Effects of Aesthetic Chills on a Cardiac Signature of Emotionality

Previous studies have shown that a cardiac signature of emotionality (referred to as EK, which can be computed from the standard 12 lead electrocardiogram, ECG), predicts inter-individual differences in the tendency to experience and express positive emotion. Here, we investigated whether EK values can be transiently modulated during stimulation with participant-selected music pieces and film scenes that elicit strongly positive emotion. The phenomenon of aesthetic chills, as indicated by measurable piloerection on the forearm, was used to accurately locate moments of peak emotional responses during stimulation. From 58 healthy participants, continuous EK values, heart rate, and respiratory frequency were recorded during stimulation with film scenes and music pieces, and were related to the aesthetic chills. EK values, as well as heart rate, increased significantly during moments of peak positive emotion accompanied by piloerection. These results are the first to provide evidence for an influence of momentary psychological state on a cardiac signature of emotional personality (as reflected in EK values). The possibility to modulate ECG amplitude signatures via stimulation with emotionally significant music pieces and film scenes opens up new perspectives for the use of emotional peak experiences in the therapy of disorders characterized by flattened emotionality, such as depression or schizoid personality disorder

Background Music Stints Creativity: Evidence from Compound Remote Associate Tasks

Background music has been claimed to enhance people’s creativity (Ritter & Ferguson, 2017). In three experiments we investigated the impact of background music on performance of Compound Remote Associate Tasks (CRATs), which are widely thought to tap creativity. Background music with foreign (unfamiliar) lyrics (Experiment 1), instrumental music without lyrics (Experiment 2), and music with familiar lyrics (Experiment 3) all significantly impaired CRAT performance in comparison to quiet background conditions. Furthermore, Experiment 3 demonstrated that background music impaired CRAT performance regardless of whether the music induced a positive mood or whether participants typically studied in the presence of music. The findings challenge the view that background music enhances creativity, and are discussed in terms of an auditory distraction account (interference-by-process; Jones & Tremblay, 2000) and the processing disfluency account (Mehta et al., 2012)

Cognitive and affective judgements of syncopated musical themes

This study investigated cognitive and emotional effects of syncopation, a feature of musical rhythm that produces expectancy violations in the listener by emphasising weak temporal locations and de-emphasising strong locations in metric structure. Stimuli consisting of pairs of unsyncopated and syncopated musical phrases were rated by 35 musicians for perceived complexity, enjoyment, happiness, arousal, and tension. Overall, syncopated patterns were more enjoyed, and rated as happier, than unsyncopated patterns, while differences in perceived tension were unreliable. Complexity and arousal ratings were asymmetric by serial order, increasing when patterns moved from unsyncopated to syncopated, but not significantly changing when order was reversed. These results suggest that syncopation influences emotional valence (positively), and that while syncopated rhythms are objectively more complex than unsyncopated rhythms, this difference is more salient when complexity increases than when it decreases. It is proposed that composers and improvisers may exploit this asymmetry in perceived complexity by favoring formal structures that progress from rhythmically simple to complex, as can be observed in the initial sections of musical forms such as theme and variations

Locus of emotion influences psychophysiological reactions to music

It is now widely accepted that the perception of emotional expression in music can be vastly different from the feelings evoked by it. However, less understood is how the locus of emotion affects the experience of music, that is how the act of perceiving the emotion in music compares with the act of assessing the emotion induced in the listener by the music. In the current study, we compared these two emotion loci based on the psychophysiological response of 40 participants listening to 32 musical excerpts taken from movie soundtracks. Facial electromyography, skin conductance, respiration and heart rate were continuously measured while participants were required to assess either the emotion expressed by, or the emotion they felt in response to the music. Using linear mixed effects models, we found a higher mean response in psychophysiological measures for the “perceived” than the “felt” task. This result suggested that the focus on one’s self distracts from the music, leading to weaker bodily reactions during the “felt” task. In contrast, paying attention to the expression of the music and consequently to changes in timbre, loudness and harmonic progression enhances bodily reactions. This study has methodological implications for emotion induction research using psychophysiology and the conceptualization of emotion loci. Firstly, different tasks can elicit different psychophysiological responses to the same stimulus and secondly, both tasks elicit bodily responses to music. The latter finding questions the possibility of a listener taking on a purely cognitive mode when evaluating emotion expression

Emotion in Motion: A Study of Music and Affective Response

Emotion in Motion’ is an experiment designed to understand the emotional reaction of people to a variety of musical excerpts, via self-report questionnaires and the recording of electrodermal response (EDR) and pulse oximetry (HR) signals. The experiment ran for 3 months as part of a public exhibition, having nearly 4000 participants and over 12000 listening samples. This paper presents the methodology used by the authors to approach this research, as well as preliminary results derived from the self-report data and the physiology