Previous studies have shown that there is a difference between recognized and induced emotion in music listening. In this study, empathy is tested as a possible moderator between recognition and induction that is, on its own, moderated via music preference evaluations and other individual and situational features. Preference was also tested to determine whether it had an effect on measures of emotion independently from emotional expression. A web-based experiment gathered from 3,164 music listeners emotion, empathy, and preference ratings in a between-subjects design embedded in a music-personality test. Stimuli were a sample of 23 musical excerpts (each 30 seconds long, five randomly assigned to each participant) from various musical styles chosen to represent different emotions and preferences. Listeners in the recognition rating condition rated measures of valence and arousal significantly differently than listeners in the felt rating condition. Empathy ratings were shown to modulate this relationship: when empathy was present, the difference between the two rating types was reduced. Furthermore, we confirmed preference as one major predictor of empathy ratings. Emotional contagion was tested and confirmed as an additional direct effect of emotional expression on induced emotions. This study is among the first to explicitly test empathy and emotional contagion during music listening, helping to explain the often-reported emotional response to music in everyday life.

although people generally avoid negative emotional experiences in general, they often enjoy sadness portrayed in music and other arts. The present study investigated what kinds of subjective emotional experiences are induced in listeners by sad music, and whether the tendency to enjoy sad music is associated with particular personality traits. One hundred forty-eight participants listened to 16 music excerpts and rated their emotional responses. As expected, sadness was the most salient emotion experienced in response to sad excerpts. However, other more positive and complex emotions such as nostalgia, peacefulness, and wonder were also evident. Furthermore, two personality traits – Openness to Experience and Empathy – were associated with liking for sad music and with the intensity of emotional responses induced by sad music, suggesting that aesthetic appreciation and empathetic engagement play a role in the enjoyment of sad music.

In a Previous Study, Mechanical and Expressive clarinet performances of Bach's Suite No. II and Mozart's Quintet for Clarinet and Strings were analyzed to determine whether some acoustical correlates of timbre (e.g., spectral centroid), timing (intertone onset interval), and dynamics (root mean square envelope) showed significant differences depending on the expressive intention of the performer. In the present companion study, we investigate the effects of these acoustical parameters on listeners' preferences. An analysis-by-synthesis approach was used to transform previously recorded clarinet performances by reducing the expressive deviations from the spectral centroid, the intertone onset interval and the acoustical energy. Twenty skilled musicians were asked to select which version they preferred in a paired comparison task. The results of statistical analyses showed that the removal of the spectral centroid variations resulted in the greatest loss of musical preference.

KNOWLEDGE OF MUSICAL RULES AND STRUCTURES HAS been reliably demonstrated in humans of different ages, cultures, and levels of music training, and has been linked to our musical preferences. However, how humans acquire knowledge of and develop preferences for music remains unknown. The present study shows that humans rapidly develop knowledge and preferences when given limited exposure to a new musical system. Using a nontraditional, unfamiliar musical scale (Bohlen-Pierce scale), we created finite-state musical grammars from which we composed sets of melodies.After 25-30 min of passive exposure to the melodies, participants showed extensive learning as characterized by recognition, generalization, and sensitivity to the event frequencies in their given grammar, as well as increased preference for repeated melodies in the new musical system. Results provide evidence that a domain-general statistical learning mechanism may account for much of the human appreciation for music.

WE REPLICATED PREVIOUS FINDINGS AND DEMONSTRATED that familiarity with musical stimuli increased 'liking' or 'preference' for the stimuli. We also demonstrated that familiarity increased the intensity of emotional responses to music, but only when the stimuli were made highly familiar through en masse repetitions (Experiment 3) rather than through interspersed repetitions (Experiment 1). In addition, intensity ratings were higher when participants were asked to judge the emotion conveyed by the music than when they were asked to judge the emotion elicited by the same music (Experiments 2 and 3). Finally, positive emotions (i.e., happy and calm) were rated higher compared with negative emotions (i.e., sad and angry) for both types of ratings (i.e., conveyed or elicited). The findings suggest that familiarity plays a role in modulating a listener's emotional response to music.

FEW WESTERN RESEARCHERS HAVE STUDIED music in everyday life. Data were collected from 200 Pakistani participants to address whether Western findings could be generalized to non-Western samples. Music was heard in everyday life by a large number of participants; most musical experiences occurred while participants were with friends; Pakistani classical and Western pop music were heard most frequently; liking for the music varied depending on who the participant was with, where they were, and whether they had chosen to be able to hear music; music was usually experienced during the course of some other activity; exposure to music occurred more frequently in the evening and at weekends; music was heard mostly at home; and the importance of several functions of music depended upon whom the participant was with and the place where the music was heard. These findings are compared with those from earlier Western research.