Research Findings
Music exists everywhere in our life; though its influence is not always obvious people should not underestimate the significance of its role. It has the influence on all people in different ways, the fact is that music does affect all people. It is used in various ways to improve our lives and express something that cannot be represented in words. There is an opinion that music is much more influential for emotions and feelings than the language in a psychological context. Moreover, people can become acquainted with music and exposed to its influence even before they are born: it is known that loud and fast tempo music can change the heartbeat of a baby in a belly while calm music leads to the reduction of activity and quiet state.
With a large interest in exploring how music affects human mind, behavior and perception of the external world gave a rise to numerous research. According to findings from various studies, music has the influence on our mood in many ways which require psychological explanations. Moreover, cognitive and neuropsychological research provide the idea that emotions and delight are the main motivations of listening to music. This paper is focused on providing psychological information and research results concerning interconnection between musical activities and emotions.
Throughout history, philosophers, anthropologists, psychologists, musicologists, neuroscientists were studying the origin and principles of music. Mostly, assumptions about original functions of music remain theoretical, but there are some helpful and interesting versions which are effective for the further investigating of music features. Though the ways music is used nowadays is far from being used in the past, it is possible to underline some useful findings related to musical origin.
According to evolutionary approaches, one of the main ideas is that music makes its contribution to the social unity and improves group activities. "Work and war songs, lullabies, and national anthems have bound together families, groups, or whole nations" (Schäfer et al., 2013). The idea of music acting as a social bond which also helps to reduce social stress and aggression was supported by many scholars. There was a supposition that music appeared from singing in infant-mother relations as comforting sounds. Others proposed that music was related to death, helped to realize fleetingness of life and calm people's fears of mortality.
According to Schäfer et al. (2013), Schubert viewed the usage of music in a more generalized way, he stated that its principal function is to evoke pleasant feelings subduing other pleasure-producing capacities.
Speaking of literature research, it is possible to notice that numerous publications do not refer to any of the theories or remind it unclear how the author made certain assumptions. At the same time, there are papers which represent extensive studies concerning functions of music. Many authors accentuate the use of music in various social aspects such as political terms, film music, physiological peculiarities or therapeutic functions under clinical circumstances.
It is known that our inner feelings are greatly influenced by neurobiological processes which are activated by means of music we listen to. Music perception and performance involves operating of a great amount of mechanisms in the brain which are included in the cognitive neuroscience of music. Though there are a lot of theories developed to study the effects of music on emotions it is necessary to explore if there are common principles which explain the mechanisms involved in this interaction. Juslin and Vastfjall (2008) provided the list of main mechanisms: brain stem reflexes, evaluative conditioning, emotional contagion, visual imagery, episodic memory, and musical expectancy.
Before applying to the main questions it is important to understand the meaning and theories of emotion and its connection with cognition. At the first onset, we face with a confusion about how emotions are operated, whether they are a part of cognitive processes or there is a special emotional system which functions regardless of cognition. William Forde Thompson and Lena Quinto (2011) describe different views on this question: one of them accentuates on the opinion that emotional and cognitive processes refer to two different types of intelligence, the rational and emotional one. Hence, it follows that preferences do not depend on one's cognitive processing, but they are influenced by the unconscious perception of stimuli. Possibly, such predilection can be explained by associations and stimuli which were kept in memory implicitly and still call up certain feelings.
The next assumption consists in following: "emotional responses are the outcome of a sequence of cognitive processes in which features are coded, classified, and finally appraised" (Thompson & Quinto, 2011). In other words, at first, information is sensed, perceived and then estimated; the latter stage is connected with emotion appearance.
According to the third point of view, emotions and cognitive processes interact with a help of "somatic markers". It means that emotional associations, experience and events have a significant influence on the cognitive processing and effectiveness of decision-making.
A theory of emotion developed by Carver provides the idea that behavior is mostly intentional and controlled by reactions or feedback; this control plays an important role as it helps to manage and correct various actions in accordance with the desired state. The discrepancy between current and final state makes people correct their arrangements and acts as a signal which gives rise to emotions. Changes which are made in order to achieve the desired goal can cause both positive and negative emotions. All assumptions mentioned above can help understand and interpret emotions produced during listening to music.
Emotionally, music is delicately perceived by listeners, its effects are closely connected with many musical attributes such as loudness, rhythm, dissonance, tempo and pitch height. Music performers and composers can use changes of these attributes in order to affect emotional code and enhance communication by means of melody and voice. One of the most important aspects is tempo. Investigation of diverse tempo effects on the perception of music showed the following results: description of melodies played at a slow tempo were associated with such terms like tranquil, sad, thoughtful while fast tempo performances were defined as cheerful, gripping or stirring.
