Once More, With Feeling: The Psychological Mechanisms Underlying Emotion Induction in Music

Similar documents
Can parents influence children s music preferences and positively shape their development? Dr Hauke Egermann

Expressive performance in music: Mapping acoustic cues onto facial expressions

DAT335 Music Perception and Cognition Cogswell Polytechnical College Spring Week 6 Class Notes

Affective response to a set of new musical stimuli W. Trey Hill & Jack A. Palmer Psychological Reports, 106,

The relationship between properties of music and elicited emotions

What is music as a cognitive ability?

Compose yourself: The Emotional Influence of Music

Expressive information

The intriguing case of sad music

BIBB 060: Music and the Brain Tuesday, 1:30-4:30 Room 117 Lynch Lead vocals: Mike Kaplan

What Can Experiments Reveal About the Origins of Music? Josh H. McDermott

MELODIC AND RHYTHMIC CONTRASTS IN EMOTIONAL SPEECH AND MUSIC

PHI 3240: Philosophy of Art

INFLUENCE OF MUSICAL CONTEXT ON THE PERCEPTION OF EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION OF MUSIC

THE SOUND OF SADNESS: THE EFFECT OF PERFORMERS EMOTIONS ON AUDIENCE RATINGS

THE EFFECT OF EXPERTISE IN EVALUATING EMOTIONS IN MUSIC

Electronic Musicological Review

Therapeutic Function of Music Plan Worksheet

This slideshow is taken from a conference presentation (somewhat modified). It summarizes the Temperley & Tan 2013 study, and also talks about some

Surprise & emotion. Theoretical paper Key conference theme: Interest, surprise and delight

Exploring Relationships between Audio Features and Emotion in Music

Kant: Notes on the Critique of Judgment

& Ψ. study guide. Music Psychology ... A guide for preparing to take the qualifying examination in music psychology.

Mammals and music among others

Opening musical creativity to non-musicians

Effects of Musical Training on Key and Harmony Perception

Embodied music cognition and mediation technology

Making Connections Through Music

Supplemental Data. Universal Recognition. of Three Basic Emotions in Music. Current Biology, Volume 19

With thanks to Seana Coulson and Katherine De Long!

Why should we be concerned?

WESTFIELD PUBLIC SCHOOLS Westfield, New Jersey

Affective Priming. Music 451A Final Project

Stewart, Lauren and Walsh, Vincent (2001) Neuropsychology: music of the hemispheres Dispatch, Current Biology Vol.11 No.

Subjective Emotional Responses to Musical Structure, Expression and Timbre Features: A Synthetic Approach

EXPLAINING AND PREDICTING THE PERCEPTION OF MUSICAL STRUCTURE

Music and the emotions

Module PS4083 Psychology of Music

Rhythm and Melody Aspects of Language and Music

Consumer Choice Bias Due to Number Symmetry: Evidence from Real Estate Prices. AUTHOR(S): John Dobson, Larry Gorman, and Melissa Diane Moore

Tinnitus: The Neurophysiological Model and Therapeutic Sound. Background

Perceiving Differences and Similarities in Music: Melodic Categorization During the First Years of Life

Therapeutic Sound for Tinnitus Management: Subjective Helpfulness Ratings. VA M e d i c a l C e n t e r D e c a t u r, G A

EMOTIONS IN CONCERT: PERFORMERS EXPERIENCED EMOTIONS ON STAGE

1. BACKGROUND AND AIMS

A Condensed View esthetic Attributes in rts for Change Aesthetics Perspectives Companions

THE OFT-PURPORTED NOTION THAT MUSIC IS A MEMORY AND MUSICAL EXPECTATION FOR TONES IN CULTURAL CONTEXT

Susanne Langer fight or flight. arousal level valence. parasympathetic nervous. system. roughness

Image and Imagination

Emotions perceived and emotions experienced in response to computer-generated music

The Healing Power of Music. Scientific American Mind William Forde Thompson and Gottfried Schlaug

Interpretations and Effect of Music on Consumers Emotion

A STEP-BY-STEP PROCESS FOR READING AND WRITING CRITICALLY. James Bartell

New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards for Visual and Performing Arts INTRODUCTION

The bias of knowing: Emotional response to computer generated music

Bas C. van Fraassen, Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective, Oxford University Press, 2008.

