that way...
This could even potentially be just from societal conditioning.
This could even potentially be just from societal conditioning.
We don't rule out learning processes (e.g., social conditioning), but we do examine evidence for some level of innateness. For example, cross-modal Bouba–Kiki-like effects are present in pre-linguistic infants, and arousal signals can be easily understood across species. It may end up that what is innate is a predisposition to track and learn cross-modal correspondences that are widespread in the environment.
Link to paper pre-print: https://psyarxiv.com/wucs4