Is empathy related to the perception of emotional expression in music? A multimodal time-series analysis.

Abstract

Recent theories of empathy highlight perception-action components as a basis for automatic responses to perceived emotions. Since music is universally based on human actions and often elicits strong emotions, it was hypothesized that empathy influences audiovisual estimations of emotional expression. In this study, the performance and perception of a string quartet was investigated using time-series analyses. Quartet musicians rated video presentations of their own performance, resulting in relationships between visual-only and auditory-only judgments as well as acoustical intensity measures. Independent observers accurately perceived the string quartet's expressive intentions in multimodal presentations. Observers with higher affective and overall empathy were more accurate at estimating the musicians' intentions. It is argued that empathy-via the perception of bodily motion-has an impact on the appreciation of performing arts such as music.

Adolescents’ expression and perception of emotion in music reflects their broader abilities of emotional communication

“…As regards emotion recognition accuracy, certain aspects of emotional intelligence (perceiving emotions and using emotions to facilitate thought) have been found to relate to better identification of musicians' intended expression of emotion (Resnicow et al 2004). Similar findings have been observed for empathy: participants' scores on the affective and overall empathy (not on cognitive empathy) have been shown to correlate with better accuracy of recognizing the intended emotion in music (Wöllner 2012). Preliminary findings also indicate a correlation between empathy and more intense emotional responding to music, Eerola 2011b, 2012).…”

“…Due to the lack of previous research the study was primarily exploratory, but we did expect accurate and congruent perception and expression of musical emotions to correlate positively with empathy and negatively with conduct problems. In detail, we hypothesized that higher empathy would correlate with more accurate recognition of intended emotion in music (see Resnicow et al, 2004;Wöllner 2012), with an overall trait-congruent tendency of compassionate and intense perception of emotion in music (see Ladinig andSchellenberg 2012 Liljeström 2011;Eerola 2011a, 2012), and with a congruent use of musical parameters in the expression of emotion (e.g. expressing happiness with high tempo and sadness with slow tempo, see Juslin and Timmers 2010;Juslin and Laukka 2003;2004;Gabrielsson & Lindström, 2010).…”

The Role of Individual Difference in Judging Expressiveness of Computer-Assisted Music Performances by Experts

“…When assessors were evaluating interactive performances, they were also looking at the performer; thus, the visual part was not only the Disklavier keys but also the movements and controls of the performer. Thus, the judgments were based on different information and the visual dimension is likely to add an additional level of connection for the audience [Wöllner 2012]. Furthermore, we know that visual information is very important in guessing the winner in contests [Tsay 2013[Tsay , 2014.…”

Individual differences in athletes' perception of expressive body movements

“…A number of research articles has shown that communication of basic emotions (e.g., happiness, sadness, fear) is possible when experimental participants observe bodily motions depicted as point light displays: the actions depicted in these situations ranged from simple arm movements (Pollick, et al, 2001), to full body movements (Atkinson, et al, 2004), including interpersonal dialogue (Clarke, et al, 2005;Kaiser & Keller, 2011) and dance (Dittrich, et al, 1996). Experimental manipulations of expressive movements and sounds are also common in music and dance performance contexts: Musicians, conductors or dancers are asked to use different levels of expression while they perform and their recordings are subsequently judged by observers (Broughton & Stevens, 2009;Dahl & Friberg, 2007;Davidson, 1993;Sevdalis, 2011b;Wöllner 2012). More recently, researchers have been investigating individual differences in the perception of biological motion, in cases such as alexithymia (Lorey, et al, 2012), personality (Kaletsch, et al, 2014a), and depressive disorders (Kaletsch, et al, 2014b).…”