Expression, Perception, and Induction of Musical Emotions: A Review and a Questionnaire Study of Everyday Listening

Satoshi Kawase Soai University, Japan. Satoshi Obata The University of Electro-Communications, Japan. Article

WORKING MEMORY AND MUSIC PERCEPTION AND PRODUCTION IN AN ADULT SAMPLE. Keara Gillis. Department of Psychology. Submitted in Partial Fulfilment

Comparison, Categorization, and Metaphor Comprehension

Pitch. The perceptual correlate of frequency: the perceptual dimension along which sounds can be ordered from low to high.

Quantifying Tone Deafness in the General Population

Trauma & Treatment: Neurologic Music Therapy and Functional Brain Changes. Suzanne Oliver, MT-BC, NMT Fellow Ezequiel Bautista, MT-BC, NMT

Harmony and tonality The vertical dimension. HST 725 Lecture 11 Music Perception & Cognition

Handbook of Music and Emotion: Theory, Research, Applications, Edited by Patrik N. Juslin and John A. Sloboda. Oxford University Press, 2010: a review

Enjoyment and Anxiety in Music Performance

The Tone Height of Multiharmonic Sounds. Introduction

that would join theoretical philosophy (metaphysics) and practical philosophy (ethics)?

Improving Piano Sight-Reading Skills of College Student. Chian yi Ang. Penn State University

Advanced Placement Music Theory

A DEFENCE OF AN INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS OF ART ELIZABETH HEMSLEY UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

Music Curriculum. Rationale. Grades 1 8

University of Groningen. Beauty in mathematics Montano Juarez, Ulianov

The Strengths and Weaknesses of Frege's Critique of Locke By Tony Walton

Perceptual Considerations in Designing and Fitting Hearing Aids for Music Published on Friday, 14 March :01

Music. Curriculum Glance Cards

Musical Developmental Levels Self Study Guide

Dynamic Levels in Classical and Romantic Keyboard Music: Effect of Musical Mode

12 Lynch & Eilers, 1992 Ilari & Sundara, , ; 176. Kastner & Crowder, Juslin & Sloboda,

Influence of timbre, presence/absence of tonal hierarchy and musical training on the perception of musical tension and relaxation schemas

Characterization Imaginary Body and Center. Inspired Acting. Body Psycho-physical Exercises

TOWARDS AFFECTIVE ALGORITHMIC COMPOSITION

The influence of different structural features on felt musical tension in two. piano pieces by Mozart and Mendelssohn

Searching for the Universal Subconscious Study on music and emotion

PRESCOTT UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT District Instructional Guide January 2016

Memory and learning: experiment on Sonata KV 331, in A Major by W. A. Mozart

"The mind is a fire to be kindled, not a vessel to be filled." Plutarch

A Confusion of the term Subjectivity in the philosophy of Mind *

Construction of a harmonic phrase

Brain.fm Theory & Process

The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. W. I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki

A Categorical Approach for Recognizing Emotional Effects of Music

The power of music in children s development

Gestalt, Perception and Literature

Emotions from the Perspective of Analytic Aesthetics

THE INTERACTION BETWEEN MELODIC PITCH CONTENT AND RHYTHMIC PERCEPTION. Gideon Broshy, Leah Latterner and Kevin Sherwin

Consonance perception of complex-tone dyads and chords

Environment Expression: Expressing Emotions through Cameras, Lights and Music

Arts, Computers and Artificial Intelligence

Concert halls conveyors of musical expressions

Transcription:

Once More, With Feeling: The Psychological Mechanisms Underlying Emotion Induction in Music Candidate: Andrey Barsky Supervisor: David D. Clarke Degree: BSc Psychology 1

Contents 1. Overture: The Paradox of Musical Emotions 3 2. The Enculturation Hypothesis 4 3. A Multi-Modal Approach 5 i. Subcortical reflexes 6 ii. Memory & learning processes 6 iii. Emotional expression & contagion 7 iv. Musical expectancy 8 v. Discussion 9 4. Coda 10 5. References 11 2

