Misery loves company: Mood-congruent emotional responding to music.

We examined emotional responding to music after mood induction. On each trial, listeners heard a 30-s music excerpt and rated how much they liked it, whether it sounded happy or sad, and how familiar it was. When the excerpts sounded unambiguously happy or sad (Experiment 1), the typical preference for happy-sounding music was eliminated after inducing a sad mood. When the excerpts sounded ambiguous with respect to happiness and sadness (Experiment 2), listeners perceived more sadness after inducing a sad mood. Sad moods had no influence on familiarity ratings (Experiments 1 and 2). These findings imply that “misery loves company.” Listeners in a sad mood fail to show the typical preference for happy-sounding music, and they perceive more sadness in music that is ambiguous with respect to mood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality, self-estimated intelligence, and uses of music: A Spanish replication and extension using structural equation modeling.

This study replicates and extends a recent study on personality, intelligence and uses of music [Chamorro-Premuzic, T., & Furnham, A. (2007). Personality and music: Can traits explain how people use music in everyday life? British Journal of Psychology, 98, 175–185] using Spanish participants and structural equation modeling. Data from 245 university students showed that, in line with our hypotheses, individuals higher in Neuroticism were more likely to use music for emotional regulation (influencing their mood states), those higher in Extraversion were more likely to use music as background to other activities, and those higher in Openness were more likely to experience music in a cognitive or intellectual way. As predicted, self-estimates of intelligence were also linked to cognitive use of music, though not when individual differences were considered. On other hand, contrasting with initial predictions, Extraversion was positively rather than negatively linked to emotional use of music. Small incremental effects of gender (over personality) were also found on the emotional use of music. Results are discussed in regards to previous findings on personality traits as determinants of uses of music. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of music and lyrics on personality.

An experiment tested whether music can produce significant changes in the experience of one's own personality traits under laboratory conditions. Participants were 87 first-year undergraduates at a large Canadian university (58 women and 29 men; mean age = 18.3 years). After completing a set of questionnaires including the Big Five Inventory, they were divided into 3 groups: the music-and-lyrics group listened to a classical song while reading the English translation of lyrics, the music-only group listened to a classical song and followed along the text of lyrics in German, and the lyrics-only group listened to the English translation of the lyrics, while following its text as well. Participants were then readministered the Big Five Inventory within another set of questionnaires. The results show that music produced significant increases, and lyrics significant decreases, in the short-term self-reported experience of change of one's personality traits. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 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)     

"It's a bittersweet symphony: Simultaneously mixed emotional responses to music with conflicting cues": Correction to Larsen and Stastny (2011).

Reports an error in "It's a bittersweet symphony: Simultaneously mixed emotional responses to music with conflicting cues" by Jeff T. Larsen and Bradley J. Stastny (Emotion, 2011, np). In the first paragraph on page 5, the word “inches” was omitted from the sentence, “As noted by Sir Arthur Eddington (1939; see Cacioppo & Berntson, 1994), scientists who cast nets with 2 mesh into the sea may catch many fish, but none of them will be smaller than 2.” The corrected sentence is provided in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2011-12883-001.) Some evidence indicates that emotional reactions to music can be organized along a bipolar valence dimension ranging from pleasant states (e.g., happiness) to unpleasant states (e.g., sadness), but songs can contain some cues that elicit happiness (e.g., fast tempos) and others that elicit sadness (e.g., minor modes). Some models of emotion contend that valence is a basic building block of emotional experience, which implies that songs with conflicting cues cannot make people feel happy and sad at the same time. Other models contend that positivity and negativity are separable in experience, which implies that music with conflicting cues might elicit simultaneously mixed emotions of happiness and sadness. Hunter, Schellenberg, and Schimmack (2008) tested these possibilities by having subjects report their happiness and sadness after listening to music with conflicting cues (e.g., fast songs in minor modes) and consistent cues (e.g., fast songs in major modes). Results indicated that music with conflicting cues elicited mixed emotions, but it remains unclear whether subjects simultaneously felt happy and sad or merely vacillated between happiness and sadness. To examine these possibilities, we had subjects press one button whenever they felt happy and another button whenever they felt sad as they listened to songs with conflicting and consistent cues. Results revealed that subjects spent more time simultaneously pressing both buttons during songs with conflicting, as opposed to consistent, cues. These findings indicate that songs with conflicting cues can simultaneously elicit happiness and sadness and that positivity and negativity are separable in experience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 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)     

Personality predictors of artistic preferences as a function of the emotional valence and perceived complexity of paintings.

