Music and Emotion
Sloboda, J.A., & Juslin, P.N. (2001).
Psychological Perspectives on Music and
Emotion. In: P.N. Juslin & J.A. Sloboda
(Eds)(2001). Music and Emotion, OUP, Chapter 4
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
 Why does music induce emotions to listeners?
 Are the emotions we experience in relation to music
different from the experience in everyday life?
 Why are different pieces of music associated with
different emotions?
 Are performers able to communicate specific
emotions to listeners?
 Do emotional responses to music vary as a function
of the cultural context?
 How do emotional responses to music affect the brain
and body of listeners?
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Psychological perspective
A psychological approach to music and
emotion seeks an explanation for how and why
we experience emotional reactions to music,
and how and why we experience music as
expressive of emotion.
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
What is an emotion?
 "everyone knows what an emotion is, until
asked to give a definition" (Fehr & Russell,
1984, p.464)
 Emotion in both an everyday concept and a
scientific construct.
 Involves both an implicit and an explicit body
of knowledge.
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Implicit knowledge
 embodied in so-called 'folk theories' of
emotion
 powerful sources that affect our behavior and
thoughts in powerful ways
 some emotions feel good, some bad
 some people are more 'emotional' than others
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Explicit knowledge
 development of emotions
 physiological changes associated with
emotions
 judgment of emotions from facial or vocal
expressions
 three kinds of evidence:
 self-report
 expressive behavior
 physiological measurement
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Definition
Emotion is a complex set of interactions among
subjective and objective factors, mediated by
neural/hormonal systems, which can
(a) give rise to affective experiences such as feelings of
arousal, pleasure/displeasure
(b) generate cognitive processes such as perceptually
relevant effects, appraisals, labeling processes
(c) activate widespread physiological adjustments to
the arousing conditions
(d) lead to behavior that is often, but not always,
expressive, goal-directed, and adative
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
The study of emotion in relation to
music
 Two kinds of musical emotions (not wholly
independent of each other):
 aesthetical value of music
 emotions induced or expressed by music, more or
less apart from the aesthetical value of the music
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Problems for studying emotions in
relation to music
1. Emotional reactions are commonly understood in
terms of their adaptive functions related to
biological survival.
2. There is great variability between individuals, and
across time within individuals.
3. Experiments that attempts to measure listeners'
affective responses to music may impact so much
on the listening process that the tasks destroys the
very thing it is supposed to measure (problem of
reactivity).
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Typical characteristics of emotions
 Emotions are functional despite their apparent
non-instrumentality.
 Emotions have behavioral, physiological, and
experimental components.
 Emotions have proximal elicitors.
 Emotions are intrinsically social.
 Emotions invoke action tendencies.
 Emotions change during the course of human
development.
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Emotions are functional despite their
apparent non-instrumentality
 What functionality do emotions have?
 Are they useful to us, and if so how?
 The primary function of emotions is to guide
behavior: emotions evolved because they
enabled successful interaction with the
environment.
 But how does the idea of functionality apply in
the case of music?
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
1. The functional architecture of emotions
should constrain our responses to music
(e.g., selective pressures favoring our ability
to employ acoustic cues in our environment
to make useful inferences about the probable
behaviors of other individuals).
2. Might serve as mood-optimizing function in
people's lives – non-instrumentality of other
emotions
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Emotions have behavioral, physiological,
and experimental components
 Self-report: musically untrained participants
listened to different pieces of music; wrote
down responses; results (content analysis)
 feeling of pleasure (96%)
 perception of stable mood (86%)
 feeling of oneness with the music (83%)
 perception of spontaneous and transient emotional
states (72%)
 feeling of movement (65%)
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
 Expressive behavior: People do cry when
listening to some music
 Facial electromyography (EMG): subliminal
facial expressions to expressive music
 Behavioral measures: decision time, distance
approximation, writing speed
 Physiological reactions: cardiorespiratory
differences
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Emotions have proximal elicitors
 Emotions are elicited. The eliciting event
appears to fulfill a specific role: they are not
just stimuli. They appear to act through their
significance, they meaning, their reward or
aversive nature (Frijda, 1986, p.4)
 Is it necessary that the person should be able to
know, consciously, what meanings mediate the
emotion?
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Emotions are intrinsically social.
 Emotions are 'contagious'.
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Emotions invoke action tendencies
 Emotions change the probabilities associated
with subsequent behavior (e.g., fear).
 Emotions are biologically embedded
mechanisms that ensure that our psychological
energies are directed to the meeting of primary
needs , both physical and psychological.
 Emotions by themselves do not guarantee
effective solutions to life's challenges –
solutions are developed by learning.
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
 Emotional intelligence: understanding the link
between one's emotion and effective behavior.
 Novels, plays, operas, and films can provide
opportunities to feel emotions with and for the
protagonists, and explore consequences of different
ways of action on these same emotions.
 True even in Western art culture: passive and
immobile 'respectful silence' of the audience has such
paradigmatic status.