1. Overture: The Paradox of Musical Emotions Music remains an inconsistency in the contemporary study of emotion. Though emotion in general is not fully understood (the current literature finds difficulty even in defining the term) there are a number of common categorical elements present in many of the field s currently-held formulations. Emotion is described conservatively by Scherer (2004) as a hypothetical construct referring to a class of phenomena that effect broad changes in an organism s cognition, behaviour and physiology. Typical emotions tend to arise where our goals are fulfilled or threatened and as a result we feel happy, content, angry or upset and so on; emotions are also responsible for approach and avoidance behaviours such as interest, excitement, fear or disgust. Emotions have intentionality (Solomon, 1993), that is to say they are directed at an object in the linguistic sense when we are afraid or envious of something, that is necessarily to say that the thing is dangerous and needs avoiding (the fear response), or that the thing is desirable and we do not have it (the envy response). We are sad that our house has burned down, or happy about our hard-earned promotion. Music, however, is an anomaly in that it expresses and elicits emotion but does not appear to be characterised by any of these common features. It has no obvious relation to our biologicallyderived goals, nor does an emotional response to music seem to confer any adaptive advantages to the organism. It seems not to be immediately representative of anything, unlike most other forms of art such as literature, theatre and painting while these, too, can elicit a broad range of emotion, they more often depict or resemble facets of human experience that would produce emotion outside of the artistic medium (Aiken, 1998). Moreover, musical emotions lack clear intentionality - when we are moved by, for instance, a melancholy orchestral composition, our sadness is not directed at the music itself. We do not feel regret for having heard the song, nor do we imagine the miserable composer writing at his desk and feel our share of his plight the beliefs that typically accompany sadness are nowhere present in this case. In general, musical emotions appear arbitrary. The psychophysical difference between, for instance, a major and a minor third is no more than a small variation in relative pitch, and yet the two have puzzlingly different emotional spectra. In brief, the mechanisms that produce typical emotions that occur in real-world tasks seem unable to account for the emotions produced in response to music. The question, then, is whether music indeed holds a privileged space in the human brain is there a psychological mechanism that has developed specifically for the purpose of recognising and responding to musical stimuli? The presence of some form of music within every known past and present human society (McDermott, 2008) makes it tempting to suppose that this is the case, and speculation may be had as to the adaptive advantages of such a module. If, however, musical emotions may be explained parsimoniously with reference to existing emotional mechanisms, then there should be no need to posit a uniquely evolved module to this same end. 2. The Enculturation Hypothesis A specific psychological module responsible for musical emotions would likely have developed to respond in specific ways to specific musical themes and features. One of the major disputes within the psychology of music is whether or not elicited emotions indeed constitute an innate, hardwired response, or if the response is a learned association between recurring musical features and what have traditionally been the emotions accompanying their composition and performance. To 3

put it another way, does a song in minor key sound sad because of the fact that it is in minor key, or because minor keys have been persistently associated with compositions intended to sound sad? This latter line of thinking is known as the enculturation hypothesis (e.g. Walker, 1996, Feld & Keil, 1994). It posits that over the course of our lives we learn implicitly that particular tropes of musical performance and composition are considered melancholy, hopeful, dreamy and so on, in a manner that is subject to cultural and individual variation but is psychologically arbitrary. We experience the appropriate emotions by internalising these associations over time. The question is an important one to resolve in the context of our investigation, since if musical emotions can be explained largely as a product of learning mechanisms then this presents an easily available mechanism that has a non-musical origin. Fortunately, the theory presents a testable hypothesis. Various culture groups use distinct tonal systems that are often unfamiliar to one another if, for instance, the musical qualities that define a composition as calm or cheerful to a European listener are similar to those used in music from other cultures, then listeners will be capable of perceiving the same expressed emotions in a composition regardless of its cultural origin. Research has typically favoured the view that specific emotional cues exist in music, even in cross-cultural studies (Behrens & Green, 1993; Crist, 2000; Hoshino, 1996; Gregory & Varney, 1996; Balkwill et al., 2004). In one of the better-known examples, Balkwill & Thompson (1999) had Western participants listened to sections of Hindustani ragas and attempt to identify the emotions involved. The nature of raga music is such that it is written and performed specifically to convey one of a number of emotional moods, called rasas. Listeners were sensitive to the intended emotion in the raga when this was joy, sadness, or anger, but not peace (note that this exclusion may possibly reflect a non-musical cultural distinction regarding the status of peace as an emotion). In addition, some recurring psychophysical features associated with particular emotional moods across both Western and Hindustani music were identified sad songs are slow in tempo and melodically complex, joyful songs are fast in tempo and melodically simple. It is unlikely that the extent of emotion differentiation in music is so simple, but the finding suggests that there are indeed innate musical properties associated with specific emotional spectra, and that these need not be learned but occur consistently across musically disparate cultures. However, it should nonetheless remain uncontroversial to note that learning and memory do play a role in eliciting musical emotions, as anyone who has been subject to the Darling, they are playing our tune phenomenon (Davies, 1976) will attest. Though there appear to be particular universal psychophysical cues to musical emotion, these need not be the extent of the picture. Answering the question of the enculturation hypothesis solves one issue, but explains little of the underlying processes of musical emotion induction because these psychophysical cues do not seem to account for the full range of emotions experienced. It is proposed here that a more adequate conception of musical emotion processes should consider the influence of a number of parallel mechanisms. 3. A Multi-Modal Approach Rather than conceptualising musical emotion as a learned cultural response, or as an innate reaction to specific psychophysical features, it seems reasonable to propose that both of these may play a part in the production of emotions, and neither one need exclude the other. The study of musical emotions has tended to suffer due to a number of disagreements and inconsistencies in the literature, and a framework that postulates multiple independent induction mechanisms seems 4