"There is strong scientific evidence that the emotional consequences of manipulating acoustic attributes appear to tap into universal links between the auditory system and emotional responses" (Thompson & Quinto, 2011). The musical attributes which are used to manipulate emotions act in the same way in speech; in other words, aspects of the emotional code are also applicable in communication and related to the "supralinguistic dimension of speech or prosody". Thus, it was found that processes of emotional communication are conducted through auditory areas. During evaluation of both instrumental music and spoken fragments, listeners report equal reactions: intensity growth causes energetic stimulation, whereas changes of pitch height resulted in different emotional outcomes in listening to music and speech. Moreover, music attributes have the influence on cognitive functions because in contrast to slow stimuli, fast tempo performances and spoken passages make people more active and faster in their response.
Using facial expressions, gestures and body movements during emotional singing or speaking plays a significant role in establishing the emotional connection between listeners and performers or speakers and intensifies or supports emotional messages to the audience. Thompson & Quinto (2011) described the experiment conducted by Davidson: he recorded video of musicians who were asked to execute music impassively, in a projected and exaggerated ways. Participants of the experiment watched mute videos of these performances and proved that mime and movements reproduce emotional information and are effective signs of the expressiveness.
Music is considered to be the language of emotion, but there is no single theory which explains the interaction between these integral parts of everyone's life. Cooke supposed that "music consists of various melodic features and patterns that have recognizable emotional significance" (Thompson & Quinto, 2011). He also stated that such factors as melodic intervals play one of the most important roles. These assumptions were followed by a thorough examination of music with lyrics and noticing striking sequence and combination of various adjectives with certain intervals.
The other point of view is that emotions people experience during listening to music are connected with expectations. In other words, as words can have different meaning depending on things they refer to, so it is applicable to symbols. People's expectations determine the power of emotions; music evokes certain emotional reactions because it differs from listener's expectations. Mandler (1984) thought of these processes in the biological context; he mentioned that unexpected events could be threatening to our health, they increased arousal and attention. Such reactions change blood pressure, breathing, cardiac contractions, then body reactions and experienced emotions are appraised and analyzed. In contrast to this opinion of Mandler, Huron (2006) stated that emotional response to the event appeared after appraisal of the situation regardless of expectation. The reaction is a quick and automatic "reflectory" process which activates body responses while evaluation is more considered.
The next view is focused on the existence of several mechanisms which operate within the interaction between music and emotions. It lies in the association of music with other emotional stimuli: integration of emotions themselves, unification with events or stimuli which include emotional implication related to past events, visual imagery, and the human voice.
The processes which are involved in perception take part in the permanent analysis of the current environment in order to find out important changes and events. There are sounds which are associated with alterations, they attract attention by loudness, sharpness, speed and make the central nervous system highly activated. It is hard to understand exact physiological processes which operate in brain stem responses, but it was found that they are closely connected with " the reticular formation of the brain stem and the intralaminar nuclei of the thalamus, which receive inputs from the auditory system" (Juslin & Vastfjall, 2008). Brain stem cooperates with numerous sensory and motor functions, the reticular system is able to produce actuation in order to turn attention to sensory stimuli of potential importance. Along with sensory and motor functions, arousal by means of neurotransmitters are greatly influenced by the system. Brain stem responses to music occur in the initial stages of auditory perception, they are usually quick and automatic.
The appearance of the term emotional contagion as the basic principle of interconnection between music and emotion is considered to be one of the most significant assumptions. It is considered that the effects of this mechanism can be common for many music attributes and are observed in processes related to synchronizing with the music. "Physical responses, action tendencies, and mental events associated with music listening are manifestations of synchronization" (Thompson & Quinto, 2011). Synchronization is essential for all human interactions, it results from continuous analyzing of feedback processes and usually involves physical movements, though can also occur implicitly. The accuracy of synchronization is conditioned by the mirror neuron system activity.
Biologically, differences between people cause some kind of strain which acts as a signal to assimilate to other people and the environment. Such assimilation is conducted in various ways, including instinctive imitation or synchronization of behavior. Social psychologists paid more attention to mimicry because it is a reliable tool to enhance social connections, increase empathy and mutual understanding between people. Mimicry is a behavior when interacting people unconsciously imitate the same manners, facial expression, movements, gestures and verbal patterns. This instinct is based on certain neural processes: particular areas of the brain cortex are activated when sympathy with other people appears. One experiment which consisted in showing to participants two types of images, menacing and neutral ones, has shown that those who saw the first type of images reported negative emotional response to threatening episode. When participants were asked to imagine themselves if they were in those scenes, they felt empathy and functional magnetic resonance imaging registered changes of blood flow to the brain. "Activation was observed in brain areas associated with facial and gestural processing, as well as the premotor mirror-neuron area" (Thompson & Quinto, 2011).
