What makes music emotionally significant? Exploring the underlying mechanisms

Juslin, Peter; Harmat, László; Eerola, Tuomas

doi:10.1177/0305735613484548

Cited by 163 publications

(194 citation statements)

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“…A few recent experimenrs have also reported evidence of a so-called synchronization between the various components (see Juslin, Harmat, & Eerola, 2013;Lundqvist, Carlsson, Hilmersson, & Juslin, 2009). Juslin and Zentner (2002) note that "inclusion of measures of different sub-components might increase our ability to decide exactly what kind of reaction has occurred to a musical event" (p. 7).…”

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confidence: 93%

From Sound to Significance: Exploring the Mechanisms Underlying Emotional Reactions to Music

Juslin¹,

Barradas²,

Eerola³

2015

The American Journal of Psychology

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Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. A common approach to study emotional reactions to music is to attempt to obtain direct links between musical surface features such as tempo and a listener's responses. However, such an analysis ultimately fails to explain why emotions are aroused in the listener. In this article, we we explore an alternative approach, which seeks to explain musical emotions in terms of a set of psychological mechanisms that are activated by different types of information in a musicalevent. This approach was tested in four experiments that manipulated four mechanisms (Brain stem reflex, Contagion, Episodic memory, Musical expectancy), by selecting existing musical pieces that featured information relevant for each mechanism. The excerpts were played to 60listeners, who were asked to rate their felt emotions on 15 scales. Skin conductance levels and facial expressions were measured and listeners reported subjective impressions of relevance to specific mechanisms. Results indicated that the target-mechanism conditions evoked emotions largely as predicted by a multi-mechanism framework and that mostly similar effects occurred across the experiments that included different pieces of music. We conclude that a satisfactory account of musical emotions requires consideration of how musical features and responses are mediated by a range of underlying mechanisms. Mere sound can have profound effects on listeners. It can be argued that sound is more 'intimate' than sight -"more inside our 'heads'" (Thompson, 2009, p. 125). Nowhere is this impact more apparent than in the case of music. Still, it is often regarded as one of the great mysteries in life that music, which consists only of abstract tone sequences, is able to arouse such strong emotions. What is more, listeners differ considerably in their emotions to music (Sloboda, 1996). Thus, Gutheil (1952) asked whether music and emotion research "can ever reach the goal of science, namely to discover laws of cause and effect in order to predict the results" (p. 11). In this article, we explore some of the principal ways in which music might evoke emotions and show that despite their elusiveness, emotional reactions to music can be predicted to a greater extent than is usually believed. Music and Emotion ResearchMusic is ubiquitous in today's society (North & Hargreaves, 2008). It often occurs in a variety of social contexts, and accompanies people's activities "from the cradle to the grave" (Gregory, 1997, p. 124). In a significant...

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confidence: 93%

From Sound to Significance: Exploring the Mechanisms Underlying Emotional Reactions to Music

Juslin¹,

Barradas²,

Eerola³

2015

The American Journal of Psychology

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“…Taruffi and Koelsch [23] expanded this explanation by bringing in the role of memories and deliberate savouring of emotions, whereas Juslin [33] also evoked the same rationale by explaining that sad music may combine two independent mechanisms, contagion of negative emotion and the aesthetic judgment mechanism that leads to an overall pleasurable response. Sachs and his colleagues 120 [34] interpreted the paradox from the perspective of adjusting homeostatic imbalances.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Unfortunately, many of these 360 studies have distinguished the emotions based on their arousal (sadness is a low arousal emotion whereas happiness is high arousal). Nevertheless, certain indicators such as skin conductance response, temperature, and respiration rate have been observed to differentiate neutral and sad emotions ( [87,33], although such nuances have not been explored within music yet.…”

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An integrative review of the enjoyment of sadness associated with music

Eerola

Vuoskoski

Peltola

et al. 2018

Physics of Life Reviews

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Citation for published item:ierolD F nd uoskoskiD tF uF nd eltolD rFEF nd utkinenD F nd h¤ ferD uF @PHIUA 9en integrtive review of the enjoyment of sdness ssoited with musiF9D hysis of life reviewsF F Further information on publisher's website: httpsXGGdoiForgGIHFIHITGjFplrevFPHIUFIIFHIT Publisher's copyright statement:Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. AbstractThe recent surge of interest towards the paradoxical pleasure produced by sad music has generated a handful of theories and an array of empirical explorations on the topic. However, none of these have attempted to weigh the existing evidence in a systematic fashion. The present work puts forward an integrative framework laid out over three levels of explanation -biological, psycho-social, and cultural -to compare and integrate the existing findings in a meaningful way. First, we review the evidence pertinent to experiences of pleasure associated with sad music from the fields of neuroscience, psychophysiology, and endocrinology. Then, the psychological and interpersonal mechanisms underlying the recognition and induction of sadness in the context of music are combined with putative explanations ranging from social surrogacy and nostalgia to feelings of being moved. Finally, we address the cultural aspects of the paradox -the extent to which it is embedded in the Western notion of music as an aesthetic, contemplative object -by synthesising findings from history, ethnography, and empirical studies. Furthermore, we complement these explanations by considering the particularly significant life meanings that sadness portrayed in art can evoke in some perceivers. Our central claim is that one cannot attribute the enjoyment of sadness fully to any one of these levels, but to a chain * Corresponding author Email address: tuomas.eerola@durham.ac.uk (Tuomas Eerola)Preprint submitted to Physics of Life Reviews November 10, 2017 of functionalities afforded by each level. Each explanatory level has several putative explanations and its own shift towards positive valence, but none of them deliver the full transformation from a highly negative experience to a fully enjoyable experience alone. The current evidence within this framework ranges from weak to non-existent at the biological level, moderate at the psychological level, and suggestive at the cultural level. We propose a series of focussed topics for future investigation that would allow to deconstruct the drivers and constraints of the processes leading to pleasurable music-related sad...

