Individual Differences in Emotional Response to Music

Although emotional experiences with music have been enjoyed for millennia, research involving music has focused primarily on emotions perceived rather than felt, and not much research exists into differential emotional response to music as a function of individual differences. A recent study (Djikic, 2011) looked at the effect of music on personality, but it did not assess emotional state before or after listening. In an extension of that study, the present research explores how changes in emotion may be related to self-reported personality. Relationships between extraversion and neuroticism, emotional state before and after music listening, and liking the stimulus were examined. It was hypothesized that in predicting final emotional state, an interaction was expected between initial emotional state and liking the stimulus; personality was expected to moderate the relationship between liking the stimulus and its type; and greater change in affect would be found in music than in control conditions. A one-factor between-subjects experiment was conducted in which participants listened to one of four randomly-assigned sound conditions: choral music likely to be perceived as happy, instrumental music likely to be perceived as sad, Brownian noise, or a classroom lecture. Sixty students from a university located in the southeastern United States participated individually in a laboratory setting. Repeated measures assessed affect, extraversion and neuroticism, both before and after listening. Liking the stimulus was found to interact with initial negative affect in predicting negative affect after listening, but no similar interaction was found for positive affect. Highest levels of neuroticism were associated with liking the stimulus likely to be perceived as sad. Significantly greater reduction in negative affect was found in music conditions than control conditions. This study also found partial support for a surprising difference in neuroticism, which changed after exposure to all conditions except the Brownian noise control condition. These findings underscore the importance of individual differences in emotional response to music and the need to take them into account

In pursuit of satisfaction and the prevention of embarrassment : affective state in group recommender systems

Peer reviewedPostprin

Take a Sad Song and Make It Better : Exploring Rewards Related to Liking Unfamiliar Sad Music

This thesis tested some of Levinson\u27s (1997) ideas on why people like music that makes them sad. A path model of this effect was interpreted from Levinson\u27s theory, and 5 of the paths were tested. These paths were that music would directly create a communion with the song, that happiness and sadness would mediate this effect, that absorption would moderate the direct path, that absorption would moderate the songs\u27 ability to evoke the emotions, and that satisfaction would moderate the emotions\u27 influence on liking the songs. A pilot study was conducted to determine if the songs evoked their intended emotions. The pilot study included 6 songs: two fast, major songs to induce happiness; two repetitive songs intended to be neutral; and two slow, minor songs to evoke sadness. One song for each condition was retained for the primary study. All participants listened to all three songs in a counterbalanced order and completed a measure of absorption in a counterbalanced order. The music did not directly cause a change in communication scores, but happiness mediated it. Sadness did not. Absorption did not moderate the direct path, either. It also did not moderate the songs\u27 ability to evoke emotions. Satisfaction did notmoderate happiness\u27s effect on liking, but it did moderate sadness\u27s effect, where people with high satisfaction liked the song less as sadness increased. Satisfaction overall positively predicted liking the songs, regardless of the evoked emotion. Only Levinson\u27s (1997) reward of Savoring Feeling was supported in this study. The significant results suggest that nonmusical outcomes from unfamiliar music are directly related to the amount of happiness one feels from the music. Liking songs regardless of the emotional content increased as satisfaction increased. Therefore, liking a sad song may be a function on how much satisfaction one feels with the song as long as one does not feel too much sadness from the song

Predicting emotions and meta-emotions at the movies

Audiences are attracted to dramas and horror movies even though negative and ambivalent emotions are likely to be experienced. Research into the seemingly paradoxical enjoyment of this kind of media entertainment has typically focused on gender- and genre-specific needs and viewing motivations. Extending this line of research, the authors focus the role of the need for affect as a more general, gender- and genre-independent predictor of individual differences in the experience of emotions and meta-emotions (i.e., evaluative thoughts and feelings about one’s emotions). The article discusses a field study of moviegoers who attended the regular screening of a drama or a horror film. Results support the assumption that individuals high in need for affect experience higher levels of negative and ambivalent emotions and evaluate their emotions more positively on the level of meta-emotions. Controlling for the Big Five personality factors does not alter these effects. The results are discussed within an extended meta-emotion framework

Music, Pleasure, and Meaning: The Hedonic and Eudaimonic Motivations for Music (HEMM) Scale

Many people listen to music that conveys challenging emotions such as sadness and anger, despite the commonly assumed purpose of media being to elicit pleasure. We propose that eudaimonic motivation, the desire to engage with aesthetic experiences to be challenged and facilitate meaningful experiences, can explain why people listen to music containing such emotions. However, it is unknown whether music containing violent themes can facilitate such meaningful experiences. In this investigation, three studies were conducted to determine the implications of eudaimonic and hedonic (pleasure-seeking) motivations for fans of music with violent themes. In Study 1, we developed and tested a new scale and showed that fans exhibit high levels of both types of motivation. Study 2 further validated the new scale and provided evidence that the two types of motivations are associated with different affective outcomes. Study 3 revealed that fans of violently themed music exhibited higher levels of eudaimonic motivation and lower levels of hedonic motivation than fans of non-violently themed music. Taken together, the findings support the notion that fans of music with violent themes are driven to engage with this music to be challenged and to pursue meaning, as well as to experience pleasure. Implications for fans’ well-being and future applications of the new measure are discussed.</p

Modeling Musical Mood From Audio Features, Affect and Listening Context on an In-situ Dataset

