A theoretical basis for understanding and researching the relationship between music, stress, and biofeedback

Music’s ability to influence emotional states and physical arousal has become an increasingly popular area of study. The wealth of literature around music and stress suggests a significant amount of interest in leveraging music to manage stress. However, as attention increases, the robustness of research becomes an increasing concern. This study investigates the current literature and proposes recommendations for the future studying of the psychological and physiological impacts of music as it relates to stress reduction. Existing literature was reviewed with a focus on the operationalization of key concepts of music and stress. The analysis showed considerable discrepancies in research design, operationalization of music, operationalization of the psychological aspects of stress, and operationalization of the physiological aspects of stress. The findings of this study have implications for future research design. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA (https://aura.antioch.edu) and OhioLINK ETD Center (https://etd.ohiolink.edu)

Disclosing the association between empathy and emotion: a correlation ERP study

Emotions and empathy are integral parts of human being. In contemplation of correlation between trait empathy and neuronal emotional processing, this study meant to investigate the relationship between them. The experiment was conducted with forty participants, divided in twenty females and twenty males passively viewing five emotional stimulating images (Erotic, Threat, Mutilation, Dangerous sport, and Neutral). Cortical activities as well as subjective evaluation of emotion were recorded simultaneously besides analysis of self-report to segregate gender-relating empathy traits. Men’s and women’s empathy traits whether are similar or different were expected to play a big role in affecting amplitude of P1 and P300 wave during the experiment. Additionally, the process of quantifying the recorded data in an attempt to seek apparent evidence if there was a correlation between trait empathy and the components. Furthermore, as regards the similarity and difference in the cortical emotional responses due to gender divergence, the correlation if be discovered could be generalised for both sexes and being manifested in the manner of gender-bias in trait empathyEmotions and empathy are integral parts of human being. In contemplation of correlation between trait empathy and neuronal emotional processing, this study meant to investigate the relationship between them. The experiment was conducted with forty participants, divided in twenty females and twenty males passively viewing five emotional stimulating images (Erotic, Threat, Mutilation, Dangerous sport, and Neutral). Cortical activities as well as subjective evaluation of emotion were recorded simultaneously besides analysis of self-report to segregate gender-relating empathy traits. Men’s and women’s empathy traits whether are similar or different were expected to play a big role in affecting amplitude of P1 and P300 wave during the experiment. Additionally, the process of quantifying the recorded data in an attempt to seek apparent evidence if there was a correlation between trait empathy and the components. Furthermore, as regards the similarity and difference in the cortical emotional responses due to gender divergence, the correlation if be discovered could be generalised for both sexes and being manifested in the manner of gender-bias in trait empath

Psychophysiological responses to isolated musical chord progressions

It is widely accepted that music is capable of inducing emotional responses, but there is a great deal of conflicting evidence among the research concerning the nature of those responses. The present study aimed to begin identifying some specific components of music that contribute to musical emotions by evaluating electrodermal activity and heart rate responses to isolated cadential chord progressions of varying conventionality. The results show a significant main effect of musical ensemble participation on heart rate; participants with any experience in a musical ensemble exhibited significantly greater heart rate responses than participants with no experience in a musical ensemble. This indicates that musical experience modulates physiological responses to isolated chord progressions.Thesis (B.?)Honors Colleg

Physiological arousal response to differing musical genres

Music is a complex medium that has social, psychological, and physiological implications. Music elicits early emotional responses (arousal) in the sympathetic nervous system, that later become consciously recognized emotions. We investigated how music genre effects physiological arousal by measuring participant skin conductance level (SCL). Physiological responses of 19 participants (3 male, mean age 23 years) were recorded by way of the iWorx 214 Psychophysiology Teaching Kit. The stimuli were four different genres of music: classical, Dubstep, Celtic, and big band (swing). Stimuli were presented to participants in one of four counterbalanced blocks. Participants\u27 highest SCL matched their reported genre preference 31.57% of the time. Contrary to our hypothesis, participants did not have a higher SCL for their preferred music, leading us to hypothesize that people habituate to their musical preference. The most significant result was that participants were able to accurately describe their emotional arousal to a musical stimulus. Thus, participants were able to recognize their physiological reaction to musical genres

Music induces universal emotion-related psychophysiological responses: comparing Canadian listeners to Congolese Pygmies

Subjective and psychophysiological emotional responses to music from two different cultures were compared within these two cultures. Two identical experiments were conducted: the first in the Congolese rainforest with an isolated population of Mebenzélé Pygmies without any exposure to Western music and culture, the second with a group of Western music listeners, with no experience with Congolese music. Forty Pygmies and 40 Canadians listened in pairs to 19 music excerpts of 29–99 s in duration in random order (eight from the Pygmy population and 11 Western instrumental excerpts). For both groups, emotion components were continuously measured: subjective feeling (using a two- dimensional valence and arousal rating interface), peripheral physiological activation, and facial expression. While Pygmy music was rated as positive and arousing by Pygmies, ratings of Western music by Westerners covered the range from arousing to calming and from positive to negative. Comparing psychophysiological responses to emotional qualities of Pygmy music across participant groups showed no similarities. However, Western stimuli, rated as high and low arousing by Canadians, created similar responses in both participant groups (with high arousal associated with increases in subjective and physiological activation). Several low-level acoustical features of the music presented (tempo, pitch, and timbre) were shown to affect subjective and physiological arousal similarly in both cultures. Results suggest that while the subjective dimension of emotional valence might be mediated by cultural learning, changes in arousal might involve a more basic, universal response to low-level acoustical characteristics of music

