Lundqvist, Carlsson, Hilmersson, and Juslin (2009) presented evidence of differential autonomic emotional responses to “happy” and “sad” music in healthy adult listeners. The present study sought to replicate and extend these findings by employing a similar research design and measurement instruments. Therefore, we used instrumental film music instead of vocal music, and assessed listeners’ music expertise. The present results show similarities and differences in patterns of psychological and physiological responses as compared to the previous work. Happy music evoked more happiness, higher skin conductance level, higher respiratory rate, and more zygomatic facial muscle activity than sad music, whereas sad music generated higher corrugator muscle activity than happy music. Influences of music sophistication as well as of sex were negligible. Taken together, these results further support the hypothesis that music induces differential autonomic emotional responses in healthy listeners. They also highlight the importance of replication or multi-site studies to strengthen the empirical basis of fundamental issues in music psychological research.

This paper explores perceived and experienced emotions elicited by computer-generated music. During the experiments, 30 participants listened to 20 excerpts. Each of the excerpts lasted for about 16 seconds and was generated in real-time by specifically designed software. Measurements were performed using both categorical (a free verbal description) and dimensional approaches. The relationship between structural factors of music (mode, tempo, pitch height, rhythm, articulation, and presence of the dissonance) and emotions was examined. Personal characteristics of the listener: gender and music training were also taken into account. The relationship between structural factors and the perceived emotions was mostly congruent with predictions derived from the literature, and the relationship between those factors and experienced emotions was very similar. Tempo and pitch height – the cues common to music and speech – turned out to have a strong influence on the evaluation of emotion. Personal factors had a marginal effect. In the case of verbal categories comparable with the dimensional model, a strong correspondence was found.

MUSIC ELICITS PROFOUND EMOTIONS; HOWEVER, THE time-course of these emotional responses during listening sessions is unclear. We investigated the length of time required for participants to initiate emotional responses ("integration time") to 138 musical samples from a variety of genres by monitoring their real-time continuous ratings of emotional content and arousal level of the musical excerpts (made using a joystick). On average, participants required 8.31 s ( SEM = 0.10) of music before initiating emotional judgments. Additionally, we found that: 1) integration time depended on familiarity of songs; 2) soul/funk, jazz, and classical genres were more quickly assessed than other genres; and 3) musicians did not differ significantly in their responses from those with minimal instrumental musical experience. Results were partially explained by the tempo of musical stimuli and suggest that decisions regarding musical structure, as well as prior knowledge and musical preference, are involved in the emotional response to music.

THE STUDY OF MUSICAL EMOTIONS IS A CHALLENGE for psychology and neuroscience, but the ethnomusicological account is often excluded from the debate. The present article focuses on types of performances that differ from the model of Western classical music: weddings and funerals in a Gypsy community of Transylvania. Analysis of musical activity and expression of emotions in these contexts showed that aesthetic meanings are transformed when music is embedded in social action: the same tunes are played while people dance at weddings and while they cry at funerals. The major anthropological hypothesis suggested by this study is that music acts in rituals as a means for establishing and reinforcing the emotional experiences of different kinds of relationships. The hypotheses and data are discussed in light of recent psychological research on musical emotion.