An Exploratory Study of Musical Emotions and Psychophysiology

Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, Dec 1997 by Carol L Krumhansl

The experiment reported here addressees these issues by measuring psychophysiologal changes during music listening. According to Hugdahl (1995, p. 8), "Psychophysiology is the study of brain-behavior relationships in the framework of peripheral and central physiological responses." Recording of psychophysiological responses is regarded as a "window" into the brain and mind. These responses include measures of the central nervous system (through electroencephalograms, event-related potentials, and more recently brain imaging techniques) and peripheral nervous system (electrodermal activity, heart and blood circulation, respiration, and muscular activity). The autonomic system includes the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. The present study exclusively considers measures of peripheral nervous system function.

The present investigation is of an exploratory nature. It sought to obtain a fairly wide spectrum of physiological measures of cardiac, vascular, electrodermal, and respiratory function on the same subjects while listening to music. These measures were taken continuously (at one-second intervals) during the music. Six excerpts were chosen to represent (two selections each) the emotions of sad, fear, and happy. Each of the excerpts was approximately three minutes in duration. Each excerpt was preceded by a 90second period of silence during which baserate measures were collected. These values were subtracted from the premusic measure to control for individual differences and overall changes that might occur during the experimental session. In addition, listeners gave self-report ratings of their emotional responses during the excerpts. Because the primary emphasis is on dynamic changes that occurred during the musical excerpts, independent groups of listeners made dynamic ratings of the degree of sadness, fear, happiness, and tension they experienced while listening.

METHODS

Subjects

Forty Cornell University students participated as subjects in the experiment collecting dynamic emotion judgments of the six musical excerpts. Ten listeners were in each of the four conditions in which they indicated the experienced degree of sadness, fear, happiness, or tension. Three additional subjects participated, but their data were invalid because of equipment failure. On average, the subjects had taken 7.8 years of instruction on musical instrument or voice and had played music for 7.6 years. Fourteen were currently playing music, and on average they had taken one course in music at the college level. They listened to music an average of 17.3 hours per week, of which 5.6 hours were listening to classical music.

Thirty-eight students at the University of California at Berkeley participated as subjects in the experiment measuring physiological responses to the six excerpts. The data for four additional subjects were incomplete, in part because of equipment failure, and were not included in the data analysis. On average, they had studied musical instruments or voice for an average of 3.3 years, played music for 7.6 years, and had taken one course in music at the college level. Three were currently playing music. The average number of hours per week listening to music was 14.2, of which 1.6 was to classical music.