Music and Emotions
1

what is an
emotion?

how do psychologists
measure and group emotions?

musical features and
their relation to emotions

theories linking music
and emotion (BRECVEMA)

scherer's (1984) definition

  • emotion consists of multiple components; they are coordinated; and they serve many functions
    • physiological: heart rate, skin conductance, etc
    • display patterns: posture, gait
    • facial expressions: smiling vs. frowning
    • experience emotions in subjective ways

defining emotion

  • 1:
  • affect is an umbrella term that covers all evaluative or valenced states (eg. positive/negative emotions and moods)
    • emotion (your emotional state) is a brief but intense affective reaction > several minutes-several hours
    • mood is a lower intensity, longer lasting affective state > several hours- several days.
    • a final affective evaluation is a preference
  • locus of emotion: induced emotions (felt) vs. perceived emotions (identified)
  • 2:
  • emotion can be seen as part of "aesthetic experience"
  • aesthetic experience can be thought of as an overall experience that is made up of three interactive components.

how are emotions grouped?

functions of emotions

  • focus attention
  • generally adaptive (helps us to function), but can also be maladaptive
  • emotions help with communication

visual topography

discrete emotions

  • basic emotions that are fundamental to survival. universal, have facial expressions.
    • four basic emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, and fear.
  • secondary emotions: socially and culturally dependent. develop later in life, more subjective between people/cultures.
    • include embarrassment, shame, guilt, etc.

dimensional approach

  • emotions as a combination of arousal and valence
    • arousal = activity level, valence= positive or negative
  • early studies focused on physiological measurements, and this has developed over many decades.
    • heart rate, skin conductance, blood pressure, saliva sampling, respiration, blood-oxygen saturation, muscle tension, chills, goosebumps, hair standing up, startle reflex, etc.
  • other approaches have been observational (ie display pattern > posture and facial expressions)
  • recent decades have focused on neurophysiological methods (eg fMRI)

how are emotions measured?

the most common method is self reporting

  • likert scale (any scale with a neutral point in the centre, and either end has a polar opposite response.
  • visual scales (e.g. faces > might be some grey areas, but for the most part should be universally recognised)
  • continuous responses on a computer
  • open-ended responses/diary entries, etc
  • accompanying problems due to the subjectivity of emotions.
  • qualitative and quantitative
    • qualitative data allows for more depth, themes, and categories to emerge
  • the self-report method is generally easy to administer
    • potentially problematic > how reliable are the answers
    • numerical data > gather more information, objective
  • highlighted with hevner's approach
    • more options = more refinement, but harder to interpret
    • fewer options = more agreement, but less accuracy.

musical features

  • tempo (speed)
  • loudness/dynamics (the more correct term for 'volume')
  • rhythm (duration/length of notes, and their placement in time)
  • tonality (eg music in a 'happy' major key vs a 'sad' minor key)
  • expression devices such as legato (notes smoothly joined together) vs. staccato (short, abrupt notes)

theories

brecvema mechanisms

  • very few researchers have attempted to explain every aspect of emotional responses to music.
  • juslin and colleagues proposed brecvema, aiming to identify and describe the full set of causes/reasons
  • contains 8 interacting mechanisms, and can cover many different listening cirucmstances

resemblance theories (kivy 1980)

  • musical elements resemble qualities from the real world, and this is how emotions are brought in. kivy specifically notes contour and convention: tempo, mode, and melodic patterns.
    • related theory: contour theory > centres on melodic contour (the general shape of the melody or the pitches that are used)
  • emotion is also linked to speech prosody (pitch inflections in our speech)
  • happy speech vs. sad speech and music
    • jumping for joy = staccato, short jumping notes
    • sadness = lower pitch, slow tempo, like slow walking.

