Emery Schubert

Measuring Emotion Continuously: Validity and Reliability of the Two‐Dimensional Emotion‐Space

Abstract The validity and reliability of the two-dimensional emotion-space (2DES) was examined in three experiments. This computer-controlled instrument measures direct, self-reported emotion expressed by stimuli along two bipolar dimensions: happy/sad valence (VA) and aroused/sleepy (AR). In Experiment 1, responses to 24 words and five pictures of faces were collected from 28 participants. The intuitive nature of the 2DES was supported; the instrument had an average resolution of 21 for VA and 25 for AR on a 201-point scale, and demonstrated high test-retest reliability (r> 0.83, p = 0.01 for all). Construct validity was supported by significant correlation coefficient between hypothesised responses (generated from Russells circumplex of emotion and Whissells dictionary of affect) and actual responses (r > 0.84). In Experiment 2, 67 participants responded continuously to four complete musical movements. Good agreement was obtained between averaged continuous, overall, and checklist response, supporting...

Individual Differences in the Enjoyment of Negative Emotion in Music: A Literature Review and Experiment

Why do People Seek out Music that Makes Them cry? This paradox is a complex one that appears to have no single answer. Rather, numerous factors appear to be interacting in the diverse responses of individuals to music. The present study tested the hypothesis that individual differences in dissociation, absorption, fantasy proneness, empathy, and rumination would be related to the enjoyment of negative emotion in music. Fifty-nine participants completed a survey pertaining to this question. Results revealed statistically significant positive relationships between enjoyment of evoked negative emotion in response to music with both absorption and the recently reported construct of 9music empathy,9 Factor analysis and a regression model confirmed these results, and the approach suggests that further study of individual differences will continue to provide new insights into some of the subtleties of the enjoyment of negative emotions in music.

Relationships between expressed and felt emotions in music.

Abstract This study examines empirically the possible relationships between the emotional quality one can attribute to musical stimuli (expressed emotion, or external locus of emotion) and the subjective emotional response one can have as a result of listening to music (felt emotion, or internal locus). The relationship between the two loci of emotion is often assumed to be positive, that is, when listening to music, one feels the emotion that the music expresses. Gabrielsson has suggested, however, that this assumption is simplistic, and has proposed a model that describes other possible relationships. The present study quantitatively investigates Gabrielssons proposal. Forty-five participants responded to questions about both expressed emotion and felt emotion for two familiar experimenter-selected pieces (Pachelbels Canon and Advance Australia Fair, the Australian national anthem) and one or two pieces of their own selection. Participants were asked to “imagine” their self-selected pieces in the absence of recordings or a live performance. An experimenter-selected piece was both sounded and imagined, and no significant difference was observed in responses between the two conditions. Quantitative criteria were generated in order to compare the loci (internal and external) of each piece in geometric space. Results showed that the positive relationship, where the internal and external locus emotions are the same, occurred in 61% of cases. In general, these pieces were preferred more than those exhibiting non-positive relationships. Implications for practices that tacitly assume a 100% positive relationship, or are not specific about the locus of emotion, are discussed.

Adaptive and maladaptive attraction to negative emotions in music

Individual differences were investigated in an attempt to explain why some people are attracted to negative emotion (grief, sadness) in music. A 10-item Like Sad Music Scale (LSMS) was developed (Cronbach’s α = .802) and compared against subscales measuring absorption, music empathy, rumination, reflectiveness and nostalgia-proneness. This was tested via an online survey, completed by 137 participants. It was hypothesized that absorption and reflectiveness would be correlated with the enjoyment of sad music and rumination would be correlated with an attraction to sad music although not necessarily an enjoyment of it. Consistent with previous findings, absorption was a good predictor of the LSMS and was particularly correlated with the enjoyment of strong emotions in connection with sad music. Rumination correlated with LSMS items ‘helps release sadness’ and ‘can relate to sadness’ while reflectiveness correlated with the item ‘I often find myself grieving as a result of listening to sad music’. These correlations suggest both adaptive and maladaptive uses of sad music for mood manipulation. The results were presented with respect to the dissociation theory of aesthetic enjoyment, where participants with the capacity to enter states of absorption are able to deactivate displeasure circuits and hence enjoy negative emotion in music.

Cognition and the temporal arts: Investigating audience response to dance using PDAs that record continuous data during live performance

If artists and art explore organization of the brain [Zeki, S., Lamb, M., 1994. The neurology of kinetic art. Brain 117, 607-636], then investigation of response to artistic performance holds promise as a window to perceptual and cognitive processes. A new instrument for recording real-time audience response - the portable Audience Response Facility (pARF) - is described. Twenty, hand-held, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) collect responses on customizable skin interfaces. The pARF server transmits the customizable options, synchronizes devices and collects data for export. We report two studies using the pARF that demonstrate respondent agreement of perceived emotion during particular sections of two dance works. Greater agreement was evident in continuous ratings of arousal than valence; arousal appears to be related to surface features of the dance work. Future applications of the pARF to studies of multi-modal perception and cognition are discussed.