promising in being able to resolve these (Juslin & Västfjäll, 2008). Note, for instance, that the induction of emotional experiences can be recognised as separate from the mere perception of emotion in music. Listeners may accurately ascribe some affective predicate to a composition ( what a sad song ) without necessarily experiencing the attributed emotion firsthand (Gabrielsson, 2002). There is relatively good agreement between listeners across cultures on what emotions a musical piece expresses, but strong emotional reactions to music tend to vary greatly between different listeners, based on differences in personal experience. The underlying distinction between the processes that express and elicit emotion in musical contexts may simply be between the particular mechanisms involved in either. The proposed mechanisms range in complexity and in level of processing - the simplest may easily be connected to well-known methods of emotion induction. Consider the example of a hardworking student attempting to study, but finding himself constantly distracted by his neighbour s loud music. He feels angry in response and the anger emotion motivates his behaviour to, for instance, go next door and curse at the offender. The influence of accompanying lyrics is another such example: an emotional response to lyrics is unsurprising given their semantic and representational content. These are examples of musical emotions that may be related to typical induction mechanisms without difficulty and without controversy so much so that it is easy to dismiss them as proper musical emotions in their own right. The question remains whether all musical emotions can be explained in this way. What follows is an attempt at a broad discussion of the primary classes of emotion induction mechanisms seen in music, based on areas of concentration in the literature and in particular on Scherer (2004) and Juslin & Västfjäll (2008), who independently proposed lists of these mechanisms. The four coherent categories identified here are: subcortical reflexes, memory & learning processes, emotional expression & contagion, and musical expectancy (although others are alluded to). Emphasis is placed on how these may or may not be related back to the induction of typical, non-musical emotions. i. Subcortical reflexes Perhaps the most psychologically basic mechanism is the brain stem reflex, an early-stage neurophysiological response to the low-level acoustic features of music, or more simply the sound of music (Juslin & Västfjäll, 2008). These are generally limited to simple changes in arousal that accompany the startle or surprise responses (Beveridge & Knox, 2009). Particular psychophysical features of a sound can provoke a strong displeasure or revulsion response, the archetypical example of this being the nails-on-a-chalkboard effect. Halpern et al. (1986) identify the specific low-frequency spectral components involved in this response, and compare these to the auditory profile of primate warning calls, as well as the vocalisations of predators (Ploog, 1992). This suggests a primitive evolutionary reflex that may be exploited by musical compositions, where dissonant musical sounds evoke a similar response by virtue of their acoustic similarity to these sounds. The basic pleasant response to consonant sounds is less-well understood, although consonance (and what constitutes it) has seen significant attention over centuries of musical theory and acoustic research. Six-month old infants respond positively to consonant music, implying that its pleasance is an innate quality rather than a learned response (Trainor & Heinmiller, 1998). In the simplest case, consonance may be fundamentally pleasing at various gradations merely due to its lack of dissonant qualities (Itoh et al., 2003). Most natural sounds, and in particular human speech, are harmonically consonant (Peretz, 2008). To some extent the subcortical reflex mechanism appears to offer an explanation for the perception of basic emotional valence in music (which is not 5