persona theory

  • suggests the listener creates an agent or persona for the music, and the emotions are ascribed to this persona.
  • similar to the internal locus (felt) and external locus (perceived)
  • theoretically, the listener is able to switch between affective attentive states, at times embracing the emotions as their own (internal) and at other times acknowledging the emotions as perceived (external)

cooke 1959

  • particular music intervals (time between notes) are linked to specific emotions
  • eg major third = joy/triumph, minor third = sadness. this is a learned association that we are used to.
    • evidence: numerous examples in western music
    • problems: based on melodic fragments
      • observable data does not always show that specific intervals evoke the same specific emotions.
      • universality > if these intervals are so universal why are musical styles so different between cultures

expectation theories (meyer 1956)

  • meyer's theory: one of the most well-known music psychology theories.
  • through exposure through our culture to music, we learn patterns and styles of music. from this, we develop expectations of probabilities and music 'syntax'.
  • when this expectation is disrupted, meyer suggests we experience "undifferentiated arousal" (like a surprise)
  • meyer suggests this is a universal method
    • evidence from most western music (tension and release)
  • problems: it does not refer to specific emotions, only arousal

aristotle 335BC

  • suggested that certain tonalities (musical keys and modes) could be linked to moral character traits.
    • evidence: music education teachings reinforce the belief system
    • problem: changes in culture over the centuries = hard to test

ITPRA (huron 2006)

  • a modern explanation
  • contains 5 categories of expectation
    • imagination, tension, prediction, reaction, appraisal
  • strength: it can explain a range of emotional responses to music; as with meyers theory, the evidence can be observed in much of western music (tension and release)

evaluative conditioning >> BRECVEMA

  • often emerges from repeated pairings of music and a stimulus, leads to a conditioned association.
    • can become a cultural norm > associations with 'happy birthday'. > has an overlap with resemblance theories

visual imagery >> BRECVEMA

  • listening to music can evoke visual imagery > at times this imagery might be emotional in nature.
  • learned association between audio and visual information
  • could also be from musical features, such as the structure

contagion (emotional) >> BRECVEMA

  • the tendency to feel the emotions of people around us; the universal tendency in all cultures to mmic facial expressions/other behaviours of those around us.
  • a similar hypothesis for music
  • a suggestion of why instrumentalists often aim for a 'vocal tone'
  • hypothesised to occur via 'mirror neuron' brain units, although there has been harsh criticism of this explanation based on a lack of hard neuroscientific evidence.

episodic memory >> BRECVEMA

  • sometimes referred to as 'referentialism' (eg meyer 1956)
  • if a piece is paired with an emotionally charged event, later exposure to the piece may trigger a memory of the event and the emotions associated with it.
  • a conscious recollection of a particular past event
  • based on a personal association between music and memory (an event, a person, place, etc)
  • can be very strong; can be positive or negative
  • these associations are more likely to be from a specific era of your life > know as a reminiscence bump
    • from when you were around 13-14 years old > you are significantly more likely to associate memories with music you were listening to at this point
  • could be a positive or negative association

rhythmic entrainment >> BRECVEMA

  • inclination to move to the pulse of the music
  • internal rhythms (eg heart rate, breathing, walking pace) tend to gradually adjust to the pulse of the music we hear
    how does this lead to emotion?
    • behavioural manifestation of emotional states can spread to other emotions
    • fast rhythms > rapid breathign/increased heartbeat > excitement

musical expectancy >> BRECVEMA

  • responses to the unfolding structure of music, based on our understanding of the syntax of music
  • the theories of meyer and huron (ITPRA)
  • violations of expectancy are most linked to anxiety, surprise, and thrills

brain stem reflex >> BRECVEMA

  • the most ancient section of the brain responsible for unconscious systems
  • mechanism linked to fundamental acoustic characteristics ("startle response").
  • cues that are sudden/extreme, dissonant, fast-paced or loud (or increasing in speech/loudness)
  • focused on arousal, which is just one aspect of emotions
  • cannot explain complex emotions such as tenderness

aesthetic judgement >> BRECVEMA

  • a subjective evaluation of the aesthetic value of the music (eg based on the perceived quality of the performers and the music itself, etc)