Music and emotion
Research into music and emotion seeks to understand the psychological relationship between human affect and music. The field, a branch of music psychology, covers numerous areas of study, including the nature of emotional reactions to music, how characteristics of the listener may determine which emotions are felt, and which components of a musical composition or performance may elicit certain reactions.
The research draws upon, and has significant implications for, such areas as philosophy, musicology, music therapy, music theory, and aesthetics, as well as the acts of musical composition and of musical performance like a concert.
Overview
The ability to perceive emotion in music is known to develop early in childhood, and improve significantly through development. The ability to ascribe specific emotions to a piece of music begins in childhood, although there is not a scientific consensus as to the specific age in which this ability develops. By adulthood, humans have measurable physiological responses to music: Listening to music triggers the cerebellum, increases dopamine levels, and decreases cortisol levels in the brain.The capacity to perceive emotion in music is also subject to cultural influences, and both similarities and differences in emotion perception have been observed in cross-cultural studies. Although perception of basic emotional features is culturally universal, people can more easily perceive emotion, particularly more nuanced emotion, in music from their own culture.
Development
Musical-emotional development begins in infancy, where infants are often exposed to singing and singsongy speech from their parents. Infants tend to prefer positive speech to neutral speech as well as happy music to negative music. Until the age of around four, children are typically unable to differentiate between the emotions found in music, particularly for complex emotions, although babies as young as five months old have been able to discriminate between happy and sad musical excerpts under some conditions. However, children as young as three years old can still identify a musical excerpt as happy or sad based on major or minor mode. Four-and-five-year-old children are typically able to classify musical emotions as "happy" or "sad", but struggle with more complex labels such as "angry" and "afraid".Musical-emotional associations can be innate, learned, or both. Studies on young children and isolated cultures show innate associations for features are similar to a human voice. Cross-cultural studies show that associations between major and minor modes and consonance and dissonance are probably learned.
Approaches
Appearance emotionalism
Some philosophers, such as Stephen Davies, argue that music evokes emotion by resembling human expressions of emotion, a theory that Davies termed "appearance emotionalism". According to the theory, the structure and form of music reflect human behaviors, such as movement and speech patterns, associated with emotional expression, causing the listener to feel these associated emotions while listening to a piece of music. Associations between musical features and emotion differ among individuals. Davies argues that expressiveness is an objective property of music and not subjective in the sense of being projected into the music by the listener. Critics of the theory argue that it is difficult to literally and objectively map musical characteristics to expressive behaviors, and that musical features that tend to provoke specific emotions, such as glissandos and low, dark timbres, do not necessarily resemble human expressive behavior relating to those emotions.Neuroscience of music and emotion
Recent neuroscience has clarified how the brain predicts and responds to emotionally meaningful musical events. Research on rhythmic incongruity shows that violations of expected musical patterns trigger strong neural responses in auditory and frontal regions, supporting theories that the brain continuously uses predictive coding to interpret musical structure. These predictive mechanisms are a key component in the emotional power of anticipation and tension within music.Research comparing different forms of musical information processing has shown that pitch perception and vocal memory activate specialized neural systems, with memory advantages for vocal music emerging independently of pitch-processing ability. These findings support models in which emotional responses to music stem from distributed systems that process rhythm, pitch, timbre, and voice in different ways.
Physiological studies further show that low-frequency musical components can amplify emotional and neural responses. High-intensity bass frequencies increase physiological arousal, modulate neural activity, and strengthen subjective reports of emotional intensity during listening. The involvement of subcortical pathways in low-frequency processing contributes to the visceral nature of music-induced emotion.
Process theory
Coined by philosopher Jennifer Robinson, the "emotions as process, music as process" theory assumes the existence of a mutual dependence between cognition and elicitation of emotion. Robinson argues that the process of emotional elicitation begins with an "automatic, immediate response that initiates motor and autonomic activity and prepares us for possible action", causing a process of cognition that may enable listeners to name the felt emotion. This series of events cycles with new, incoming information. Robinson argues that emotions may transform into one another, causing blends and conflicts between felt emotions: Rather than a single emotional state, inner feelings are better thought of as the products of multiple emotional streams. When one listens to music, the emotional perceptions of different aspects of the music may reinforce or conflict with each other as new information is processed by the brain, affecting someone's overall perception of the emotion expressed by a piece of music.Theory of musical equilibration
The theory of musical equilibration suggests that, rather than inherently having an emotional character, music inspires listeners to identify with messages that are often associated with emotions. For example, a minor chord may convey the message no more, which a listener would then translate to a feeling of sadness.BRECVEM model
Juslin and Västfjäll developed a model of seven ways in which music can elicit emotion, called the BRECVEM model- Brain stem reflex: Emotion is induced by music because one or more fundamental acoustical characteristics of the music is taken by the brain stem to signal a potentially important and urgent event. This is especially applicable to sudden, loud, and dissonant pieces of music that induce arousal.
- Rhythmic entrainment: The rhythm of a piece of music influences an internal bodily rhythm of the listener, such as heart rate, which in turn affects other components of emotion.
- Evaluative conditioning: An emotion is induced by music because the musical stimuli has been repeatedly paired with positive or negative stimuli, conditioning the listener to associate the positive or negative emotion with the music itself.
- Emotional contagion: A listener perceives the emotional expression of a piece of music, causing them to feel the perceived emotion themselves.
- Visual imagery: A listener conjures up visual images inspired by the music, which in turn provokes an emotional response.
- Episodic memory: An emotion is induced by music because the music reminds the listener of an emotional memory. This is sometimes referred to as the 'Darling, they are playing our tune' phenomenon.
- Musical expectancy: Emotion is induced in a listener because a feature of the music, such as rhythm or harmony, violates, delays, or confirms a listener's expectations.
Framework for Adaptable Musical Emotions
Susino and colleagues developed the Framework for Adaptable Musical Emotions, which explains emotional responses to music through the mechanism of adaptability over time. The framework suggests that emotional responses to music are formed in an adaptive way to accommodate or assimilate a wide range of cues arising from psychophysical, cultural, and personal variables interacting with situational contexts. Emotional adaptability helps to explain and predict the convergence and divergence of emotional responses to music across individuals and cultures over time.Specific factors affecting emotion
Many different aspects of a piece of music come together to create its overall emotional perception, including structure, performance, listener demographics, and context.Structural features
Structural features are specific aspects of a piece of music itself, disregarding how it is played, who is listening, and other contextual cues. There are two types of structural features: Segmental features are the individual sounds or tones that make up the music, such as duration, amplitude, and pitch, while suprasegmental features are the foundational structures of a piece, such as melody, tempo, and rhythm. There are a number of specific musical features that are highly associated with particular emotions. Within the factors affecting emotional expression in music, tempo is typically regarded as the most important, but a number of other factors, such as mode, loudness, and melody, also influence the emotional valence of the piece.| Structural Feature | Definition | Associated Emotions | Citation |
| Tempo | The speed or pace of a musical piece | Fast tempo: arousal, valence | |
| Mode | The type of scale | Major tonality: happiness, joy. Minor tonality: sadness | |
| Loudness | The physical strength and amplitude of a sound | Louder music: higher levels of arousal | |
| Harmony | The linear succession and interaction of musical tones and chords | Resolving harmonies: tension and release. Unexpected harmonies: surprise | |
| Style | The style and phrasing of the music | Staccato music: tense, energetic, amusing, surprising. Legato music: cohesive, calm, sad, scary |