Do You Chill When I Chill? Exploring Strong Emotional Responses to Unfamiliar Musical Traditions

While research suggests that listeners from diverse cultural backgrounds can infer what mood is expressed in a piece from a different culture, no study to date has assessed whether peak emotional responses can also be induced cross-culturally. The chill response in particular has been defined as a sudden increase in emotional arousal elicited by a passage in music. This study addressed the question of whether listeners could experience chills for traditional Chinese music – with which they were either familiar or unfamiliar – as well as for Western classical music – with which all participants were familiar. Chills were measured through self-report and skin conductance while participants listened to pieces selected from each style. In accordance with the hypothesis, there was no significant difference in the number of chills felt in response to both styles of music, regardless of whether participants were familiar or unfamiliar with traditional Chinese music. However, both groups of participants showed significantly fewer chills when listening to scrambled versions of the same pieces, which acted as a control. Scrambled music was also rated as less likable and harder to pay attention to across groups. Overall, pieces that had received higher liking and attention ratings were found to elicit more chills. Thus, even under limited exposure, listeners can experience strong emotional responses to music from an unfamiliar culture as much as listeners familiar with that music. This contrasts with the view that all musical meaning is generated within a culture and suggests instead that there are cross-cultural cues capable of eliciting powerful emotions in people of all backgrounds

Are You Awed Yet? How Virtual Reality Gives Us Awe and Goose Bumps

“Awe” is a category of emotion within the spectrum of self-transcendent experiences. Awe has wellness benefits, with feelings of social interconnectivity and increased life satisfaction. However, awe experiences remain rare in our everyday lives, and rarer in lab environments. We posit that Virtual Reality (VR) may help to make self-transcendent and potentially transformative experiences of awe more accessible to individuals. Here, we investigated how interactive VR as a positive technology may elicit awe, and how features of aesthetic beauty/scale, familiarity, and personalization (self-selection of travel destinations) may induce awe. In this mixed-methods study, participants used an interactive VR system to explore Earth from ground and orbit. We collected: introspective interviews and self-report questionnaires with participants’ experience of awe; information on personality traits and gender; and we recorded physiological goose bumps on the skin (using an arm-mounted goose bump camera instrument), which is a documented marker of an awe experience. Results showed that on a scale of 0–100 for self-reported awe, four different interactive VR environments yielded an average awe rating of 79.7, indicating that interactive VR can indeed induce awe. 43.8% of participants experienced goose bumps: awe ratings positively correlated with the occurrence of goose bumps with those who experienced goose bumps having showed significantly higher ratings of awe than those who did not. Most (64%) of the goose bumps occurred when participants self-selected their VR environment. Participant statements from the interviews were characteristic of an awe-inspiring experience, revealed themes of social connection, and usability problems with the VR interface. Personality traits yielded no clear correlation to awe ratings, and females appear to experience more goose bumps than males. In summary: (1) Interactive VR can elicit awe, especially within familiar, self-selected environments; (2) Physiological goose bumps can be recorded to provide reliable, non-intrusive indications of awe; (3) Care must be taken to design interaction interfaces that do not impede awe; and (4) While personality traits are not correlated to awe ratings, goose bumps were experienced more frequently among females. We aim to conduct future studies using custom VR environments, interfaces, and additional physiological measures to provide further insight into awe

Evaluating Content-centric vs User-centric Ad Affect Recognition

Despite the fact that advertisements (ads) often include strongly emotional content, very little work has been devoted to affect recognition (AR) from ads. This work explicitly compares content-centric and user-centric ad AR methodologies, and evaluates the impact of enhanced AR on computational advertising via a user study. Specifically, we (1) compile an affective ad dataset capable of evoking coherent emotions across users; (2) explore the efficacy of content-centric convolutional neural network (CNN) features for encoding emotions, and show that CNN features outperform low-level emotion descriptors; (3) examine user-centered ad AR by analyzing Electroencephalogram (EEG) responses acquired from eleven viewers, and find that EEG signals encode emotional information better than content descriptors; (4) investigate the relationship between objective AR and subjective viewer experience while watching an ad-embedded online video stream based on a study involving 12 users. To our knowledge, this is the first work to (a) expressly compare user vs content-centered AR for ads, and (b) study the relationship between modeling of ad emotions and its impact on a real-life advertising application.Comment: Accepted at the ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interation (ICMI) 201

The good of boredom

I argue that the state of boredom (i.e., the transitory and non-pathological experience of boredom) should be understood to be a regulatory psychological state that has the capacity to promote our well-being by contributing to personal growth and to the construction (or reconstruction) of a meaningful lif