An Exploratory Study of Musical Emotions and Psychophysiology

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

Apparatus

In the experiment collecting dynamic emotion quality judgments, an audio tape recorder played the music at a comfortable loudness level over headphones. The audio tape was made from the videotape used in the physiology study. A Macintosh IIcx computer with the MAX software presented an interface containing a slider that subjects adjusted to indicate their responses. A foot pedal was used to signal the beginning of each 90-second pre-music interval.

In the physiological study, the music was played by one channel of a videotape player. The measures were recorded using polygraphs and a computer and sampled a range of responses from cardiac, vascular, electrodermal, and respiratory systems (see, for example, Gottman & Levenson, 1992; Gross, Fredrickson, & Levenson, 1994; Levenson, Carstensen, & Gottman, 1994, for additional information). These included: 1) cardiac interbeat interval (IBI), measured in milliseconds, with shorter IBIs taken to indicate a higher level of cardiovascular arousal; 2) pulse transmission time to the finger (FPTT), measured in milliseconds, with shorter pulse transmission times indicative of greater autonomic (sympathetic) activation; 3) finger pulse amplitude (FPA), a measure of the amount of blood in the periphery, with reduced amplitude indicating greater vasoconstriction and associated with greater autonomic (sympathetic) activation; 4) pulse transmission time to the ear (PTT), another measure of blood flow; 5) respiration intercycle interval (ICI), measuring the time between successive inspirations in milliseconds; 6) respiration depth (RD), which is the point. of maximum inspiration minus the point of maximum expiration; 7) respiration-sinus asynchrony (RSA), 8) systolic blood pressure (SBP), 9) diastolic blood pressure (DBP), 10) mean arterial pressure (MAP), 11) skin conductance level (SCL), with increased skin conductance indicative of greater autonomic (sympathetic) activation; and temperature on the finger (TEM) measured in degrees Fahrenheit. The computer processed the physiological measure on-line, computing second-by-second averages for each physiological measure.

Stimulus materials

The stimulus materials consisted of six excerpts of approximately three minutes in duration from the beginning of the following pieces: 1) Gustav Holst: Mars - the Bringer of War from The Planets, Orchestre National de France/Lorin Maazel, 2) Antonio Vivaldi, La Primavera (Spring) from The Four Seasons, Catherine Mackintosh/King's Consort/Robert King, 3) Tomaso Albinoni, Adagio in G minor for Strings and Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic/Herbert von Karajan, 4) Modest Mussorgsky, Night on Bare Mountain, Philadelphia Orchestra/Eugene Ormandy, 5) Samuel Barber, Adagio for Strings, Op. 11, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra/Leonard Bernstein, 6) Hugo Alfven, Midsommarvaka, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Esa-Pekka Salonen. The excerpts by Albinoni and Barber were chosen to represent sadness, those by Holst and Mussorgsky were chosen to represent fear, and those by Vivaldi and Alfven were chosen to represent happiness. Each excerpt was preceded by a 90-second interval to collect baseline rates of the physiological measures, and followed by a 90second interval during which they filled out a questionnaire about the emotions they experienced during the excerpt. The excerpts were always played in the order given above.