The PUMS Database: A Corpus of Previously-Used Musical Stimuli in 306 Studies of Music and Emotion

A corpus of Previously-Used Musical Stimuli (PUMS) is presented. The PUMS database is an online, publicly-available database where researchers can find a list of 22,417 musical stimuli that have been previously used in the literature on how music can convey or evoke emotions in listeners. A total of 306 studies on music and emotion are included in the database. Each musical stimulus used in these studies was coded according to various criteria: its designated emotion and how it was operationalized, its length, whether it is an excerpt from a longer work, and its style or genre. In the PUMS corpus, there is also information regarding the familiarity of the original participants with each musical sample, as well as information regarding whether each passage was used in a study about perceived or induced emotion. The name of the passage, composer, track number, and specific measure numbers or track location were noted when they were identified in the original paper. The database offers insight into how music has been used in psychological studies over a period of 90 years and provides a resource for scholars wishing to use music in future behavioral or psychophysical research. The PUMS database can be accessed online at https://osf.io/p4ta9.

MUSIC AS A TOOL FOR MOOD REGULATION: THE ROLE OF ABSORPTION VS. MINDFULNESS

The aim of this research was to determine the relationship between mindfulness, absorption in music, and emotion regulation through music in people who have different tastes in music. The research started from the assumption that absorption in music means the possibility of deep “absorption” in musical experience and thus a greater possibility of emotion regulation through music. In contrast to absorption, mindfulness as full awareness of the current moment or a state of consciousness in which attention is intentionally focused on one’s own experiences (bodily sensations, senses, thoughts, or emotions) could make it difficult to indulge in a musical experience. In order to test these assumptions, a study was conducted on 252 participants in late adolescence and young adulthood age who, in addition to using instruments designed to examine absorption in music, mindfulness, and emotion regulation through music, assessed their musical taste. The results showed a positive correlation between the preferences for different music styles and absorption in music, as well as between absorption in music and different strategies for regulating emotions through music. Mindfulness, on the other hand, proved to be negatively correlated with both absorption in music and most strategies for regulating mood through music. Conducted regression analyses showed that in addition to controlling musical taste, absorption in music is a positive predictor of all emotion regulation strategies, while mindfulness is a negative predictor of discharging negative emotions and forgetting unwanted thoughts and feelings through music.

The emotion trajectory of self-selected jazz music with lyrics: A psychophysiological perspective

This study explored how lyrics, participant-selected music, and emotion trajectory impact self-reported emotional (happiness, sadness, arousal, and valence) and physiological (heart, respiration, and skin conductance rates) responses. Participants were matched (based on sex, age, musicianship, and lyric preference) and assigned to a lyric or instrumental group. Each participant experienced one emotion trajectory (happy-sad or sad-happy), with alternating self- and experimenter-selected jazz music. Emotion trajectory had a significant effect on self-reports, where participants in the sad-happy trajectory reported significantly more sadness overall compared to participants in the happy-sad trajectory. There were also several interaction effects between the independent variables, which indicate the relevance of order as well as differences in processing musical emotions depending on whether music is instrumental or contains lyrics.

Empirical Musicology: An Interview with David Huron Part II

On the occasion of David Huron's retirement, EMR Editor, Daniel Shanahan, recently interviewed him regarding research methodology, public musicology, music and emotion, formal theory, the place of biology in music studies, and other topics. The second of two interviews.

Musical emotions in the Roma community of Ceuaş

In this chapter, the three contexts of musical tears (professional service, parties in the Roma neighborhood, funerals) are compared in order to determine whether they have any characteristics in common. The analysis of their differences leads to a concentric model illustrating three different modes on which musical emotions are experienced: “making emotion,” “sharing emotion,” and “expressing emotion.” The analysis of their similarities brings out three invariants of musical emotions: an aesthetic system (sorrowful tunes), “personal” tunes, and a specific way of being (milos, i.e., compassionate, empathic). It is argued that such invariants, since they are unaffected by the performance context, should be viewed as the “focal points” or “deep structures” of the relationship between music and emotion. While this result is local in scope, it makes it possible to sketch a few cross-cultural comparisons.

Roma Music and Emotion

By combining long-term field research with hypotheses from the cognitive sciences, this book proposes a groundbreaking anthropological theory on the emotional power of music. It hig hlights a human tendency to engage in empathic relations through and with the musical artifacts, veritable “sonic agents” for which we can feel pity, compassion, or sympathy. The theory originates from a detailed ethnography of the musical life of a small Roma community of Transylvania (Romania), where Filippo Bonini Baraldi lived several years, seeking an answer to intriguing questions such as: Why do the Roma cry while playing music? What lies behind their ability to move their customers? What happens when instrumental music and wailing voices come together at funerals? Through the analysis of numerous weddings, funeral wakes, community celebrations, and intimate family gatherings, the author shows that music and weeping go hand in hand, revealing fundamental tensions between unity and division, life and death, the self and others—tensions that the Roma enhance, overemphasize, and perceive as central to their identity. In addition to improving our understanding of a community still shrouded in stereotypes, this book is an important contribution for research on musical emotion, which thus far has focused almost exclusively on western classical music.

Davies and Levinson on the Musical Expression of Emotion

Stephen Davies and Jerrold Levinson have each offered accounts of how music can express emotions. Davies’s ‘Appearance Emotionalism’ holds that music can be expressive of emotion due to a resemblance between its dynamic properties and those of human behaviour typical of people feeling that emotion, while Levinson’s ‘Hypothetical Emotionalism’ contends that a piece is expressive when it can be heard as the expression of the emotion of a hypothetical agent or imagined persona. These have been framed as opposing positions but I show that, on one understanding of ‘expressing’ which they seem to share, each entails the other and so there is no real debate between them. However, Levinson’s account can be read according to another—and arguably more philosophically interesting— understanding of ‘expressing’ whereas Davies’s account cannot as easily be so read. I argue that this reading of Hypothetical Emotionalism can account for much of our talk about music in terms of emotions but must answer another question—viz., how composers or performers can express emotions through music—to explain this relation between music and emotion. I suggest that this question can be answered by drawing on R. G. Collingwood’s theory of artistic expression.

“I hate this part right here”: Embodied, subjective experiences of listening to aversive music

Although the majority of previous research on music-induced responses has focused on pleasurable experiences and preferences, it is undeniable that music is capable of eliciting strong dislike and aversion as well. To date, only limited research has been carried out to understand the subjective experience of listening to aversive music. This qualitative study explored people’s negative experiences associated with music listening, with the aim to understand what kinds of emotions, affective states, and physical responses are associated with listening to aversive music. One hundred and two participants provided free descriptions of (1) musical features of aversive music; (2) subjective physical sensations, thoughts and mental imagery evoked by aversive music; (3) typical contexts where aversive music is heard; and (4) the similarities and/or differences between music-related aversive experiences and experiences of dislike in other contexts. We found that responses to aversive music are characterized by embodied experiences, perceived loss of agency, and violation of musical identity, as well as social or moral attitudes and values. Furthermore, two “experiencer types” were identified: One reflecting a strong negative attitude toward unpleasant music, and the other reflecting a more neutral attitude. Finally, we discuss the theoretical implications of our findings in the broader context of music and emotion research.