Discussion
Earlier it was considered that synchronization was used to establish understanding in social communications. But there is a fact that sometimes people experience mimicry when being alone. It is explained by the following: when listening to pleasant music or watching positive video some activity in the zygomatic muscle (which is associated with smiling) occurs unintentionally. Unpleasant melodies are connected with the corrugator muscle activation which is responsible for expressing displeasure. Such findings confirm the theory that mimicry is an automatic and unintended process which is the part of the close relation between action and perception.
Musical synchronization may occur in both ways - observable behavior such as singing, dancing, moving in response to music and mental representation including attention and imagination. No matter if the audience has musical experience, the perception of music evokes possible representation of appropriate actions.
In this frame of reference, a model Shared Affective Motion Experience was developed to explain emotional responses to music. According to this theory, " music is perceived not only as sound, but also in terms of the intentional, hierarchically organized sequence of the motor acts that are required to produce the signal" (Thompson & Quinto, 2011). Auditory functions operate in the superior temporal gyrus in conjunction with movement impulses from the mirror neuron system. The motional information would be produced depending on the musical experience of a listener. Moreover, the prediction is considered to be a significant factor influencing on enjoying music - disturbance of expectations cause dramatic emotional reactions.
Another separate mechanism which contributes a lot to the close interaction between music and emotions is visual imagery. It means that while listening to music people create in their mind visual images which cause corresponding emotions. Mental images are considered to be internal stimuli of emotions; " visual imagery associated with different emotions involves different imagery contents, as well as different patterns of physiological response" (Juslin & Vastfjall, 2008). Thus, it was proposed that music is the most effective stimulus for creating visual images while imagery improves the appearance of emotional responses to music. At this point, it is necessary to mention that this mechanism can be exposed to the influence of the listeners because it is possible to create images, manipulate and reject them in spite of the fact that images come to mind unintentionally. Especially, this peculiarity is used in music therapy.
"What is unique about music is that it instantiates goal-directed behavior in the form of an especially tight coupling of action–attention–imagination with perceptual input: synchronization" (Thompson & Quinto, 2011). According to this statement, it is necessary to regulate feedback rapidly and permanently in order to perform particular synchronization. Synchronization is realized on different levels, from the reflection of the surface of the tone-to-tone musical features to those forms of synchronization which represent movements.
The appearance of emotions is conditioned by the response to goals and its achievement: feelings of joy and relief aroused when the important goal is attained, in the opposite case we face with sadness and disappointment. These affective states clearly represent the functioning of responses in a goal-directed behavior.
As it was mentioned above, synchronization is based on prediction and expectation, so it can be explained by both mechanisms of expectancy and feedback control. It is important to realize that not all the emotional reactions to music are conditioned by feedback processes. Some emotions appear on account of learned associations with music and remind of some memorable events; such responses refer to cognitive evaluation and are not connected with the music itself.
Affective states of an individual in the context of music is a very interesting, significant but difficult subject to explore. Research in musical psychology showed that listeners do response to music emotionally as performers do. A variety of different emotional reactions and experiences gave a rise to numerous studies and deep investigation of all processes involved in music-emotion interaction. It is hard to make certain conclusions in this area of study because there are still many discussions, confusions, theories and view that contribute to the given topic. Listeners can distinguish emotional background of unknown music from other cultures that proves that there are some universal signs of musical emotions.
It is supposed that complications in studying emotions produced by musical action originate from disregarding basic mechanisms involved in emotion formation. All these mechanisms have differences in such aspects as informational orientation, cultural impact, ontogenetic development, main brain areas, the degree of volitional influence, modularity, and dependence on musical structure. Studying how emotions emerge by means of mentioned mechanism is applicable not only in musical context, acquired knowledge can make an important contribution to learning emotions in general.
Acquired knowledge and research findings allow confirming the impact which music can have on physical health and well-being of people. Many positive effects can be achieved due to emotions caused by listening to music as it is a tool which helps to express things which seem to be inexpressible. Thorough exploration and understanding of mechanisms which take part in the rise of these emotions can make a significant contribution to such field as music therapy because music is possessed of power and ability to change one's thoughts and behavior.
References
Huron, D. (2006). Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Juslin & Vastfjall. (2008). Emotional Responses to Music. The Need to Consider Underlying Mechanisms. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 31, 559 –621. doi:10.1017/S0140525X08005293
Mandler, G. (1984). Mind and Body: Psychology of Emotion and Stress. New York: Norton.
Schäfer, T, Sedlmeier, P, Städtler, C & Huron, D. (2013). The Psychological Functions of Music Listening. Front Psychol; 4: 511.doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00511
Thompson, W.F. & Quinto, L. (2011). Music and Emotion: Psychological Considerations. In Peter Goldie and Elizabeth Schellekens (Eds.), The Aesthetic Mind: Philosophy and Psychology, Chapter 21 (pp. 357-375). Oxford University Press.