specific to music), though not for any further speciation between the various emotions that may be produced. ii. Memory & learning processes The strong relationship between music and memory is well-documented, and the aforementioned Darling, they are playing our tune phenomenon is seen consistently throughout psychological literature. Relative to other sensory inputs, music is an exceptionally powerful recall cue, able to evoke vivid memories with which it is associated, and the emotions accompanying those memories (Gabrielsson, 2001; Baumgartner, 1992). Scherer & Zentner (2001) propose that music s strength in this regard is a combination of two factors: first, that many personally significant events in one s life are accompanied by music as a matter of tradition, including weddings, graduations, parties and religious rites; and second, that music is processed in part by subcortical memory structures that are especially resistant to extinction (LeDoux, 1992). Related but distinct is the mechanism of evaluative conditioning, whereby an unconditioned, positively or negatively-evaluated stimulus is paired with a conditioned neutral stimulus, modifying the CS s affective valence in the direction of the UCS (Martin & Levey, 1978). In music, this can occur where particular songs (or even particular features of music) are repeatedly and consistently paired with particular events, places or people. Crucially, and in contrast to other forms of classical conditioning, both the conditioning process and the affective response may be implicit, occurring without awareness by the listener (Field & Moore, 2005). Like musical memory, evaluative conditioned associations are resistant to subsequent modification. Juslin & Västfjäll (2008) suggest that this mechanism may explain why some music may elicit an emotional reaction for no apparent reason, based on the unconscious, unintentional and effortless processes that underlie evaluative conditioning. As this mechanism is non-specific to music, the conditioning may occur in either direction affectively valenced objects or events can establish a conditional response to previously-neutral musical stimuli, just as affectively valenced music can establish a response to other neutral stimuli (Eifert et al., 1988). It may also be speculated that music can influence the affective valence of other music associated with it. In any case, these are phenomena well-documented to occur outside of the musical modality. iii. Emotional expression & contagion Emotional contagion is a higher-level social mechanism whereby an expressed emotion induces similar emotions in others (Hatfield et al., 1992). This may be seen in situations where, for example, we interpret someone s facial muscles as expressing anger or fear (Ekman, 1994) and this may lead us to mirror that emotion in turn (e.g. Hess & Blairy, 2001). In music, emotional contagion occurs where the music expresses or resembles some emotional tone, and this emotion is converged upon by the listener. The basis of this musical expression may be related to the common characteristics of expressive speech (Juslin & Laukka, 2003). Humans are capable of perceiving emotional tone in the psychophysical qualities of another s voice, and different emotions may be consistently expressed in the spoken word using different combinations of volume, tempo, pitch contour and so on. This is a biologically advantageous ability the capacity to easily express and perceive emotions as part of normal communication has obvious benefits to a social organism. Super-expressive voice theory postulates that music hijacks this emotional perception module, itself having been developed to specifically and efficiently mimic these psychophysical markers in order to produce an emotional response. 6

Scherer (1995) suggests that sung music expresses emotion by virtue of its similarly to emotional expression in spoken language. A stronger claim is that even instrumental music has this effect, despite the lack of human vocal involvement. Juslin & Laukka s (2003) broad review of studies into music performance and vocal expression offers support for this hypothesis, finding that there are certain acoustic cues that consistently express similar emotions in both the vocal and instrumental modalities. For example, anger expression is characterised by fast speech rate/tempo, rising fundamental frequency/pitch contour, fast voice onset/tone attack, microstructural irregularity and a number of other features summarised in their paper, along with similar lists for other emotions. Koelsch et al. (2006) further found through fmri that the perception of emotion in heard music also activates brain areas involved in speech production, even when singing was controlled for. This suggests a link between instrumental music and the voice that gives credence to the superexpressive voice theory. Hatfield et al. (1992) conceive of emotional contagion as the tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize facial expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements with those of another person and, consequently, to converge emotionally (pp.153-154) if music may indeed be considered an analogue of the human voice in some respect, then this activation of speech areas may represent direct neural evidence of emotional contagion through the vocalisation medium in music. iv. Musical expectancy Higher-order musical principles such as tension and resolution are used to great effect by composers of music, who are aware that listeners implicitly or explicitly anticipate the continuation of schematic musical structures through time. When our various expectations are met, delayed, or subverted, our affective system responds in different ways (Koelsch, 2005) this is what gives music much of its character. Musical expectancy is a predictive process undertaken automatically and unconsciously (Meyer, 1956), based on an understanding of musical syntax (Lerdahl & Jackendoff (1977). According to the outcome of our anticipations, we may experience differentiated emotions such as relaxation, contentment, suspense or disappointment (Steinbeis et al., 2006). The psychological basis of musical expectancy is the more general human aptitude to form expectations and predictions based on past experience (Huron & Margulis, 2010). This is a useful ability with considerable survival value, and innumerable cognitive tests throughout psychological history have shown it to be a persistent and automatic aspect of normal functioning (see for example Posner & Petersen, 1990). Owing to its survival role, the prediction mechanism is intimately associated with the emotional system (Wilson & Gilbert, 2005). Huron (2006) argues that accurate prediction is likely to be positively reinforced by the brain due to this role, and notes a number of music-induced emotions that may be attributed to various forms of musical expectancy. In addition to the satisfaction and violation of expectations, failure to establish clear expectations in the first place may be another source of affective response (Margulis, 2007). Huron & Margulis (2010) speculate as to the neurochemical processes underlying positive reinforcement in successful prediction. They discuss how the rewarding effects of the dopamine neurotransmitter are specifically tuned to the experiences of seeking and expectation, rather than the consummation of some desired target. This is advantageous, since motivated wanting of, for instance, food, should begin before it is actually needed in order to offer better chances of survival. Expectation and anticipation are thus closely tied to affective systems, which may explain the musical expectancy mechanism of emotion induction. Based on this, it is highly unlikely that the role of expectation in emotional response is limited to music alone. Humour, for instance, is often 7

