Emotional responses to music: experience, expression, and physiology

TLDR

Music research debates whether music elicits genuine emotions (emotivist) or merely conveys perceived emotions (cognitivist). The study aimed to determine whether music induces genuine emotional responses or simply reflects perceived emotions. The authors measured self‑reported emotion, facial muscle activity, and autonomic responses in 32 participants listening to popular music with happy or sad emotional expression. Results revealed a coherent experiential, expressive, and physiological response supporting the emotivist view; happy music produced greater zygomatic activity, higher skin conductance, lower finger temperature, and more happiness and less sadness than sad music, consistent with emotional contagion.

Abstract

A crucial issue in research on music and emotion is whether music evokes genuine emotional responses in listeners (the emotivist position) or whether listeners merely perceive emotions expressed by the music (the cognitivist position). To investigate this issue, we measured self-reported emotion, facial muscle activity, and autonomic activity in 32 participants while they listened to popular music composed with either a happy or a sad emotional expression. Results revealed a coherent manifestation in the experiential, expressive, and physiological components of the emotional response system, which supports the emotivist position. Happy music generated more zygomatic facial muscle activity, greater skin conductance, lower finger temperature, more happiness and less sadness than sad music. The finding that the emotion induced in the listener was the same as the emotion expressed in the music is consistent with the notion that music may induce emotions through a process of emotional contagion.