Prevalence of emotions, mechanisms, and motives in music listening: A comparison of individualist and collectivist cultures.

Abstract

Several studies have explored emotional reactions to music from a psychological perspective. However, little is still known about whether such responses are invariant across cultures. The aim of the present study was thus to investigate the prevalence of (a) emotional reactions, (b) psychological mechanisms, and (c) motives during music listening in a cross-cultural sample. Six hundred sixty-eight participants from 6 countries completed a web survey featuring 22 items that measured musical emotions in general (semantic estimates), the most recent emotion episode involving music (episodic estimates), and individual trait variables (the Satisfaction with Life Scale, Big Five, Rumination & Reflection). Three of the countries investigated (Australia, Sweden, and U.S.A.) were categorized as Individualist (valuing personal independence and achievement), and the remaining 3 (Brazil, Kenya, and Portugal) were categorized as Collectivist (giving priority to in-group goals above individual needs or desires). Comparisons suggested that the patterns of prevalence were relatively similar for the 2 culture categories. Yet there were some notable differences. Thus, for example, nostalgia–longing, spirituality–transcendence, and happiness–elation, and the mechanism episodic memory, were more frequent in Collectivist cultures. In contrast, sadness–melancholy and the mechanism musical expectancy were more prevalent in Individualist cultures. Trait variables explained little variance in the estimates of prevalence. Implications for future research on music and emotion are discussed.

Negative Emotion Responses to Heavy-Metal and Hip-Hop Music with Positive Lyrics

“…Finally, research into emotion stereotyping in music would benefit from investigating a broader number of music genres beyond the ones generally found in Western culture (Juslin, Barradas, Ovsiannikow, Limmo, & Thompson, 2016;Susino, 2015). Nevertheless, the present research supports the idea that emotion stereotyping for some music genres occurs with minimal influence due to nonstereotyped lyrics.…”

Towards a more explicit account of the transformation

“…Surveys of the general prevalence of di↵erenct music-induced emotions place sadness among moderately frequently experienced emotions: In a survey of 141 Swedish listeners, sadness was ranked 8th out of 44 emotion terms in of the frequency of felt emotions in response to music [21]. Furthermore, in a cross-cultural survey involving 668 participants from 6 countries in 5 di↵erent continents [22], sadness received a mean rating of 4.04 (on a scale from 1=rarely, to 7=often) with regard to its frequency of occurrence in response to music listening, ranking 8th (out of 15 emotion labels) overall. In the same survey, sadness also emerged as the third most prevalent emotion (out of 15) in retrospective evaluations of the participants' most recent music-induced emotional episodes [22].…”

“…Furthermore, in a cross-cultural survey involving 668 participants from 6 countries in 5 di↵erent continents [22], sadness received a mean rating of 4.04 (on a scale from 1=rarely, to 7=often) with regard to its frequency of occurrence in response to music listening, ranking 8th (out of 15 emotion labels) overall. In the same survey, sadness also emerged as the third most prevalent emotion (out of 15) in retrospective evaluations of the participants' most recent music-induced emotional episodes [22]. This suggests that while sadness might not be the most frequent emotion induced by music, it is nevertheless a highly relevant emotion label that is consistently nominated across multiple studies and cultures.…”

Effects of musical cultural experience on music emotion processing

“…(ⅴ) 视觉想象机制是指音乐刺激构建的音乐形象激 活了听众的视觉意象或者是视觉图像, 在此基础上 诱发了听众的情绪体验, 情绪反应是音乐和图像之 间紧密作用的结果 [36] . 视觉想象机制涉及枕叶皮层 [9,45] [37,52] . 例如: 听众聆听习惯和聆听风格会使之具有 不同的注意焦点取向 [53] , 当倾向于关注音乐细节内 [39] .…”