Sweet anticipation: music and the psychology of expectation

TLDR

Huron’s theory of musical expectation explains how listeners’ emotions arise from predictive processes, linking cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, and music. The book aims to demonstrate how musical devices such as syncopation, cadence, meter, tonality, and climax exploit expectation to create aesthetic possibilities. Huron outlines five distinct response systems—reactive, tension, predictive, imaginative, and appraisal—that mediate how expectation shapes musical emotion. The theory offers new insights into the physiological bases of awe, laughter, and spine‑tingling chills. All notated music examples are available online.

Abstract

A theory of expectations is used to explain how music evokes various emotions for readers interested in cognitive science and evolutionary psychology as well as music. The psychological theory of expectation that David Huron proposes in Sweet Anticipation grew out of experimental efforts to understand how music evokes emotions. These efforts evolved into a general theory of expectation that will prove informative to readers interested in cognitive science and evolutionary psychology as well as those interested in music. The book describes a set of psychological mechanisms and illustrates how these mechanisms work in the case of music. All examples of notated music can be heard on the Web. Huron proposes that emotions evoked by expectation involve five functionally distinct response systems: reactive responses (which engage defensive reflexes); tension responses (where uncertainty leads to stress); predictive responses (which reward accurate prediction); imaginative responses (which facilitate deferred gratification); and appraisal responses (which occur after conscious thought is engaged). For real-world events, these five response systems typically produce a complex mixture of feelings. The book identifies some of the aesthetic possibilities afforded by expectation, and shows how common musical devices (such as syncopation, cadence, meter, tonality, and climax) exploit the psychological opportunities. The theory also provides new insights into the physiological psychology of awe, laughter, and spine-tingling chills. Huron traces the psychology of expectations from the patterns of the physical/cultural world through imperfectly learned heuristics used to predict that world to the phenomenal qualia experienced by those who apprehend the world.