Emotions evoked by the sound of music: Characterization, classification, and measurement.

One reason for the universal appeal of music lies in the emotional rewards that music offers to its listeners. But what makes these rewards so special? The authors addressed this question by progressively characterizing music-induced emotions in 4 interrelated studies. Studies 1 and 2 (n = 354) were conducted to compile a list of music-relevant emotion terms and to study the frequency of both felt and perceived emotions across 5 groups of listeners with distinct music preferences. Emotional responses varied greatly according to musical genre and type of response (felt vs. perceived). Study 3 (n = 801)--a field study carried out during a music festival--examined the structure of music-induced emotions via confirmatory factor analysis of emotion ratings, resulting in a 9-factorial model of music-induced emotions. Study 4 (n = 238) replicated this model and found that it accounted for music-elicited emotions better than the basic emotion and dimensional emotion models. A domain-specific device to measure musically induced emotions is introduced--the Geneva Emotional Music Scale. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An experience sampling study of emotional reactions to music: Listener, music, and situation.

The Experience Sampling Method was used to explore emotions to music as they naturally occurred in everyday life, with a focus on the prevalence of different musical emotions and how such emotions are related to various factors in the listener, the music, and the situation. Thirty-two college students, 20 to 31 years old, carried a palmtop that emitted a sound signal seven times per day at random intervals for 2 weeks. When signaled, participants were required to complete a questionnaire on the palmtop. Results showed that music occurred in 37% of the episodes, and in 64% of the music episodes, the participants reported that the music affected how they felt. Comparisons showed that happiness-elation and nostalgia-longing were more frequent in episodes with musical emotions, whereas anger-irritation, boredom-indifference, and anxiety-fear were more frequent in episodes with nonmusical emotions. The prevalence of specific musical emotions correlated with personality measures and also varied depending on the situation (e.g., current activity, other people present), thus highlighting the need to use representative samples of situations to obtain valid estimates of prevalence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Feelings and perceptions of happiness and sadness induced by music: Similarities, differences, and mixed emotions.

The authors examined similarities and differences between (1) listeners’ perceptions of emotions conveyed by 30-s pieces of music and (2) their emotional responses to the same pieces. Using identical scales, listeners rated how happy and how sad the music made them feel, and the happiness and the sadness expressed by the music. The music was manipulated to vary in tempo (fast or slow) and mode (major or minor). Feeling and perception ratings were highly correlated but perception ratings were higher than feeling ratings, particularly for music with consistent cues to happiness (fast-major) or sadness (slow-minor), and for sad-sounding music in general. Associations between the music manipulations and listeners’ feelings were mediated by their perceptions of the emotions conveyed by the music. Happiness ratings were elevated for fast-tempo and major-key stimuli, sadness ratings were elevated for slow-tempo and minor-key stimuli, and mixed emotional responses (higher happiness and sadness ratings) were elevated for music with mixed cues to happiness and sadness (fast-minor or slow-major). Listeners also exhibited ambivalence toward sad-sounding music. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perception of emotional expression in musical performance.

Expression in musical performance is largely communicated by the manner in which a piece is played; interpretive aspects that supplement the written score. In piano performance, timing and amplitude are the principal parameters the performer can vary. We examined the way in which such variation serves to communicate emotion by manipulating timing and amplitude in performances of classical piano pieces. Over three experiments, listeners rated the emotional expressivity of performances and their manipulated versions. In Experiments 1 and 2, timing and amplitude information were covaried; judgments were monotonically decreasing with performance variability, demonstrating that the rank ordering of acoustical manipulations was captured by participants' responses. Further, participants' judgments formed an S-shaped (sigmoidal) function in which greater sensitivity was seen for musical manipulations in the middle of the range than at the extremes. In Experiment 3, timing and amplitude were manipulated independently; timing variation was found to provide more expressive information than did amplitude. Across all three experiments, listeners demonstrated sensitivity to the expressive cues we manipulated, with sensitivity increasing as a function of musical experience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The prepared emotional reflex: Intentional preparation of automatic approach and avoidance tendencies as a means to regulate emotional responding.

