No evidence for a universal effect of major versus minor music on emotions in Papua New Guinea

Music is a vital part of most cultures and has a strong impact on emotions. In Western cultures, emotive valence (happiness and sadness) is strongly influenced by major and minor melodies and harmony (chords and their progressions). Yet, how pitch and harmony affect our emotions, and to what extent these effects are culturally mediated or universal, is hotly debated. Here, we report an experiment conducted in a remote cloud forest region of Papua New Guinea, across several communities with similar traditional music but differing levels of exposure to Western-influenced tonal music. One hundred and seventy participants were presented with pairs of major and minor cadences (chord progressions) and melodies, and chose which of them made them happier. The experiment was repeated by 60 non-musicians and 19 musicians in Sydney, Australia. Bayesian analyses show that, for cadences, there is strong evidence that major induced greater reported happiness than minor in every community except one: the community with minimal exposure to Western-like music. For melodies, there is strong evidence that those with higher mean pitch (major melodies) induced greater happiness than those with lower mean pitch (minor melodies) in only one of the three PNG communities and in both Sydney groups. The results show that the emotive valence of major and minor is strongly associated with exposure to Western-influenced music and culture, and there is no evidence for universality.

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Australia and Papua New Guinea. Edited by W. J. Hudson. (Sydney, Australia: Sydney University Press, 1971. Pp. viii, 198. $8.45.)

American Political Science Review ◽

10.2307/1959807 ◽

1974 ◽

Vol 68 (1) ◽

pp. 308-309

Author(s):

Francis West

Keyword(s):

Papua New Guinea ◽

New Guinea ◽

Sydney Australia

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Enga Traditional Music. Papua New Guinea

Ethnomusicology ◽

10.2307/851479 ◽

1979 ◽

Vol 23 (2) ◽

pp. 358

Author(s):

Vida Chenoweth ◽

Frederic Duvelle

Keyword(s):

Papua New Guinea ◽

New Guinea ◽

Traditional Music

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A Bibliography of Traditional Music in Papua New Guinea

Ethnomusicology ◽

10.2307/851466 ◽

1979 ◽

Vol 23 (2) ◽

pp. 327

Author(s):

Steve Feld ◽

Kenneth Gourlay

Keyword(s):

Papua New Guinea ◽

New Guinea ◽

Traditional Music

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Evidence for infixation after the first syllable: data from a Papuan language

Phonology ◽

10.1017/s0952675714000232 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 31 (3) ◽

pp. 511-523

Author(s):

Jennifer Wilson

Keyword(s):

Papua New Guinea ◽

Strong Evidence ◽

New Guinea

Linguists have been attempting to define the range of locations in which infixes can occur since Ultan's pioneering work in 1975, but to date there has been no unambiguous evidence for infixation after the first syllable, despite previous (now controversial) claims of its existence by Ultan (1975) and Moravcsik (2000), as well as its predicted existence by Yu's Salient Pivot Hypothesis (‘phonological pivots must be salient at the psycholinguistic or phonetic level’) (2003, 2007). Previously examined potential examples are controversial due to restricted patterns and the acceptability of alternative analyses such as a first-vowel pivot or a foot-based pivot (Samuels 2010). In this article, I present strong evidence from fieldwork on Yeri, an endangered Torricelli language of Papua New Guinea, that imperfective and additive morphemes productively occur as infixes after the first syllable of the verb stem, and that a first-vowel or foot-based analysis cannot account for their position.

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Papua New Guinea: Tolari Traditional Music from the Gazelle Peninsula

Ethnomusicology ◽

10.2307/851480 ◽

1979 ◽

Vol 23 (2) ◽

pp. 359

Author(s):

Vida Chenoweth ◽

Frederic Duvelle

Keyword(s):

Papua New Guinea ◽

New Guinea ◽

Traditional Music

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Minor impacts of reduced pH on bacterial biofilms on settlement tiles along natural pH gradients at two CO2 seeps in Papua New Guinea

ICES Journal of Marine Science ◽

10.1093/icesjms/fsw204 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 74 (4) ◽

pp. 978-987 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Christiane Hassenrück ◽

Halina E. Tegetmeyer ◽

Alban Ramette ◽

Katharina E. Fabricius

Keyword(s):

Coral Reefs ◽

Papua New Guinea ◽

Community Composition ◽

Light Exposure ◽

New Guinea ◽

Bacterial Biofilm ◽

Bacterial Biofilms ◽

Rrna Gene ◽

Strong Impact ◽

Ph Gradients

Bacterial biofilms provide cues for the settlement of marine invertebrates such as coral larvae, and are therefore important for the resilience and recovery of coral reefs. This study aimed to better understand how ocean acidification may affect the community composition and diversity of bacterial biofilms on surfaces under naturally reduced pH conditions. Settlement tiles were deployed at coral reefs in Papua New Guinea along pH gradients created by two CO2 seeps. Biofilms on upper and lower tiles surfaces were sampled 5 and 13 months after deployment. Automated Ribosomal Intergenic Spacer Analysis was used to characterize 240 separate bacterial communities, complemented by amplicon sequencing of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene of 16 samples. Bacterial biofilms consisted predominantly of Alpha-, Gamma-, and Delta-proteobacteria, as well as Cyanobacteria, Flavobacteriia, and Cytophagia, whereas taxa that induce settlement of invertebrate larvae only accounted for a small fraction of the community. Bacterial biofilm composition was heterogeneous, with on average only ∼25% of operational taxonomic units shared between samples. Among the observed environmental parameters, pH was only weakly related to community composition (R2 ∼ 1%), and was unrelated to community richness and evenness. In contrast, biofilms strongly differed between upper and lower tile surfaces (contrasting in light exposure and grazing intensity). There also appeared to be a strong interaction between bacterial biofilm composition and the macroscopic components of the tile community. Our results suggest that on mature settlement surfaces in situ, pH does not have a strong impact on the composition of bacterial biofilms. Other abiotic and biotic factors such as light exposure and interactions with other organisms may be more important in shaping bacterial biofilms on mature surfaces than changes in seawater pH.

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Beier, Ulli (1922–2011)

Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism ◽

10.4324/9781135000356-rem1387-1 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Katharina Greven

Keyword(s):

Papua New Guinea ◽

Modern Art ◽

New Guinea ◽

African Culture ◽

African Art ◽

Outsider Art ◽

The Arts ◽

The World ◽

The University ◽

Sydney Australia

Ulli Beier (b. 1922, Glowitz, Poland – d. 2011, Sydney, Australia) was a Polish-born publisher, writer, translator, lecturer, curator, theatre producer, and particularly a promoter and collector of arts. Throughout his career, Beier’s interests shifted between Aboriginal Art in Australia, outsider art in India and Papua New Guinea, but the focus of his life’s work was centered in Nigeria, where he would come to shape the arts as one of the first outsiders to recognize and support the emerging modern art movement in this country. By promoting and collecting traditional and modern art he shaped a very specific image of Africa. Beier’s initiatives such as the Black Orpheus magazine, the Mbari-Club in Ibadan, and the Mbari-Mbayo-Club in Osogbo helped new forms of African art to develop a voice and aesthetic. From 1981–1996, Beier was the director of the Center of African Culture at the University in Bayreuth, the Iwalewa-Haus, where he continued to promote art from all over the world, in exhibitions, festivals and publications, until he retired with his wife Georgina Beier to Sydney, Australia, where he died in 2011.

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