conceptualised as a product of incongruity between an imagined and actual outcome (e.g. Deckers & Buttram, 1990). Violations of musical expectations often result in phenomena variously called thrills, chills, shivers, or frisson (an equivalent French loanword and Huron s preferred term proposed alternative labels such as skin orgasm have failed to gain currency). These are bodily expressions of a peak non-specific emotional reaction (Sloboda, 1991), easily measurable by self-report or physiological methods and thereby often used in musical emotion research. Frisson is particularly useful as a paradigm for studying musical expectancy, as it tends to occur at points of sudden or significant change in meter, key, melody, harmony, volume or timbre (Sloboda, 1991). The accompanying pattern of neural activation reflects brain areas involved in reward and motivation: the nucleus accumbens, ventral tegmental area, and other reward centres all show heightened activation during musically-induced chills (Blood & Zatorre, 2001). This reflects the positive affective experience of frisson resulting from expectation violation, although precisely how this relates to aforementioned principles of anticipation reward and motivation is yet to be determined. Frisson is not unique to musical experiences indeed, Grewe et al. (2011) note that chills may be elicited by stimuli across any of the five traditional sensory modalities, as well as by mental self-stimulation. In a number of regards, emotion induction through musical expectancy appears at least in principle to be reducible to the induction mechanisms of a number of typical emotions. v. Discussion This multi-modal theory of musical emotion mechanisms is appealing for a number of reasons. First, it resolves numerous disputes in the literature that arise not only due to a failure to consider the underlying mechanisms of musical emotions, but also an implicit assumption that the mechanisms are roughly equivalent and interchangeable (Juslin & Västfjäll, 2008). Second, it provides a parsimonious explanation as to why a single composition may express more than one emotional tone, a consistent finding according to Li & Ogihara (2003) this happens when more than one mechanism is involved at a time and produce conflicting emotional reports that are experienced in unison. In a related sense, this combination of active mechanisms may resolve a phenomenon known to philosophers as the paradox of tragedy the question of why a negatively valenced musical work (such as a sad song) may still be found pleasurable, and why we may come back and listen to it again and again. It is unlikely that the various mechanisms discussed constitute an exhaustive list of all those that are active in producing musical emotions. Others have been proposed, and their exclusion in this section is not a statement as to their perceived validity but to the lack of relevant research surrounding them. Scherer (2004), for instance, proposes a proprioceptive feedback module, where low-level musical beats induce the bodily urge to dance, and the emotional response is a result of the bodily sensations from the dance act itself. Juslin & Västfjäll (2008) postulate a mental imagery mechanism, whereby the resemblance of musical structures and melodies to real-world objects in some sense elicits mental representations of emotional scenarios, such as relaxing nature scenes, which act as a proxy for the emotional response to affectively-valenced scenes in general. Future research may shed more light onto the nature of these mechanisms, as well as any others that may become evident. However, the four mechanisms discussed may account for a significant amount of the variation in musical emotions, and present the outline of a well-grounded framework for understanding the way in which music (we may say paradoxically ) elicits emotions in listeners. 4. Coda 8