Advance preparation of action courses toward emotional stimuli is an effective means to regulate impulsive emotional behavior. Our experiment shows that performing intentional acts of approach and avoidance in an evaluation task influences the unintended activation of approach and avoidance tendencies in another task in which stimulus valence is irrelevant. For the evaluation-relevant blocks, participants received either congruent (positive-approach, negative-avoidance) or incongruent (positive-avoidance, negative-approach) mapping instructions. In the evaluation-irrelevant blocks, approach- and avoidance-related lever movements were selected in response to a stimulus feature other than valence (affective Simon task). Response mapping in the evaluation task influenced performance in the evaluation-irrelevant task: An enhanced affective Simon effect was observed with congruent mapping instructions; in contrast, the effect was reversed when the evaluation task required incongruent responses. Thus, action instructions toward affective stimuli received in one task determined affective response tendencies in another task where these instructions were not in effect. These findings suggest that intentionally prepared short-term links between affective valence and motor responses elicit associated responses without a deliberate act of will, operating like a “prepared reflex.” (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What makes us like music? Determinants of music preference.

What are the determinants of music preference, and how strong is their relative influence? This article investigates the parameters that may influence music preference, focusing on the cognitive, emotional, and cultural functions of music, physiological arousal, and familiarity. Data were collected in a lab study and in an online survey (total N = 263). Participants listened to six pieces of distinct musical styles (and to their own favorite music in the lab study). They had to indicate how much they liked the music and how much they agreed with a list of statements concerning the parameters mentioned above for each piece. Multiple regressions revealed that all parameters (except cultural functions) accounted significantly for the strength of music preference. The cognitive functions of music (i.e., music as a means for communication and self-reflection), as well as physiological arousal elicited by the music, were the most important determinants of music preference. The results are discussed in the light of several assumptions about the evolutionary foundation of music listening. In addition, the present findings may serve as a basis for the construction of an empirically derived theory of music preference. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Electrophysiological correlates of emotional responding in schizophrenia.

People with schizophrenia consistently report normal levels of pleasant emotion when exposed to evocative stimuli, suggesting intact consummatory pleasure. However, little is known about the neural correlates and time course of emotion in schizophrenia. This study used a well-validated affective picture viewing task that elicits a characteristic pattern of event-related potentials (ERPs) from early to later processing stages (i.e., P1, P2, P3, and late positive potentials [LPPs]). Thirty-eight stabilized outpatients with schizophrenia and 36 healthy controls viewed standardized pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral pictures while ERPs were recorded and subsequently rated their emotional responses to the stimuli. Patients and controls responded to the pictures similarly in terms of their valence ratings, as well as the initial ERP components (P1, P2, and P3). However, at the later LPP component (500–1,000 ms), patients displayed diminished electrophysiological discrimination between pleasant versus neutral stimuli. This pattern suggests that patients demonstrated normal self-reported emotional experience and intact initial sensory processing of and resource allocation to emotional stimuli. However, they showed a disruption in a later component associated with sustained attentional processing of emotional stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Diminished self-conscious emotional responding in frontotemporal lobar degeneration patients.

Frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) is a neurodegenerative disease that dramatically alters social and emotional behavior. Recent work has suggested that self-conscious emotions (e.g., embarrassment) may be particularly vulnerable to disruption in this disease. Self-conscious emotions require the ability to monitor the self in relation to others. These abilities are thought to be subserved by brain regions (e.g., medial prefrontal, anterior cingulate, and insula) that are particularly vulnerable to damage in FTLD. This study examined emotional responding (expressive behavior, peripheral physiology, and subjective experience) in 24 FTLD patients and 16 cognitively normal control participants using a karaoke task known to elicit self-conscious emotion reliably and a nonemotional control task (isometric handgrip). Results indicated that FTLD patients showed diminished self-conscious emotional behavior (embarrassment and amusement) and diminished physiological responding while watching themselves singing. No differences were found between patients and controls in the nonemotional control task. These findings offer evidence of marked disruption of self-conscious emotional responding in FTLD. Diminished self-conscious emotional responding likely contributes significantly to social inappropriateness and other behavioral abnormalities in FTLD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Affective, evaluative, and collative responses to hated and loved music.

This study investigated the effect of some possible predictors of musical preference using participant-selected pieces that were loved or hated. The pieces were played to groups who rated each according to familiarity, quality, preference, as well as emotions felt (internal locus) and emotions expressed (external locus) along the scales of strength, valence, activity, and dominance. The main findings were that good quality was statistically most strongly associated with high preference followed by valence felt, emotional strength felt, and familiarity respectively. The gap across emotion loci (difference between a felt emotion and emotion expressed by the music) was also a significant predictor of preference, with smaller gap preferred. However, analysis of responses by stimulus revealed that the most disliked pieces were highly familiar. Furthermore, although quality strongly matched preference response trends, the quality ratings made by participants did not always comply with conventional views of quality, leading to the speculation that quality and preference share an ontological source and become distinct concepts through social and intellectual filtering. Instances of preference for negative emotion-evoking music were found. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A preliminary investigation of the effects of experimentally induced mindfulness on emotional responding to film clips.

