Music and emotion

The ability to perceive emotion in music is known to develop early in childhood, and improve significantly through development. The ability to ascribe specific emotions to a piece of music begins in childhood, although there is not a scientific consensus as to the specific age in which this ability develops. By adulthood, humans have measurable physiological responses to music: Listening to music triggers the cerebellum, increases dopamine levels, and decreases cortisol levels in the brain. The capacity to perceive emotion in music is also subject to cultural influences, and both similarities and differences in emotion perception have been observed in cross-cultural studies. Although perception of basic emotional features is culturally universal, people can more easily perceive emotion, particularly more nuanced emotion, in music from their own culture. ==Development==

Musical-emotional development begins in infancy, where infants are often exposed to singing and singsongy speech from their parents. Infants tend to prefer positive speech to neutral speech as well as happy music to negative music. However, children as young as three years old can still identify a musical excerpt as happy or sad based on major or minor mode. ==Approaches==

Appearance emotionalism Some philosophers, such as Stephen Davies, argue that music evokes emotion by resembling human expressions of emotion, a theory that Davies termed "appearance emotionalism". According to the theory, the structure and form of music reflect human behaviors, such as movement and speech patterns, associated with emotional expression, causing the listener to feel these associated emotions while listening to a piece of music. Associations between musical features and emotion differ among individuals. Davies argues that expressiveness is an objective property of music and not subjective in the sense of being projected into the music by the listener. Critics of the theory argue that it is difficult to literally and objectively map musical characteristics to expressive behaviors, and that musical features that tend to provoke specific emotions, such as glissandos and low, dark timbres, do not necessarily resemble human expressive behavior relating to those emotions. These predictive mechanisms are a key component in the emotional power of anticipation and tension within music. Research comparing different forms of musical information processing has shown that pitch perception and vocal memory activate specialized neural systems, with memory advantages for vocal music emerging independently of pitch-processing ability. These findings support models in which emotional responses to music stem from distributed systems that process rhythm, pitch, timbre, and voice in different ways. Physiological studies further show that low-frequency musical components can amplify emotional and neural responses. High-intensity bass frequencies increase physiological arousal, modulate neural activity, and strengthen subjective reports of emotional intensity during listening. The involvement of subcortical pathways in low-frequency processing contributes to the visceral nature of music-induced emotion. Process theory Coined by philosopher Jennifer Robinson, the "emotions as process, music as process" theory (often shortened to just process theory) assumes the existence of a mutual dependence between cognition and elicitation of emotion. Robinson argues that the process of emotional elicitation begins with an "automatic, immediate response that initiates motor and autonomic activity and prepares us for possible action", causing a process of cognition that may enable listeners to name the felt emotion. This series of events cycles with new, incoming information. Robinson argues that emotions may transform into one another, causing blends and conflicts between felt emotions: Rather than a single emotional state, inner feelings are better thought of as the products of multiple emotional streams. When one listens to music, the emotional perceptions of different aspects of the music may reinforce or conflict with each other as new information is processed by the brain, affecting someone's overall perception of the emotion expressed by a piece of music. Theory of musical equilibration The theory of musical equilibration suggests that, rather than inherently having an emotional character, music inspires listeners to identify with messages that are often associated with emotions. For example, a minor chord may convey the message no more, which a listener would then translate to a feeling of sadness. BRECVEM model Juslin and Västfjäll developed a model of seven ways in which music can elicit emotion, called the BRECVEM model • Brain stem reflex: Emotion is induced by music because one or more fundamental acoustical characteristics of the music is taken by the brain stem to signal a potentially important and urgent event. This is especially applicable to sudden, loud, and dissonant pieces of music that induce arousal. • Evaluative conditioning: An emotion is induced by music because the musical stimuli has been repeatedly paired with positive or negative stimuli, conditioning the listener to associate the positive or negative emotion with the music itself. • Musical expectancy: Emotion is induced in a listener because a feature of the music, such as rhythm or harmony, violates, delays, or confirms a listener's expectations. Framework for Adaptable Musical Emotions Susino and colleagues developed the Framework for Adaptable Musical Emotions (FAME), which explains emotional responses to music through the mechanism of adaptability over time. The framework suggests that emotional responses to music are formed in an adaptive way to accommodate or assimilate a wide range of cues arising from psychophysical, cultural, and personal variables interacting with situational contexts. Emotional adaptability helps to explain and predict the convergence and divergence of emotional responses to music across individuals and cultures over time. ==Specific factors affecting emotion==

