research on musical emotion

[annicherrimoi]

Hello dear fellow forum members,

Is anyone researching musical emotion here? I'm collecting ground truth for GEMS model of induced emotion (a thouroughful model of emotion that you feel when listening to music (that music induces in you).

I've created an online psychological test, where you can listen to some nice music in an internet radio fashion and report what you were feeling. The good news is that you get feedback! You'll get to know which music (in sense of emotional content) was to your liking and which was not, you can also see what other folks were thinking about those pieces.
It's here:

emotify.org

The other nice consequence is that listening to music for 10 minutes not only lifts your mood but also helps my ph.d. research a lot!

[Arcadian]

Indeed, I am interested in musical pleasure. I am just starting some research about the neural mechanisms of music-induced pleasure.

 

It's a fascinating question why music causes pleasure in the first place. I believe it can happen in three ways: 1) by conjuring episodic memories with emotional associations, 2) by conveying some semantic meaning that the listener feels emotionally attached to, or 3) by pure sequences and combinations of auditory tones.

 

That last one is especially interesting to me. To the extent that music conjures memories and meaning, it is not surprising that music evokes pleasure at all. But why would seemingly arbitrary sequences and combinations of auditory stimulation cause pleasure? It has no apparent biological value. It's not particularly abstract like visual art - it can be, but not always. For some reason, particular arrangements of sound are sufficient to cause a pleasure response. It's weird, but interesting.

 

Anyway -- I'm taking your survey now.   

 

Edit: OK, a bit of feedback - I find the choices to be too limiting. Liking music isn't dichotomous, just "like it" or "don't like it." There are continuous degrees of liking. If you only have two choices, it's difficult to decide where to draw the line between them. And the third choice, "I know it," doesn't really make sense. Knowing is independent of liking. You can like something you have never heard before, and you can dislike it as well. Why not create two scales, one called Familiarity, the other called Enjoyment? Then you will get continuous data on both dimensions. I am doing something similar in my own research - except I'm looking into the different ways people can enjoy music.

Edited May 1, 2013 by Arcadian

[Guest |||]

Arcadian

 

Thinking over your points, I'll add my two cents.

 

Yes of course each of your potential answers may be the answer or more likely part of the answer, but to add discussion.

 

Music is enjoyable even without memory, an infant who does not yet solidify memories may still well enjoy a song.  Similarly, I think it might be a bit much to say, for instance, if we listened to new songs for 5 hours straight, each one evokes memory and this is why they are enjoyable.

 

Of course memories no doubt do play a role, but even if we assume that music evokes memories, hence we enjoy music, this still at best would be a partial answer.  Movies evoke memories, stories evoke memories, talking to friends evokes memories, personal thought evokes memories, but of course the experience of music is distant from any of these.  So at the least music is important, but there still would seem to be some unique aspect of music that keeps it from being just a memory phenomena.

 

On the second point, conveying a semantic meaning.  Sure that is true, I think this suffers from similar problems to the first point however.

 

As far as the last point, I feel this plays a role, but it begs the question.  We enjoy music because of the auditory stimulation - but the question still remains, why do we enjoy this auditory stimulation? 

 

 

 

Perhaps something to consider, music often has a tempo, a beat, and this in itself may have a meditative effect.  We could consider how a child in utero will recognize its mothers heart beat and may be soothed by it, and similarly we may be soothed by repetitive sound that when combined with subjective interpretation, may create the unique experience of music. 

 

Perhaps the enjoyment of music rests on, successful auditory stimulation such that a maximal amount of "feel-good" or associated "feel-good" neurons fire, then added with personal meaning.

 

Or something

[Arcadian]

Music is enjoyable even without memory, an infant who does not yet solidify memories may still well enjoy a song.  Similarly, I think it might be a bit much to say, for instance, if we listened to new songs for 5 hours straight, each one evokes memory and this is why they are enjoyable.