Musical mood is the emotion that a piece of music expresses. When musical mood is used in music recommenders (i.e., systems that recommend music a listener is likely to enjoy), salient suggestions that match a user’s expectations are made. The musical mood of a track can be modeled solely from audio features of the music; however, these models have been derived from musical data sets of a single genre and labeled in a laboratory setting. Applying these models to data sets that reflect a user’s actual listening habits may not work well, and as a result, music recommenders based on these models may fail. Using a smartphone-based experience-sampling application that we developed for the Android platform, we collected a music listening data set gathered in-situ during a user’s daily life. Analyses of our data set showed that real-life listening experiences differ from data sets previously used in modeling musical mood. Our data set is a heterogeneous set of songs, artists, and genres. The reasons for listening and the context within which listening occurs vary across individuals and for a single user. We then created the first model of musical mood using in-situ, real-life data. We showed that while audio features, song lyrics and socially-created tags can be used to successfully model musical mood with classification accuracies greater than chance, adding contextual information such as the listener’s affective state and or listening context can improve classification accuracies. We successfully classified musical arousal in a 2-class model with a classification accuracy of 67% and musical valence with an accuracy of 75%. Finally, we discuss ways in which the classification accuracies can be improved, and the applications that result from our models

Pop psych: the impact of music and lyrics on emotion

This item is only available electronically.While the effects of music on emotion have been heavily researched, the added influence of lyrics is notoriously difficult to measure. Generally, negative music has been linked with decreased wellbeing and increased aggressive behaviour, but the specific contribution of lyrics remains largely unexplored. To further understand this interaction, original pop songs were written and produced to test the effect of lyrics while controlling for the effect of music. Using a 3 x 2 within-subject design, participants (N = 61) listened to songs in three categories – vitality, unease and sublimity – building on research by Zentner et al. (2008). Each category had two versions with either positive or negative lyrics. 172 words (86 positive, 86 negative) were selected from Warriner et al.’s (2013) database and incorporated into the three song pairs. The track order was counterbalanced between participants. After each song, perceived emotions were reported using the three-dimensional model (Schimmack & Grob, 2000). Participants also responded with felt levels of prosocial (or antisocial) sentiment induced by the stimuli. Intended music emotions were accurately perceived by participants. Importantly, songs with negative lyrics led to lower feelings of prosociality than songs with positive lyrics. This is the first empirical demonstration that lyrics have an effect on felt emotion above and beyond music category. By using such stimuli in future research, along with the use of more subconscious measures, the effects of music and lyrics could be harnessed to facilitate emotions associated with wellbeing and prosocial behaviour. Keywords: music, lyrics, pop, emotion, valence, stimuli, prosocialThesis (B.PsychSc(Hons)) -- University of Adelaide, School of Psychology, 201

Understanding inner music: a dimensional approach to musical imagery

Inner music—hearing music inside your head that isn’t playing in the environment—is a common experience that takes many forms. Research on inner music, however, has primarily emphasized instances of involuntary, aversive musical imagery, such as “earworms.” The present research develops a new conceptual framework, consisting of five fundamental dimensions, that can advance our understanding of inner music. In an experience-sampling study, a sample of musicians and people from the general university community (N = 132) was recruited to examine inner music as it occurs in-the-moment in everyday life. Over the course of a week, participants were contacted throughout the day and asked about their experiences with inner music, with an emphasis on the five dimensions: Affective Valence, Repetitiveness, Vividness, Mental Control, and Length. The results showed that there is variability at both the within-person and between-person levels on each of the proposed dimensions—people have a variety of musical imagery experiences, not just a few different types. Additionally, these dimensions were related to three different individual difference factors: personality, musical expertise, and auditory imagery ability. Openness to experience and extraversion, musical training, and the ability to form vivid auditory images were the primary predictors of the qualities of inner music. Additionally, the present research has implications for how musical imagery is measured—retrospective and in-the-moment reports differed considerably, suggesting people cannot accurately recall their inner music experiences. Overall, the findings show considerable variability in musical imagery and that focusing on specific types of inner music (e.g., earworms) ignores many other experiences. Looking at the qualities of inner music will be fruitful for future work and broaden the scope of research

National Time Accounting: The Currency of Life

This monograph proposes a new approach for measuring features of society’s subjective well-being, based on time allocation and affective experience. We call this approach National Time Accounting (NTA). National Time Accounting is a set of methods for measuring, comparing and analyzing how people spend and experience their time -- across countries, over historical time, or between groups of people within a country at a given time. The approach is based on evaluated time use, or the flow of emotional experience during daily activities. After reviewing evidence on the validity of subjective well-being measures, we present and evaluate diary-based survey techniques designed to measure individuals’ emotional experiences and time use. We illustrate NTA with: (1) a new cross-sectional survey on time use and emotional experience for a representative sample of 4,000 Americans; (2) historical data on the amount of time devoted to various activities in the United States since 1965; and (3) a comparison of time use and wellbeing in the United States and France. In our applications, we focus mainly on the Uindex, a measure of the percentage of time that people spend in an unpleasant state, defined as an instance in which the most intense emotion is a negative one. The U-index helps to overcome some of the limitations of interpersonal comparisons of subjective well-being. National Time Accounting strikes us as a fertile area for future research because of advances in subjective measurement and because time use data are now regularly collected in many countries.

A preliminary investigation into the use of the emotional contagion effect in the exercise environment

Based upon the theory of Emotional Contagion, the purpose of this investigation was to examine whether the use of positively-charged imagery could create a more positive exercise experience. Participants were randomly allocated into one of three test conditions (‘neutral’, ‘happy’ and control) whereupon they performed two step-aerobic sessions; baseline/familiarisation and experimental. Upon completion of the trials various exercise related, psychological measures were taken (Session RPE, FS, Enjoyment and Subjective Exercise Experience). A 3 × 2 Factorial MANOVA was used to assess for main effects and between condition interactions. There was no evidence of any effect for any of the DVs. ES data appeared to support this conclusion. Numerous recommendations are made to direct future research into this area