The 13 emotions that music evokes in us
A new study from the University of California, Berkeley has identified and mapped the 13 subjective experiences that different kinds of music can evoke in people.
Have you ever been in a situation where you wanted a playlist of musical tracks to put you in a certain mood — for example, to motivate you to work — but were unsure how to find it or put it together?
Soon, it may become easier to find music to suit your current emotions or kickstart you into action, thanks to a new study from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.
The research, which doctoral student Alan Cowen led, used more than 2,000 music samples to gauge how different types of music influenced emotion in cohorts from two different countries and cultures: the United States and China.
"We have rigorously documented the largest array of emotions that are universally felt through the language of music," says the study's senior author Prof. Dacher Keltner. The study findings now appear in PNAS.
2 different cultures, similar responses
For their study, the researchers recruited 1,591 participants from the U.S. and 1,258 participants from China, who listened to a total of 2,168 samples of different types of music.
A first experiment involved a subgroup of U.S. and Chinese participants who listened to a music library of 1,841 samples, which they rated on 11 scales assessing for broad affective features.
This primary investigation allowed the investigators to come up with a long list of possible emotional experiences that different types of music could evoke.
It also allowed the researchers to verify how participants from different cultures perceived the same subjective experiences that the music tracks elicited.
Source: www.medicalnewstoday.com