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“…However, cultural conventions effectively mediated by film music is not the only possible explanation as to how the minor triad is able to convey nostalgia, in addition to melancholy and sadness. Juslin et al (2013) propose that as a music-evoked emotion, nostalgia can also be a by-product of sadness. Also, Wildschut et al (2006) and Sedikides et al (2008) suggest that sadness and negative mood is often a trigger of nostalgia.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…These positive effects could be one reason why music is often called for to induce nostalgia, as music is a common source of nostalgia (e.g., Barrett et al, 2010;Zentner, Grandjean, & Scherer, 2008), and it often serves a nostalgic function in everyday life (Juslin, Harmat, & Eerola, 2013). Juslin (2011) proposes that on the basis of previous survey studies both nostalgia and longing are among the most common emotions evoked by music, and nostalgia's prominence among music-induced feelings has also been pointed out by, for example, Zentner and Eerola (2010).…”

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Theoretical Proposals on How Vertical Harmony May Convey Nostalgia and Longing in Music

Lahdelma¹,

Eerola

2015

EMR

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Music is often associated with the emotions of nostalgia and longing. According to previous survey studies, both nostalgia and longing are among the most common emotions evoked by music (Juslin, 2011). Despite nostalgia's significance as a musical emotion, research on the specific properties of music that might contribute to this particular emotion has been scarce. A recent empirical experiment by Lahdelma and Eerola (2014) sought to explore whether single chords could be effective at conveying musical emotions to listeners, which spanned complex emotions such as nostalgia/longing. According to the results, single chords such as the minor triad, the minor seventh and especially the major seventh communicated the emotion of nostalgia effectively. The aim of the current paper is to raise several possible explanations that might account for the ability of single chords to convey the emotion of nostalgia. In these explanations we consider cultural, music-theoretical and psychoacoustic issues, as well as their possible interactions. The three proposed candidate explanations are (1) learning, (2) intrinsic emotional connotations arising from tonal relations, and (3) clashing conventions arising from concurrent yet separate affective associations, stemming from certain triad and interval combinations. Finally, we propose experimental designs for future research to empirically test these explanations.Submitted 2014 November 17; accepted 2015 September 8. KEYWORDS: chord, vertical harmony, emotion, nostalgia, longing NOSTALGIA is a common emotion (Boym, 2001), described as a universal experience that transcends age groups and is present across the lifespan (Sedikides, Wildschut, & Baden, 2004). According to Wildschut, Sedikides, and Routledge (2008), the term nostalgia "derives from the Greek words nostos (return) and algos (pain)" (p. 20), literally meaning "the suffering evoked by the desire to return to one's place of origin " (p. 20). The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) defines nostalgia as "a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past" (p. 1266), underlining the longing quality inherent in the emotion. According to Batcho (2007), "most theorists agree that the distinctive emotional character of nostalgia is bittersweet -a mix of sadness and wistful joy" (p. 362). Sedikides, Wildschut, Arndt, and Routledge (2008) propose that "nostalgia is triggered by dysphoric states such as negative mood and loneliness" (p. 304), but that it also generates positive affect. Nostalgia's positive effects have also been reported by, for example, Juhl and Routledge (2013) and Cheung et al. (2013).These positive effects could be one reason why music is often called for to induce nostalgia, as music is a common source of nostalgia (e.g., Barrett et al., 2010;Zentner, Grandjean, & Scherer, 2008), and it often serves a nostalgic function in everyday life (Juslin, Harmat, & Eerola, 2013). Juslin (2011) proposes that on the basis of previous survey studies both nostalgia and longing are among the most common e...

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What makes music emotionally significant? Exploring the underlying mechanisms

Cited by 163 publications

References 57 publications

From Sound to Significance: Exploring the Mechanisms Underlying Emotional Reactions to Music

From Sound to Significance: Exploring the Mechanisms Underlying Emotional Reactions to Music

An integrative review of the enjoyment of sadness associated with music

Theoretical Proposals on How Vertical Harmony May Convey Nostalgia and Longing in Music

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