This study explored associations among the Big Five personality factors, unconventionality, selected demographics, and preference for 4 distinct visual art genres (portraiture, abstract art, geometric art, and impressionism). In total, 3,254 participants completed an online survey assessing individual difference and preference ratings for different paintings. Participants were also asked to rate each observed painting for emotional liking and perceived complexity, which enabled examination of whether personality could predict artistic preferences when the latter was classified on the basis of consensual, rather than researcher-led or art historical, taxonomies. Correlations and structural equation models showed that the correlates and predictors of artistic preferences were stronger when art was classified using consensual ratings (particularly in the case of complex art) than according to researcher-led or art historical taxonomies. Although these findings are somewhat exploratory and more comprehensive measures of individual differences and art preferences could be employed, they suggest that trait-congruent classifications of aesthetic stimuli may improve prediction and understanding of individual differences in artistic preferences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Blue notes: Coping by music listening predicts neuroticism changes in adolescence.

It is important to understand distinctive developmental specificities of coping in adolescence and how these can relate to personality development. Adolescents can actively use music listening as a coping resource to maintain emotional stability and this is likely to influence their personality development. The aim of this study was to examine if interactions between 3 styles of coping by music listening (emotion oriented, problem oriented, and avoidance/disengagement oriented) could predict changes in adolescent neuroticism. This 2-wave longitudinal study followed 336 adolescent girls and boys over a 6-month period. In adolescents combining high neuroticism (baseline) and low avoidance-oriented coping, problem-oriented coping predicted lower neuroticism. In adolescents combining high neuroticism (baseline) with high avoidance-oriented coping, problem-oriented coping predicted higher neuroticism. In adolescent girls presenting high avoidance-oriented coping, emotion-oriented coping predicted higher neuroticism. Overall, avoidance/disengagement coping by music listening may represent a short-term risk/precipitating factor of increasing neuroticism in adolescence. (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)     

The effects of tempo and familiarity on children's affective interpretation of music.

When and how does one learn to associate emotion with music? This study attempted to address this issue by examining whether preschool children use tempo as a cue in determining whether a song is happy or sad. Instrumental versions of children's songs were played at different tempos to adults and children ages 3 to 5 years. Familiar and unfamiliar songs were used to examine whether familiarity affected children's identification of emotion in music. The results indicated that adults, 4 year olds and 5 year olds rated fast songs as significantly happier than slow songs. However, 3 year olds failed to rate fast songs differently than slow songs at above-chance levels. Familiarity did not significantly affect children's identification of happiness and sadness in music. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Music and emotion: perceptual determinants, immediacy, and isolation after brain damage

This study grew out of the observation of a remarkable sparing of emotional responses to music in the context of severe deficits in music processing after brain damage in a non-musician. Six experiments were designed to explore the perceptual basis of emotional judgments in music. In each experiment, the same set of 32 excerpts taken from the classical repertoire and intended to convey a happy or sad tone were presented under various transformations and with different task demands. In Expts. 1 to 3, subjects were required to judge on a 10-point scale whether the excerpts were happy or sad. Altogether the results show that emotional judgments are (a) highly consistent across subjects and resistant to brain damage; (b) determined by musical structure (mode and tempo); and (c) immediate. Experiments 4 to 6 were designed to asses whether emotional and non-emotional judgments reflect the operations of a single perceptual analysis system. To this aim, we searched for evidence of dissociation in our brain-damaged patient, I.R., by using tasks that do not require emotional interpretation. These non-emotional tasks were a 'same-different' classification task (Expt. 4), error detection tasks (Expt. 5A,B) and a change monitoring task (Expt. 6). I.R. was impaired in these non-emotional tasks except when the change affected the mode and the tempo of the excerpt, in which case I.R. performed close to normal. The results are discussed in relation to the possibility that emotional and non-emotional judgments are the products of distinct pathways.     

