Music is one of the most pleasant human experiences, even though it has no direct biological advantage. However little is known about individual differences in how people experience reward in music-related activities. The goal of the present study was to describe the main facets of music experience that could explain the variance observed in how people experience reward associated with music. To this end we developed the Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire (BMRQ), which was administrated to three large samples. Our results showed that the musical reward experience can be decomposed into five reliable factors: Musical Seeking, Emotion Evocation, Mood Regulation, Social Reward, and Sensory-Motor. These factors were correlated with socio-demographic factors and measures of general sensitivity to reward and hedonic experience. We propose that the five-factor structure of musical reward experience might be very relevant in the study of psychological and neural bases of emotion and pleasure associated to music.
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December 2013
Research Article|
December 01 2013
Individual Differences in Music Reward Experiences
Ernest Mas-Herrero,
Ernest Mas-Herrero
Cognition and Brain Plasticity Group, (IDIBELL), Barcelona, Spain
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Josep Marco-Pallares,
Josep Marco-Pallares
University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
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Urbano Lorenzo-Seva,
Urbano Lorenzo-Seva
Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain
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Robert J. Zatorre,
Robert J. Zatorre
Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, & International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research, Montreal, Canada
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Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells
Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells
Cognition and Brain Plasticity Group, (IDIBELL), Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), & University of Barcelona Barcelona, Spain
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Ernest Mas-Herrero & Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells, Cognition and Brain Plasticity Group [Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute-] IDIBELL, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona 08097, Spain. E-mail: [email protected] | [email protected]
Music Perception (2013) 31 (2): 118–138.
Article history
Received:
June 27 2012
Accepted:
March 01 2013
Citation
Ernest Mas-Herrero, Josep Marco-Pallares, Urbano Lorenzo-Seva, Robert J. Zatorre, Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells; Individual Differences in Music Reward Experiences. Music Perception 1 December 2013; 31 (2): 118–138. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2013.31.2.118
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