UPDATE OF THE HEVNER ADJECTIVE CHECKLIST

Hevners checklist has been widely used to measure emotional responses to music. Since the revision of the checklist by Farnsworth in the 1950s and 1960s, the list has not been updated. 133 musically experienced people were surveyed regarding the suitability of a list of 91 adjectives in describing music. The words consisted of the original 67 from Hevners adjective circle, and additional words were taken from Russells circumplex model of emotion (1980) and Whissells dictionary of affect (1989). The words and clusters were then grouped according to their position on a two-dimensional emotion space. Some of the words used by Hevner but dropped by Farnsworth were reinstated, and 15 other words were dropped. The final list consisted of 46 words grouped into nine clusters in emotion space.

Negative Emotion in Music: What is the Attraction? A Qualitative Study

Why do people listen to music that evokes negative emotions? This paper presents five comparative interviews conducted to examine this question. Individual differences psychology and mood management theory provided a theoretical framework for the investigation which was conducted under a realist paradigm. Data sources were face-to-face interviews of about one hour involving a live music listening experience. Thematic analysis of the data was conducted and both within-case and cross-case analyses were performed. Results confirmed the complexity of variables at play in individual cases while supporting the hypothesis that absorption and dissociation make it possible for the arousal experienced when listening to sad music to be enjoyed without displeasure. At the same time, participants appeared to be seeking a variety of psychological benefits such as reflecting on life-events, enjoying emotional communion, or engaging in a process of catharsis. A novel finding was that maladaptive mood regulation habits may cause some to listen to sad music even when such benefits are not being obtained, supporting some recent empirical evidence on why people are attracted to negative emotion in music.

Emotion felt by the listener and expressed by the music: literature review and theoretical perspectives.

In his seminal paper, Gabrielsson (2002) distinguishes between emotion felt by the listener, here: “internal locus of emotion” (IL), and the emotion the music is expressing, here: “external locus of emotion” (EL). This paper tabulates 16 comparisons of felt versus expressed emotions in music published in the decade 2003–2012 consisting of 19 studies/experiments and provides some theoretical perspectives. The key findings were that (1) IL rating was frequently rated statistically the same or lower than the corresponding EL rating (e.g., lower felt happiness rating compared to the apparent happiness of the music), and that (2) self-select and preferred music had a smaller gap across the emotion loci than experimenter-selected and disliked music. These key findings were explained by an “inhibited” emotional contagion mechanism, where the otherwise matching felt emotion may have been attenuated by some other factor such as social context. Matching between EL and IL for loved and self-selected pieces was explained by the activation of “contagion” circuits. Physiological arousal, personality and age, as well as musical features (tempo, mode, putative emotions) also influenced perceived and felt emotion distinctions. A variety of data collection formats were identified, but mostly using rating items. In conclusion, a more systematic use of terminology appears desirable. Two broad categories, namely matched and unmatched, are proposed as being sufficient to capture the relationships between EL and IL, instead of four categories as suggested by Gabrielsson.

Acoustic intensity causes perceived changes in arousal levels in music : an experimental investigation

Listener perceptions of changes in the arousal expressed by classical music have been found to correlate with changes in sound intensity/loudness over time. This study manipulated the intensity profiles of different pieces of music in order to test the causal nature of this relationship. Listeners (N = 38) continuously rated their perceptions of the arousal expressed by each piece. An extract from Dvoraks Slavonic Dance Opus 46 No 1 was used to create a variant in which the direction of change in intensity was inverted, while other features were retained. Even though it was only intensity that was inverted, perceived arousal was also inverted. The original intensity profile was also superimposed on three new pieces of music. The time variation in the perceived arousal of all pieces was similar to their intensity profile. Time series analyses revealed that intensity variation was a major influence on the arousal perception in all pieces, in spite of their stylistic diversity.

Correlation Analysis of Continuous Emotional Response to Music: Correcting for the Effects of Serial Correlation

Publications of research concerning continuous emotional responses to music are increasing. The developing interest brings with it a need to understand the problems associated with the analysis of time series data. This article investigates growing concern in the use of conventional Pearson correlations for comparing time series data. Using continuous data collected in response to selected pieces of music, with two emotional dimensions for each piece, two falsification studies were conducted. The first study consisted of a factor analysis of the individual responses using the original data set and its first-order differenced transformation. The differenced data aligned according to theoretical constraints better than the untransformed data, supporting the use of first-order difference transformations. Using a similar method, the second study specifically investigated the relationship between Pearson correlations, difference transformations and the critical correlation coefficient above which the conventional correlation analysis remains internally valid. A falsification table was formulated and quantified through a hypothesis index function. The study revealed that correlations of undifferenced data must be greater than 0.75 for a valid interpretation of the relationship between bivariate emotional response time series data. First and second-order transformations were also investigated and found to be valid for correlation coefficients as low as 0.24. Of the three version of the data (untransformed, first-order differenced, and second-order differenced), first-order differenced data produced the fewest problems with serial correlation, whilst remaining a simple and meaningful transformation.