Research indicates that people value music primarily because of the emotions it evokes. Yet, the notion of musical emotions remains controversial, and researchers have so far been unable to offer a satisfactory account of such emotions. We argue that the study of musical emotions has suffered from a neglect of underlying mechanisms. Specifically, researchers have studied musical emotions without regard to how they were evoked, or have assumed that the emotions must be based on the mechanism for emotion induction, a (...) cognitive appraisal. Here, we present a novel theoretical framework featuring six additional mechanisms through which music listening may induce emotions: (1) brain stem reflexes, (2) evaluative conditioning, (3) emotional contagion, (4) visual imagery, (5) episodic memory, and (6) musical expectancy. We propose that these mechanisms differ regarding such characteristics as their information focus, ontogenetic development, key brain regions, cultural impact, induction speed, degree of volitional influence, modularity, and dependence on musical structure. By synthesizing theory and findings from different domains, we are able to provide the first set of hypotheses that can help researchers to distinguish among the mechanisms. We show that failure to control for the underlying mechanism may lead to inconsistent or non-interpretable findings. Thus, we argue that the new framework may guide future research and help to resolve previous disagreements in the field. We conclude that music evokes emotions through mechanisms that are not unique to music, and that the study of musical emotions could benefit the emotion field as a whole by providing novel paradigms for emotion induction. (shrink)

Incorporating the complete, corrected text of The Corded Shell, Kivy brings his earlier arguments up to date in light of recent work in the field, and discusses ...

This thesis examines the relations among emotions and musical features and their changes with time, based on the assertion that there exist underlying, culturally specific, quantifiable rules which govern these relations. I designed, programmed and tested a computer controlled Two-Dimensional Emotion Space (2DES) which administered and controlled all aspects of the experimental work. The 2DES instrument consisted of two bipolar emotional response (ER) dimensions: valence (happiness-sadness) and arousal (activeness-sleepiness). The instrument had a test-retest reliability exceeding 0.83 (p > 0.01, N (...) = 28) when words and pictures of facial expressions were used as the test stimuli. Construct validity was quantified (r < 0.84, p > 0.01). The 2DES was developed to collect continuous responses to recordings of four movements of music (N = 67) chosen to elicit responses in all quadrants of the 2DES: "Morning" from Peer Gynt, Adagio from Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez (Aranjuez), Dvorak’s Slavonic Dance Op 42, No. 1 and Pizzicato Polka by Strauss. Test-retest reliability was 0.74 (p > 0.001, N = 14). Five salient and objectively quantifiable features of the musical signal (MFs) were scaled and used for time series analysis of the stimuli: melodic pitch, tempo, loudness, frequency spectrum centroid (timbral sharpness) and texture (number of different instruments playing). A quantitative analysis consisted of: (1) first order differencing to remove trends, (2) determination of suitable, lagged MFs to keep as regressors via stepwise regression, and (3) regression of each ER onto selected MFs with first order autoregressive adjustment for serial correlation. Regression coefficients indicated that first order differenced (∆) loudness and ∆tempo had the largest correlations with ∆arousal across all pieces, and ∆melodic pitch correlated with ∆valence for Aranjuez (p > 0.01 for all coefficients). The models were able to explain up to 73% of mean response variance. Additional variation was explained qualitatively as being due to interruptions, interactions and collinearity: The minor key and dissonances in a tonal context moved valence toward the negative direction; Short duration and perfect cadences moved valence in the positive direction. The 2DES measure and serial correlation adjusted regression models were, together, shown to be powerful tools for understanding relations among musical features and emotional response. (shrink)