There is a trend among the emotion induction mechanisms described here, where even the elusivesounding processes appear explicable within the context of conventional emotion mechanisms once explored in depth. Subcortical reflexes are primitive responses to general auditory stimuli that are oriented toward environmental alertness. Evaluative conditioning is a form of classical conditioning that has survival value in creating positive and negative stimulus associations. Emotional memory recall is useful for affective forecasting and making beneficial future decisions. Emotional expression in music is a function of its similarity to the human voice, and the emotional contagion based on this expression is a social process useful for group cohesion. Musical expectancy arises based on our ability to recognise syntax and grammar (likely a counterpart of our language faculty) and our affective response to the outcome of these expectations is based on reward seeking brain mechanisms. None of these are specific to the music modality, and it seems increasingly unlikely that any further proposed mechanisms would constitute a specialised music module based on this pattern. The case appears to be, rather, that the human affinity for music is an evolutionary spandrel arising from the combined function of several independent modules, including the capacities for language, vocal expression, and automatic sequence prediction. Our tendency to respond emotionally to music as listeners is a fortunate accident, born from the way in which these interact with each other under certain circumstances these forms of emotion induction are then put to great use by artists and composers through mastery of the musical elements available to them. This paper began with the question: Is music unique?. It appears not to be, in the sense that it is neither privileged nor innate, but this is only one perspective. Music certainly is unique in a number of ways, not the least of which being the privileged position it holds in human society and in the emotional lives of individual people. Juslin & Västfjäll (2008) advance that: What is unique about musical emotions is not the underlying mechanisms or the emotions they evoke, but rather the fact that music unlike most other stimuli for our emotions in everyday life is often intentionally designed to induce emotions, using whatever means available (p.572) The startling fusion of multiple psychological mechanisms into the powerful and evocative whole we know as music seems extraordinarily unlikely from ground-level. But by virtue of music s continued use over thousands of years in manipulating human emotions, it has become a complex and intricate phenomenon with a fantastical ability to influence us; constantly changing and evolving in order to better suit its human-designed purpose. Understanding the mechanisms involved in eliciting musical emotions can do nothing but help this cause. 9

5. References Aiken, N.E. (1998). The biological origins of art. Westport, CT: Praeger. Balkwill, L.L. & Thompson, W.F. (1999). A Cross-Cultural Investigation of the Perception of Emotion in Music: Psychophysical and Cultural Cues. Music Perception, 17(1), 43-64. Balkwill, L.L., Thompson, W.F., Matsunaga, R. (2004). Recognition of emotion in Japanese, Western, and Hindustani music by Japanese listeners. Japanese Psychological Research, 46(4), 337-349. Baumgartner, H. (1992). Remembrance of things past: Music, autobiographical memory, and emotion. Advances in Consumer Research, 19, 613 620. Behrens, G.A., & Green, S. (1993). The ability to identify emotional content of solo improvisations performed vocally and on three different instruments. Psychology of Music, 21, 20-33. Beveridge, S., & Knox, D. (2009). An Exploration of the Effect of Structural and Acoustical Features on Perceived Musical Emotion. Proceedings of Audio Mostly, 4th Conference on Interaction with Sound, Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland, 93-98. Blood, A.J., & Zatorre, R.J. (2001). Intensely pleasurable responses to music correlate with activity in brain regions implicated in reward and emotion. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 11818-11823. Crist, M.R. (2000). The effect of tempo and dynamic changes on listener s ability to identify expressive performances. Contributions to Music Education, 27, 63-77. Davies, J. B. (1978) The psychology of music. London: Hutchinson. Deckers, L., & Buttram, R.T. (1990). Humor as a response to incongruities between or within schemata. International Journal of Humor Research, 3(1), 53-64. Eifert, G.H., Craill, L., Carey, E., & O Connor, C. (1988). Affect modification through evaluative conditioning with music. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 26(4), 321-330. Ekman, P. (1994). Strong evidence for universals in facial expressions: A reply to Russell s mistaken critique. Psychological Bulletin, 115, 268 287. Feld, S., & Keil, C. (1994). Music grooves: essays and dialogues. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Field, A.P., & Moore, A.C. (2005). Dissociating the effects of attention and contingency awareness on evaluative conditioning effects in the visual paradigm. Cognition and Emotion, 19, 217-243. Gabrielsson, A. (2001) Emotions in strong experiences with music. In: Juslin, P.N. & Sloboda, J.A. (Eds.), Music and Emotion: Theory and research, (pp.431-449). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gabrielsson, A. (2002). Emotion perceived and emotion felt: Same or different? Musicae Scientiae, Vol Spec Issue, 123-147. Gregory, A.H., & Varney, N. (1996). Cross-cultural comparisons in the affective response to music. Psychology of Music, 24, 47-52. Grewe, O., Nagel, F., Kopiez, R., & Altenmüller, E. (2007). Listening to music as a re-creative process: Physiological, psychological, and psychoacoustical correlates of chills and strong emotions. Music Perception, 24, 297-314. Grewe, O., Katzur, B., Kopiez, R., & Altenmüller, E. (2011). Chills in Different Sensory Domains: Frisson elicited by Acoustical, Visual, Tactile and Gustatory Stimuli. Psychology of Music, 39(2), 220-239. Halpern, D.L, Blake, R., & Hillenbrand, J. (1986). Psychoacoustics of a chilling sound. Perception & Psychophysics, 39(2), 77-80. Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J.T., Rapson, R.L., & Clark, M.S. (1992). Primtiive emotional contagion. Emotion and social behaviour. Review of personality and social psychology, 14, 151-177. 10