Despite encouraging preliminary findings regarding the efficacy of mindfulness and acceptance-based treatments for a range of psychological presentations, we have yet to elucidate mechanisms of action within these treatments. One mechanism through which mindfulness may reduce psychological symptoms and promote functioning is enhancing emotional responding and regulation. In this study, we used multimodal assessment to examine the effects of a brief mindfulness intervention in a laboratory setting on emotional experiences and regulation in response to distressing, positive, and affectively mixed film clips. Although there were no condition (mindfulness vs. control) effects on reports of emotional response or difficulties in regulation after the distressing film clip, participants in the mindfulness condition reported significantly greater positive affect in response to the positive film. Additionally, participants in the mindfulness condition reported more adaptive regulation (approaching significance, medium to large effect size) in response to the affectively mixed clip and significantly less negative affect immediately after this clip, although not after a recovery period. No significant differences emerged between conditions on physiological measures (skin conductance and heart rate) throughout the study. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mood-induced shifts in attentional bias to emotional information predict ill- and well-being.

Previous research has suggested that biased attention toward emotional (typically threatening) stimuli contributes to ill-being (e.g., high levels of anxiety), but its contribution to well-being is less clear. The researchers assessed naturalistic shifts in attentional bias toward threatening and pleasant schematic face cues in response to five induced mood states in college students. They also assessed state anxiety and satisfaction with life concurrently and 3 weeks later. Controlling for concurrent anxiety, a fear-induced shift in attention to threatening cues was associated with increased levels of later anxiety. Controlling for concurrent life satisfaction, a happiness-induced shift in attention to emotional cues (both threatening and pleasant) was associated with increased levels of later life satisfaction. These results suggest that mood-induced changes in deployment of attention to emotional information may accumulate in ways that impact psychological functioning, yet these effects depend on mood state and the emotional cues afforded by the context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The do re mi's of everyday life: The structure and personality correlates of music preferences.

The present research examined individual differences in music preferences. A series of 6 studies investigated lay beliefs about music, the structure underlying music preferences, and the links between music preferences and personality. The data indicated that people consider music an important aspect of their lives and listening to music an activity they engaged in frequently. Using multiple samples, methods, and geographic regions, analyses of the music preferences of over 3,500 individuals converged to reveal 4 music-preference dimensions: Reflective and Complex, Intense and Rebellious, Upbeat and Conventional, and Energetic and Rhythmic. Preferences for these music dimensions were related to a wide array of personality dimensions (e.g., Openness), self-views (e.g., political orientation), and cognitive abilities (e.g., verbal IQ). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Heart rate variability as an index of regulated emotional responding.

The study of individual differences in emotional responding can provide considerable insight into interpersonal dynamics and the etiology of psychopathology. Heart rate variability (HRV) analysis is emerging as an objective measure of regulated emotional responding (generating emotional responses of appropriate timing and magnitude). This review provides a theoretical and empirical rationale for the use of HRV as an index of individual differences in regulated emotional responding. Two major theoretical frameworks that articulate the role of HRV in emotional responding are presented, and relevant empirical literature is reviewed. The case is made that HRV is an accessible research tool that can increase the understanding of emotion in social and psychopathological processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality and uses of music as predictors of preferences for music consensually classified as happy, sad, complex, and social.

This study replicates the findings of a recent study (Chamorro-Premuzic, Gomà-i-Freixanet, Furnham, & Muro, 2009) on the relationship between the Big Five personality traits and everyday uses of music or people's motives for listening to music. In addition, it examined emotional intelligence as predictor of uses of music, and whether uses of music and personality traits predicted liking of music consensually classified as sad, happy, complex, or social. A total of 100 participants rated their preferences for 20 unfamiliar musical extracts that were played for a 30-s interval on a website and completed a measure of the Big Five personality traits. Openness predicted liking for complex music, and Extraversion predicted liking for happy music. Background use of music predicted preference for social and happy music, whereas emotional music use predicted preference for sad music. Finally, males tended to like sad music and use music for cognitive purposes more than females did. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and variety seeking.

The authors examined the influence of age on variety seeking in 3 experiments. When given choices among jellybeans or music, age differences in variety seeking emerged. Younger adults selected similar levels of variety when choosing what to consume immediately and what to consume later. In contrast, older adults consistently chose less variety when making choices to be consumed at a later time than when making choices to be consumed immediately. This pattern may be related to an increased focus on regulating future emotional experience that is associated with age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The impact of negative moods on self-enhancing cognitions: The role of reflective versus ruminative mood orientations.