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
 Pop concerts – context and stimulus for
exuberant and joyful bodily and vocal
expressions among audience members
 Soothing music
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Emotions change during the course of
human development




maturational changes of the nervous system
changes in the stimulus conditions eliciting emotions
changes in regulation and coping skills
changes in the relationship between cognition and
emotion
 changes in expressive behavior as a consequence of
mother's communication style
 changes associated with cultural influence, including
language
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
 Individual differences in emotional responses
to music within age cohorts have by and large
not been systematically examined.
 However, see developmental.ppt facial
expression, 4 emotions
 Preferences for music change over the life
span could partly reflect the fact that certain
types of music resonate better with certain
phases of life in terms of associated emotions.
E.g., rock music with its focus on sexuality,
anger, and rebellion may have a special appeal
to adolescents.
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Intrinsic and extrinsic emotions
In music there may be a partial decoupling
between the mechanisms that determine
intensity of affect and those that determine
emotional content, the former being
predominately determined by structural
characteristics of the music (intrinsic emotion),
the latter being determined more strongly by
contextual factors, including memories,
associations, and priorities of the person
hearing the music (extrinsic emotion).
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Intrinsic emotion
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Structural characteristics that are associated with the
elicitation of bodily and behavioral manifestations of
emotions such as weeping and 'thrills' or 'shivers',
e.g.:
syncopation
enharmonic changes
melodic appoggiaturas
other music-theoretical constructs which have in
common their intimate relationship to the creation,
maintenance, confirmation, or disruption of musical
expectations.
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Appoggiatura
A note, not normally part of a chord, which displaces
a normal note of a chord. The appoggiatura resolves
onto the displaced note whilst the chord is still
sounding. If the appoggiatura is prepared, by the
same note being present in the previous chord, then
the appoggiatura is normally referred to as a
suspension. Conversely, an appoggiatura may be
referred to as an unprepared suspension. The
appoggiatura usually (but not always) creates a
dissonance with the normal notes of the chord. More
than one appoggiatura may be deployed concurrently.
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
If musical expectation is really the key to
emotional intensity, how is it that we can feel
emotions to music we are highly familiar
with?
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Many of the violations of expectations may occur on a
subconscious level.
Even when the musical 'narrative' is familiar to us, we may
still be able to enjoy it. We can appreciate the twists and
turns (like re-watching a great movie).
Iconic and associative sources of emotion, such as emotional
contagion and memories, may remain much the same
throughout repeated listening to the same piece of music.
Familiarity with an object itself might increase our liking of
that object up to a certain point.
It is possible that some effects of music processing is
executed by a processor, whose responses are 'hard-wired' in
regard to certain perceptual primitives.
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Musical expectation – emotions as a function of
monitoring match and mismatch
 Most compositional systems (e.g., tonal systems)
provide a set of dimensions that establish
psychological distance from 'home' or 'stability point'.
 Proximity or approach to this resting point involves
reduction of tension.
 Distance can be measured on a number of dimensions
such as rhythm and meter (strong beats are stable,
weak beats and syncopations are unstable) and
tonality (the tonic is stable, non-diatonic notes are
unstable).
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Extrinsic emotion
 Iconic sources of emotion: Iconic relationships come
about through some resemblance between a musical
structure and some event or agent carrying emotional
'tone'. For instance, loud and fast music shares
features with events of high energy and so suggests a
high energy emotion such as excitement.
 Associative sources of emotion: Associative sources
of emotion are those that are premised on arbitrary
and contingent relationships between the music being
experienced and a range of non-musical factors which
also carry emotional messages of their own.
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Iconic sources of emotion
Throughout history, there has been a number of
different views on what music is able to express:
 emotion
 motion
 beauty
 Christian faith
 tension and release
 things and event
 human character
 political and
social conditions
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Findings from studies of emotional
expression in music
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Listeners seem to find it natural to attach emotion labels to
pieces of music.
Listeners are often consistent in their judgments and agree
about the emotional expression of the music.
The veridicality of the judgments is rarely studies due to a
lack of sufficient criteria of composers' intentions.
Iconic representation of emotions in music seems to operate
on a broad level of emotion categories.
Listeners' judgments of emotion are influenced by such
parameters as tempo, dynamics, rhythm, timbre, articulation,
pitch, mode, tone attacks, and harmony.
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Associative sources of emotion
 Certain types of stimuli (e.g., music, smells, and
tastes) seem to become associated in human memory
with particular contexts or events in earlier life, and
provide a trigger to recall these events (in particular,
when events were occasions of strong emotion).
 Even when music does not directly trigger past
experiences, many of the emotional processes are
self-referring in some way (e.g., 'I should have
recognized that', or 'This is not my type of music').
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Interaction between different sources
of emotion
 Intrinsic emotion is locally focused, and
extrinsic emotion is more globally contextdependent.
 Different sources of emotion may interact.
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005