Hess, U., & Blairy, S., (2001). Facial mimicry and emotional contagion to dynamic emotional facial expressions and their influence on decoding accuracy. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 40(2), 129-141. Hoshino, E. (1996). The feeling of musical mode and its emotional character in a melody. Psychology of Music, 24, 29-46. Huron, D. (2006). Sweet anticipation: Music and the psychology of expectation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Huron, D. & Margulis, E.H. (2010). Musical expectancy and thrills. In Juslin, P.N. & Sloboda, J.A. (Eds.), Handbook of Music and Emotion, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Itoh, K., Suwazono, S., & Nakada T. (2003). Cortical processing of musical consonance: an evoked potential study. Neuroreport, 14, 2303 2306 Juslin, P.N. & Laukka, P. (2003). Communication of emotions in vocal expression and music performance: Different channels, same code? Psychological Bulletin, 129, 770-814. Juslin, P.N. & Västfjäll, D. (2008). Emotional responses to music: The need to consider underlying mechanisms. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31, 559-575. Koelsch, S. (2005). Investigating emotion with music: neuroscientific approaches. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1060, 412-418. Koelsch, S., Fritz, T., von Cramon, D. Y., Muller, K., & Friederici, A. D. (2006). Investigating emotion with music: An fmri study. Human Brain Mapping, 27, 239 250. LeDoux, J.E. (1992). Emotion as memory: Anatomical systems underlying indelible neural traces. In S.A. Christianson (Ed.), Handbook of Emotion and Memory: Theory and research (pp.269-288). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Lerdahl, F., & Jackendoff, R. (1977). Toward a formal theory of tonal music. Journal of Music Theory 21(1), 111-171. Li, T., & Ogihara, M. (2003). Detecting emotion in music. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Music Information Retrieval, 239-240. Margulis, E.H. (2007). Surprise and listening ahead: Analytic engagements with musical tendencies. Music Theory Spectrum, 29, 197-218. Martin, I., & Levey, A.B. (1978). Evaluative conditioning. Advances in Behaviour Research and Therapy, 1(2), 57-101. McDermott, J. (2008). The evolution of music. Nature, 453, 287-288. Meyer, L.B. (1956). Emotion and meaning in music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Peretz, I. (2008). The need to consider underlying mechanisms: A response from dissonance. Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 31, 590-591. Ploog, D. W. (1992) The evolution of vocal communication. In H. Papousek, U. Jürgens & M. Papousek (Eds.), Nonverbal vocal communication: Comparative and developmental approaches (pp. 6-30). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Posner, M.I., & Petersen, S.E. (1990). The attention system of the human brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 13, 25-42. Scherer, K. (1995). Expression of Emotion in Voice and Music. Journal of Voice, 9(3), 235-248. Scherer, K.R., & Zentner, K.R. (2001). Emotional effects of music: production rules. In Juslin, P.N. & Sloboda, J.A. (Eds.), Music and Emotion: Theory and research, (pp.361-392). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scherer, K. (2004). Which Emotions Can be Induced by Music? What are the Underlying Mechanisms? And How Can We Measure Them? Journal of New Music Research, 33(3), 239-251. Sloboda, J.A. (1991). Music structure and emotional response: Some empirical findings. Psychology of Music, 19, 110-120. Solomon, R.C. (1993). The philosophy of emotions. In M. Lewis & J. Haviland (Eds.), Handbook of emotions. (pp. 3-15). New York: Guilford Press. 11

Steinbeis, N., Koelsch, S. & Sloboda, J.A. (2006). The role of harmonic expectancy violations in musical emotions: Evidence from subjective, physiological, and neural responses. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18, 1380-138 9. Trainor, L.J., & Heinmiller, B.M. (1998). Infants prefer to listen to consonance over dissonance. Infant Behavior and Development, 21, 77-88. Wilson, T.D., & Gilbert, D.T. (2005). Affective forecasting: Knowing what to want. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 131-134. 12