This research program examined how self-focused attention to feelings affects the relation between mood negativity and self-enhancing thought. The primary hypothesis was that the particular manner in which people focus on their moods (reflective vs. ruminative) determines whether they reveal positive (i.e., mood-incongruent) or negative (i.e., mood-congruent) self-relevant thoughts in response to negative moods. Studies 1-4 revealed that social comparisons, temporal comparisons, and other self-enhancing cognitions (i.e., attributions, disidentification, relationship evaluations) are more likely to be mood incongruent when people adopt a reflective orientation to their negative feelings and more likely to be mood congruent when they adopt a ruminative orientation. Additionally, moods and mood orientations affected self-enhancing thoughts through the mediating influence of mood regulation goals and intentions (Studies 5 and 6). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The minor third communicates sadness in speech, mirroring its use in music.

There is a long history of attempts to explain why music is perceived as expressing emotion. The relationship between pitches serves as an important cue for conveying emotion in music. The musical interval referred to as the minor third is generally thought to convey sadness. We reveal that the minor third also occurs in the pitch contour of speech conveying sadness. Bisyllabic speech samples conveying four emotions were recorded by 9 actresses. Acoustic analyses revealed that the relationship between the 2 salient pitches of the sad speech samples tended to approximate a minor third. Participants rated the speech samples for perceived emotion, and the use of numerous acoustic parameters as cues for emotional identification was modeled using regression analysis. The minor third was the most reliable cue for identifying sadness. Additional participants rated musical intervals for emotion, and their ratings verified the historical association between the musical minor third and sadness. These findings support the theory that human vocal expressions and music share an acoustic code for communicating sadness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Musical structural determinants of emotional judgments in dementia of the Alzheimer type.

People with dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) may well be emotionally soothed by listening to music. However, very few systematic studies have been conducted to support the anecdotal evidence. DAT does damage certain cerebral structures that subsume emotional processing, and some studies have demonstrated deficits affecting emotional judgments of facial expression and prosody in DAT. Accordingly, this study addressed the question of whether DAT might leave musical emotional judgment intact. Twelve early DAT participants and 12 healthy elderly participants took part in this study. Emotional judgments were examined in relation to mode and tempo, two important structural properties that contribute to the happy-sad distinction in music. Their respective contributions were assessed in four different experimental conditions. The DAT participants' responses were similar to those of healthy elderly participants, showing spared ability to employ tempo and mode as cues for emotional interpretation. The DAT participants' performance was not correlated with their global cognitive functioning. These results constitute a preliminary empirical demonstration that, in early DAT, musical emotional judgments appear to be based on normal structural analysis of musical input. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotions over time: Synchronicity and development of subjective, physiological, and facial affective reactions to music.

Most people are able to identify basic emotions expressed in music and experience affective reactions to music. But does music generally induce emotion? Does it elicit subjective feelings, physiological arousal, and motor reactions reliably in different individuals? In this interdisciplinary study, measurement of skin conductance, facial muscle activity, and self-monitoring were synchronized with musical stimuli. A group of 38 participants listened to classical, rock, and pop music and reported their feelings in a two-dimensional emotion space during listening. The first entrance of a solo voice or choir and the beginning of new sections were found to elicit interindividual changes in subjective feelings and physiological arousal. Quincy Jones' "Bossa Nova" motivated movement and laughing in more than half of the participants. Bodily reactions such as "goose bumps" and "shivers" could be stimulated by the "Tuba Mirum" from Mozart's Requiem in 7 of 38 participants. In addition, the authors repeated the experiment seven times with one participant to examine intraindividual stability of effects. This exploratory combination of approaches throws a new light on the astonishing complexity of affective music listening. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotional intelligence, not music training, predicts recognition of emotional speech prosody.

Is music training associated with greater sensitivity to emotional prosody in speech? University undergraduates (n = 100) were asked to identify the emotion conveyed in both semantically neutral utterances and melodic analogues that preserved the fundamental frequency contour and intensity pattern of the utterances. Utterances were expressed in four basic emotional tones (anger, fear, joy, sadness) and in a neutral condition. Participants also completed an extended questionnaire about music education and activities, and a battery of tests to assess emotional intelligence, musical perception and memory, and fluid intelligence. Emotional intelligence, not music training or music perception abilities, successfully predicted identification of intended emotion in speech and melodic analogues. The ability to recognize cues of emotion accurately and efficiently across domains may reflect the operation of a cross-modal processor that does not rely on gains of perceptual sensitivity such as those related to music training. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)