Many different aspects of a piece of music come together to create its overall emotional perception, including structure, performance, listener demographics, and context. Structural features Structural features are specific aspects of a piece of music itself, disregarding how it is played, who is listening, and other contextual cues. There are two types of structural features: Segmental features are the individual sounds or tones that make up the music, such as duration, amplitude, and pitch, while suprasegmental features are the foundational structures of a piece, such as melody, tempo, and rhythm. Within the factors affecting emotional expression in music, tempo is typically regarded as the most important, but a number of other factors, such as mode, loudness, and melody, also influence the emotional valence of the piece. The theory of musical equilibration suggests that the quality of their tonic triads, the variability of the minor scale, and the instability of sharps and leading tones in minor keys are factors in the minor key's typically darker sound. Major and minor chords are similar emotively to their respective keys, with major triads tending to elicit higher levels of valence, energy, and happiness and lower levels of melancholy, nostalgia, and tension compared to minor triads. Minor triads are also considered more dissonant by listeners, a feature which tends to elicit negative emotions. The harmonic movement of a specific piece of music can also impact emotion. For example, a large difference of surprise and uncertainty of the last chord of a four-chord progression compared to the previous three chords is associated with higher levels of physical sensation in the head, indicating a possible emotional response due to the subversion of the expected chord. On the other hand, converging from a tense chord to a more stable one in a progression can produce a tension-and-release effect in listeners. Tempo and duration Faster music is associated with higher levels of arousal in listeners. Pieces of music with a faster tempo also tend to be judged as longer than same-duration pieces of music with a slower tempo. Many people also feel restless and unable to sit still after hearing specific rhythms. Performance features Performance features refer to the manner in which a piece of music is executed by the performer(s). These are broken into two categories: performer skills, and performer state. Performer skills include the compound ability and appearance of the performer; including physical appearance, reputation, and technical skills. The performer state include the interpretation, motivation, and stage presence of the performer. Listeners' perceptions of emotions in music also tend to match the emotional expression of the performer, even if it contradicts how they would typically perceive it otherwise: For example, a listener may perceive a typically sad minor-key song as happy if the performer playing it has a happy expression. On the other hand, children tend to prefer more arousing music, while adults tend to prefer more positive music. Among Chinese listeners, men tend to prefer sadder music. One's emotional perception of a piece of music is also largely shifted towards their emotional state at time of listening. Emotional perception is also correlated with personality: More neurotic people tend to have stronger sad reactions, and more agreeable people tend to have stronger emotional reactions in general. Extra-musical features Extra-musical features refer to extra-musical information detached from auditory music signals, such as the genre or style of music. More recently, scientists have suggested that happiness and sadness are experienced separately, which implies that they can be felt concurrently. ==Elicitation of emotion==

Music has the potential to both convey and elicit emotions in its listeners. This view often causes debate because the emotion is produced within the listener, and is consequently hard to measure. Cognitivists argue that music simply displays an emotion, but does not allow for the personal experience of emotion in the listener. Emotivists argue that music elicits real emotional responses in the listener. In spite of controversy, current research suggests that music can elicit emotions in listeners. In addition to affecting felt emotion itself, music may also affect reactional components of emotion, such as physiological responses, motoric expression of emotion, and physical movement. The context in which music is experienced has been found to play a major role in shaping how people respond. In addition to the structural features of music, like harmony and rhythm, physical and social environments are significant in eliciting emotional reactions. Recent research has shown that live musical performances tend to evoke stronger emotional and bodily responses than recordings of the same songs. In recent research, motion capture technology was used to measure how audience members reacted to live and recorded versions of identical musical performances. Researchers found that audience members moved their heads more actively and in better rhythm with the music during the live shows. Fans of the artist reacted more notably, which suggests that personal connection and crowd participation can make the experience feel more intense. Music also affects socially-relevant memories, specifically memories produced by nostalgic musical excerpts. Although all familiar music induces stronger emotional responses, musical structures are more strongly interpreted in certain areas of the brain when the music evokes nostalgia, including the interior frontal gyrus, substantia nigra, cerebellum, and the insular cortex. Because music is also processed by the lower, sensory levels of the brain, making it impervious to later memory distortions, a familiar musical excerpt can trigger emotional memories that may have otherwise been hard to access. However, self-report is still subject to biases such as social desirability bias. For example, arousing music is related to increased heart rate and muscle tension, while calming music is connected to decreased heart rate, decreased muscle tension, and increased skin temperature. In addition, music provides a stimulus for expressive behavior in many social contexts, such as concerts, dances, and ceremonies. Perceived emotions are also more consistent than elicited emotions. ==Music as a therapeutic tool==

Music therapy as a therapeutic tool has been shown to be an effective treatment for various ailments. It also can serve as an outlet for emotional expression, particularly for autistic people. Music therapy may also help people who are experiencing extended stays in a hospital due to illness. Music and emotion regulation Music is widely used as a tool for emotional self-regulation, especially during periods of stress or psychological challenge. Scholarly analyses report that individuals frequently rely on music to stabilize mood, manage anxiety, and cope with emotionally intense experiences. These effects are observed across both everyday listening and structured therapeutic environments. Sad-sounding or slow-tempo music does not reliably induce sadness; instead, listeners often report feelings of comfort, nostalgia, or emotional release. These experiences are thought to arise from autobiographical reflection and aesthetic appreciation rather than direct emotional contagion. However, we must distinguish this from a state that borders on madness or musomania. While healthy melomania is a journey of natural discovery and freedom, an uncontrollable obsession becomes tied to a forced high, it could be something similar to the effect of drugs. True melomania doesn't pressure the mind; it sets it free. == References ==