An exploratory study of musical emotions and psychophysiology.

A basic issue about musical emotions concerns whether music elicits emotional responses in listeners or simply expresses emotions that listeners recognize in the music. To address this, psychophysiological measures were recorded while 40 college students heard 2 excerpts chosen to represent each of 3 emotions: sad, fear, and happy. The measures covered cardiac, vascular, electrodermal, and respiratory functions. Other Ss indicated dynamic changes in emotions they experienced while listening to the music on 1 of 4 scales: sad, fear, happy, and tension. Both physiological and emotion judgments were made on a second-by-second basis. The physiological measures all showed a significant effect of music compared to the pre-music interval. Analyses including correlations between physiology and emotion judgments, found significant differences among the excerpts. The sad excerpts produced the largest changes in heart rate, BP, skin conductance, and temperature. The fear excerpts produced the largest changes in blood transit time and amplitude. The happy excerpts produced the largest changes in the measures of respiration. These emotion-specific physiological changes only partially replicated those found for nonmusical emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hierarchical organization of personality and prediction of behavior.

Two studies evaluated personality trait measures and Big Five factor measures for their accuracy in predicting important behavior criteria. The results of both studies showed that the narrower traits and the broader factors, thought to define 2 levels of a hierarchy of personality variables, separately predicted most criterion variables. However, the incremental validity of the personality trait measures (the degree to which the traits increased the criterion prediction achieved by the factors) was generally much larger than the incremental validity of the Big Five factor measures. It was concluded that aggregating personality traits into their underlying personality factors could result in decreased predictive accuracy due to the loss of trait-specific but criterion-valid variance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Who attains social status? Effects of personality and physical attractiveness in social groups.

One of the most important goals and outcomes of social life is to attain status in the groups to which we belong. Such face-to-face status is defined by the amount of respect, influence, and prominence each member enjoys in the eyes of the others. Three studies investigated personological determinants of status in social groups (fraternity, sorority, and dormitory), relating the Big Five personality traits and physical attractiveness to peer ratings of status. High Extraversion substantially predicted elevated status for both sexes. High Neuroticism, incompatible with male gender norms, predicted lower status in men. None of the other Big Five traits predicted status. These effects were independent of attractiveness, which predicted higher status only in men. Contrary to previous claims, women's status ordering was just as stable as men's but emerged later. Discussion focuses on personological pathways to attaining status and on potential mediators. (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)     

Personality effects on social relationships.

Personality influences on social relationships and vice versa were longitudinally studied. Personality affected relationships, but not vice versa. After entry to university, 132 students participated for 18 month in a study in which the Big Five factors of personality, the subfactors Sociability and Shyness, and all significant social relationships were repeatedly assessed. A subsample kept diaries of all significant social interactions. After the initial correlation between personality and relationship quality was controlled for, Extraversion and its subfactors, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness predicted aspects of relationships such as number of peer relationships, conflict with peers, and falling in love. In contrast, relationship qualities did not predict personality traits, and changes in relationship qualities were unrelated to changes in personality traits. Consequences for dynamic-interactionistic views of personality and relationships are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 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)     

The happy personality: A meta-analysis of 137 personality traits and subjective well-being.

This meta-analysis used 9 literature search strategies to examine 137 distinct personality constructs as correlates of subjective well-being (SWB). Personality was found to be equally predictive of life satisfaction, happiness, and positive affect, but significantly less predictive of negative affect. The traits most closely associated with SWB were repressive-defensiveness, trust, emotional stability, locus of control-chance, desire for control, hardiness, positive affectivity, private collective self-esteem, and tension. When personality traits were grouped according to the Big Five factors, Neuroticism was the strongest predictor of life satisfaction, happiness, and negative affect. Positive affect was predicted equally well by Extraversion and Agreeableness. The relative importance of personality for predicting SWB, how personality might influence SWB, and limitations of the present review are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)