Two dominant approaches try to explain the connection between music and
emotion: The emotivist position claims that music directly induces emotion
in listeners, whereas the cognitivist position asserts that listeners can
recognize the emotions, but do not actually feel them. In order to inform
this debate, our research investigated emotion elicitation by music on the
physiological, expressive and experiential level. Furthermore, the relation
between these three levels was studied. Six participants listened to two
musical pieces, designed to elicit negative and positive emotions (obtained
from Vásquez-Rosati 2017), while electrodermal activity, heart rate
variability and facial expression were measured. Before and after each
musical piece participants filled out the Self-Assessment Manikin and after
each stimulus micro-phenomenology-inspired interviews were conducted.
It was found that both positive and negative stimuli do not necessarily
cause the expected emotional responses, as seen from the experiential and
physiological data. Moreover, participants frequently reported recognizing
emotion in the music without experiencing it themselves. Therefore, neither
the cognitivist nor the emotivist position could be supported, as both
applied to varying degrees. During the interviews, participants reported
multiple experiential aspects being induced by the music, including images
and memories. Sometimes, these aspects led to certain emotions being
experienced, rather than being directly induced by the music. This study
highlights the multidimensionality of emotional experience, which cannot be
simply described by categorical definitions or differentiation between
valence and arousal.
References:
Vásquez-Rosati, A. (2017). “Body Awareness to Recognize Feelings,”
*Constructivist
Foundations*. 12 (2), 219-226.