 

Of course memories no doubt do play a role, but even if we assume that music evokes memories, hence we enjoy music, this still at best would be a partial answer.  Movies evoke memories, stories evoke memories, talking to friends evokes memories, personal thought evokes memories, but of course the experience of music is distant from any of these.  So at the least music is important, but there still would seem to be some unique aspect of music that keeps it from being just a memory phenomena.

 

On the second point, conveying a semantic meaning.  Sure that is true, I think this suffers from similar problems to the first point however.

 

As far as the last point, I feel this plays a role, but it begs the question.  We enjoy music because of the auditory stimulation - but the question still remains, why do we enjoy this auditory stimulation?

 

You missed my point. I wasn't claiming to have explained how or why music evokes emotion; I was describing the ways in which music can evoke emotion. So you're just repeating what I already said. Music can cause emotion by way of memory, but it can also cause it by pure auditory stimulation, which is the real mystery. So, to reiterate, I would say that there are three "paths" from music to emotion, each of which is worthy of research in its own right.

[kaister]

It's interesting that you both point out the relation of enjoyment to inherent, distinct musical qualities/characteristics.  I can see how perhaps they are caused subconsciously through other experiences which cause us to enjoy particular cadences or timbres, etc.  Thus explaining a seemingly random attraction to certain music.  What would be a more interesting research question is the inherent attraction to consonant sounds, as that has been shown in infants, to potentially void any limitations on exposure.  My theory is that because it relies on hierarchical organization our brain is attracted to these types of sounds.  Thus we could assume that we are merely attracted to the most organized set of sounds, at least at our base, and from there on our experiences dictate which variations of organization we like more than others.  On the bigger picture, music preference is still a fascinating question that has much more research to be done on.  I don't do research on it anymore, but had to jump in the conversation and be a little nerdy.
Sorry OP, doesn't seem all that related to your post lol.

[Guest |||]

You missed my point. I wasn't claiming to have explained how or why music evokes emotion; I was describing the ways in which music can evoke emotion. So you're just repeating what I already said. Music can cause emotion by way of memory, but it can also cause it by pure auditory stimulation, which is the real mystery. So, to reiterate, I would say that there are three "paths" from music to emotion, each of which is worthy of research in its own right.

 

I didn't miss your point, I just simply wanted to discuss, but if you want, sure we can just say I was re-iterating your 3 points.

Edited May 2, 2013 by |||

[Arcadian]

I didn't miss your point, I just simply wanted to discuss, but if you want, sure we can just say I was re-iterating your 3 points.

 

Sorry I don't mean to sound negative or anything. I was actually responding to your statement, "it begs the question." Well, it would only beg the question if it were an attempt at explanation. But it wasn't - it was laying out the paths to emotion and saying, each of these can independently cause emotion. I wonder how that works.

 

Edit: Just to clarify, "begging the question" is a kind of fallacy in which you make a conclusion that assumes a hidden premise. But I think some people use it to mean "raising a question" or something, so maybe that is a source of confusion.

 

But yeah, thanks for contributing ideas! Clearly we all care about this topic, so let's use this thread to share our ideas.

Edited May 3, 2013 by Arcadian

[Arcadian]

My theory is that because it relies on hierarchical organization our brain is attracted to these types of sounds.  Thus we could assume that we are merely attracted to the most organized set of sounds, at least at our base, and from there on our experiences dictate which variations of organization we like more than others.  

 

Right - but in the case of music, people are not merely "attracted" to it; they can actually feel pleasure in response to it, not unlike the kind of pleasure we get from eating food or having sex. So even if it were the case that we are attracted to organized sets of sound, it wouldn't explain why music in particular causes pleasure.

 

I'm sure you guys are familiar with theories of tension and release. One thing that seems to cause pleasure is the buildup of musical tension over time, and then resolving it in a satisfying way. So time is definitely a factor. I'm also interested in how a small handful of particular chord progressions are used almost ubiquitously in popular music (

), yet there are many potential chord progressions that are never used because they sound awful. What's up with that? Edited May 3, 2013 by Arcadian