Integrating methods from experimental social psychology and music
perception, we tested the hypothesis that when listeners personally like a
musician, they will be more inclined to experience his or her music as both
provoking movement and as subjectively pleasurable, the two core features
of perceived groove. In an initial experiment, participants were exposed to
a set of moderately-syncopated, high-groove drum-breaks which they were led
to believe were either produced by a relatively likable or unlikable
musician. In line with predictions, participants led to find the musician
more versus less likable rated the same drum-breaks as more evocative of both
the urge to move and of feelings of pleasure. When participants in a
follow-up study were administered the exact same manipulation of likability
– but exposed to highly-syncopated, low-groove drum-breaks – these effects
were eradicated, suggesting that the results of the first experiment were
not merely due to demand characteristics or response biases. Together,
these findings
support the notion that listeners are more responsive to “participating in
the music” when they are relatively motivated to affiliate with the
musician(s). In other words, this work suggests that the experience of
groove does not merely involve an automatic compulsion to move elicited by
particular musical structures. Rather, it at least partially reflects the
desire to affiliate
with the musician(s) by synchronizing one’s movement with the sounds that
they produce—the stronger the motive to affiliate, the greater the urge to
move to the music and the more pleasure it evokes.