Subscribe
The latest psychology and neuroscience discoveries.
My Account
  • Mental Health
  • Social Psychology
  • Cognitive Science
  • Psychopharmacology
No Result
View All Result
PsyPost
PsyPost
No Result
View All Result
Home Exclusive Social Psychology

Shared acoustic properties allow people to discern the emotional meaning of music from other cultures

by Beth Ellwood
June 9, 2021
in Social Psychology
(Image by Pexels from Pixabay)

(Image by Pexels from Pixabay)


Enhance your understanding of the human mind and mental health trends. Click here to follow PsyPost on LinkedIn.
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

A study published in Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts suggests that different cultures rely on similar acoustic elements to convey emotion within music. When study participants were presented with excerpts of both familiar and unfamiliar musical styles, they showed a similar emotional response to both styles, as measured by the number of “chills” they experienced when hearing the music.

While musical styles vary greatly from culture to culture, there has been much research interest in unearthing musical features that tend to be shared across cultures. By exploring these common elements, psychologists are able to get closer to understanding the cognitive mechanism underlying our experience of music.

Study authors Eleonora J. Beier and her team conducted a study to see whether people would show similar emotional responses to music from familiar and unfamiliar cultures. If people are able to feel emotions in response to unfamiliar music, this would suggest that they are relying on cross-cultural musical features to infer emotional meaning from the music. As a measure of emotional response, the researchers focused on the “chill” response — a pleasurable skin tingling that occurs in reaction to emotionally intense music.

The study sample was comprised of 62 undergraduate students from different cultural backgrounds, who varied in their familiarity with Western classical, Hindustani classical, and traditional Chinese music. The students were presented with four excerpts of each of these musical styles and were asked to press a button every time they felt a chill. As a second indication of a chill response, skin conductance was also measured using electrodes place in the participants’ hands. The researchers only considered chill responses that were measured via skin conductance and also accompanied by a button press, resulting in a total of 910 chills for analysis.

After an extensive series of analyses, the results showed that participants were just as likely to experience chills to musical styles they were unfamiliar with, as they were to music they knew well. However, there was some evidence that knowledge of a musical style does elicit more chills to that style.

Regardless of how familiar the students said they were with each musical style, the researchers had the students complete tests at the end of the study to assess their knowledge of each musical style. “We found that knowledge was related to the number of chills, partially supporting the idea that knowledge of each style leads to more chills to music of that style,” Beier and her team report. “In particular, we found that chills to Western music were related to music theory knowledge, chills to Chinese music to Chinese music knowledge, and chills to Indian music to Chinese, Indian and music theory knowledge.”

Finally, the results offered insight into the acoustic properties of music that may be responsible for eliciting a chill response. Across all three styles, loudness, brightness, and roughness of the music were correlated with chill responses. These results suggest that the same properties that lead to chills in Western music also produce chills in musical styles from other cultures.

In contrast to the perspective that people are unable to infer meaning from music originating from unfamiliar cultures, the findings suggest that people can infer the emotionality of music through the interpretation of common acoustic properties. Still, Beier and colleagues note that there are many ways that music and meaning are experienced, and that felt emotion is only one of them. The authors stipulate that their experiment, “does not deny the importance of cultural context and enculturation in the communication of musical meaning.”

The study, “Do you chill when I chill? A cross-cultural study of strong emotional responses to music”, was authored by Eleonora J. Beier, Petr Janata, Justin C. Hulbert, and Fernanda Ferreira.

ShareTweetSendScanShareSharePin2Send

Thanks for reading! Click here to support PsyPost by becoming a paid subscriber. In an age where information is abundant but quality knowledge is scarce, PsyPost ensures that you stay updated on the most recent and relevant discoveries made in psychology and neuroscience.

STAY CONNECTED

TRENDING

New neuroscience research upends traditional theories of early language learning in babies

Psychological and neurobiological foundations of musical pleasure illuminated by new research

Owners of sex dolls are less prone to sexual aggression, but also have lower sexual self-esteem

New insight into social anxiety: How emotional context alters face perception

Decoding addiction: Study identifies brain circuits impacted by dopamine surges

Longitudinal study links childhood pet attachment to lower adolescent anxiety

RECENT

Sacred meaning in motion: How spiritual body movements affect our emotions, according to recent study

AI scores in the top percentile of creative thinking

Decoding addiction: Study identifies brain circuits impacted by dopamine surges

Longitudinal study links childhood pet attachment to lower adolescent anxiety

Psychological and neurobiological foundations of musical pleasure illuminated by new research

New insight into social anxiety: How emotional context alters face perception

New study reveals promising effects of psilocybin in treating severe depression in bipolar II disorder patients

A video game might be effective in reducing fear of needles in children

  • Cognitive Science
  • COVID-19
  • Mental Health
  • Social Psychology
  • Drug Research
  • Conspiracy Theories
  • Meditation
  • Psychology of Religion
  • Aviation Psychology and Human Factors
  • Relationships and Sexual Health
  • Evolutionary Psychology
  • Neuroimaging
  • Psychedelic Drugs
  • Dark Triad
  • Political Psychology
  • Contact us
  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy policy
  • Terms and Conditions
Subscribe
  • My Account
  • Cognitive Science Research
  • Mental Health Research
  • Social Psychology Research
  • Drug Research
  • Relationship Research
  • About PsyPost
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In

Add New Playlist

Manage your privacy
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Statistics

Marketing

Features
Always active

Always active
Manage options Manage services Manage {vendor_count} vendors Read more about these purposes
Manage options
{title} {title} {title}
Manage your privacy

To provide the best experiences, we and our partners use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us and our partners to process personal data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site and show (non-) personalized ads. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.

Click below to consent to the above or make granular choices. Your choices will be applied to this site only. You can change your settings at any time, including withdrawing your consent, by using the toggles on the Cookie Policy, or by clicking on the manage consent button at the bottom of the screen.

Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Statistics

Marketing

Features
Always active

Always active
Manage options Manage services Manage {vendor_count} vendors Read more about these purposes
Manage options
{title} {title} {title}