The Role of Musical Features in Generating Emotional Responses

Introduction

Music listening is a highly powerful method of engaging with music stimuli and interpretation. Its ability to arouse substantial emotional responses may impact many facets of an individual’s health including their psychological, physiological, and cognitive dimensions, ultimately arousing pleasant or intense experiences. Through a variety of studies, a musical conversation opened up about the inter-relationship between music listening and the arousal of responses such as chills, meditation or aggression. Vink’s article: ‘Music and Emotion; Living apart together: a relationship between music psychology and music therapy’ highlights a general discussion of the responses and behaviors that may arise from musical expression. She also acknowledged factors that may affect how music is perceived and the frequency of these peak experiences. Moreover, Grewe’s research provides an in-depth analysis upon physiological responses such as goosebumps or shivers can be aroused from aesthetic and non-aesthetic musical stimuli. This information was useful towards improving Vink’s research in investigating the intensifying role music may encourage in negative listening situations. Additionally, the researchers; Thoma, Scholz, Ehlert and Nater construct further knowledge within relevant behaviors from stress-related issues, through proposing the mediating role of long-term habitual music listening on emotion regulation. As such, the authors build further on analyzing stress, aggression and loneliness, to add onto the symposium of the various strategies that can be used for patients to improve negative behavioral tendencies. Hence, all authors build on each other through investigating the impacts of musical stimuli and discussing relevant strategies to support clinical practices. This study highly impacted my musical practice in enquiring how the emphasis on musical features or interpretation within performance may affect listeners in enacting positive or negative emotional experiences. It also resonated with my artistic aims as it suggests a further emphasis towards the process of performance feedback so that I am able to best engage and positively improve the listening experience.

The influence of music on the psychological, cognitive and physiological state of a person

Different listening experiences offer new experiences that can affect an individual’s psychological, cognitive and physiological well-being. Vink’s article: ‘Music and Emotion; living apart together; a relationship between music psychology and music therapy’ attempts to assess the general impacts of emotional listening and the connection to music therapy practices. The article drew upon Sloboda’s research to explore how ‘music functions as a catalyst or stimulus for the experience of emotions in order to emphasise how expectations may contribute to the listening effects. Berlyne’s research and Mandler’s study was further mentioned to discuss the factors such as ‘familiarity, complexity and novelty’ creates a low hedonic value; where increase of familiarity may stimulate responses. Vink utilizes the information gathered by other scholars to locate a gap between the effects of listening and question how music may be perceived within the brain, to improve music psychology and therapy practices. Waterman’s study asserts the ongoing paradox that Vink seeks, through emphasizing how different musical features and genres can evoke negative responses. Therefore, the author’s proposed solution is to apply other theorists’ psychological and physiological analyses to investigate what is deemed powerful in generating a response. Vink attempts to fill the gap by concluding that musical stimuli create vast impacts on behavioral change such as the arousal of fear. Berlyne and ‘Hevner stated that ‘tempo and mode had the strongest impact on the listener…’ Hence, musical features have an influence towards emotional responses, as individuals associate fast music with ‘cheerfulness’ and slow, minor pieces as ‘sensitive and dreamful.’ However, Vink challenged this understanding stating that the ‘emotional content of a piece is valued’ suggesting that whilst emotions may be aroused from written musical directions, the interpretation or performance of the piece may also affect listeners. Vink continues to assess the physiological impacts through vibrations of the heart and breathing within Smeijister's study. He outlines that heart rate is influenced by musical vibrations within every genre or style of music. Therefore, Vink concludes that ‘people tended to use music as a ‘change agent’ to alter their mood state’ highlighting that the reasons to music listening have a more substantial effect on the individual, despite experiencing mostly positive emotions. She goes on to argue that ‘it is far too early too early to state that music is therapeutic, let alone be considered as medicine’ narrowly focusing her argument. Whereas, Thoma’s research, opened a new discussion that indicates otherwise; where music can mediate stress positively. The author puts forth technological strategies such as Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, to further analyze how music affects cognitive health. She further promotes support for patients in order to improve behavioral and psychological effects through emotion regulation. Lin continues Vink’s conversation through investigating the development of composition software for those with a disability. The authors directed the conversation through music making on MIDI, by suggesting an emphasis on enhancing musical experiences and understanding how emotions can impact the sound quality produced. Despite the conversation moving forward in a technological manner, Vink’s article establishes a meaningful understanding towards the emotional implications in music listening.

Different bodily responses may also be an indication of how significant musical attributes can physically affect an individual. Grewe’s article; ‘Listening to music as a recreative process: physical, psychological and psychoacoustical correlates of chills and strong emotions’ attempts to extend the role of expressive and technical attributes that may trigger chills or a quickened heart rate. Their study adds on to Vink’s research on revealing how features such as tempo and rhythm are responsible for intense responses, with the extension of generating chills from strong peak experiences. Goldstein’s past study on ‘thrills or chills… as a parameter for strong emotions in response to music’ was frequently drawn upon, to consider not all types of participants are receptive to thrills and that sudden peaks and unexpectedness allowed for a reaction. caused a reaction a. Similarly, Sloboda was continually referenced throughout many studies, such as Vink’s study to acknowledge for the first time that structural musical patterns were able to arouse different bodily reactions. Hence, the authors locate a gap through exploring the frequency of bodily responses and to what extent are listeners able to control these responses. They explore the paradox through questioning; ‘Can our moods be manipulated by the ‘right’ music or do we actively construct our feelings using music as a kind of tool?’ They acknowledge the limitations of past studies where only singular aspects of experiences are drawn, with the solution of combining psychoacoustic methods to expose the chill reaction. Craig’s recent research supports their paradox, revealing that ‘chills were associated with discrete physiological events’ supporting the nature of inducing stimuli in reporting higher skin conducting levels. Therefore, through conducting auditory samples and questionnaires, significant peaks were aroused from ‘loudness, sharpness, roughness or fluctuations’ that exposed that musical features had relevant capacity of arousing chill structures. This supported Vink’s study, as the authors revealed that reactions did not ‘show a simple stimulus-response pattern’ but rather generated 36% impact of intense emotions within the sympathetic nervous system based on sweating reactions and blood flow. However, this study, along with Panksepp’s and Blood and Zatorre’s research, reiterated that musical preferences and varying levels of musical understanding may also influence the extent of chills, as they are rare peak experiences; hence not easily aroused. Further research can be done on to investigate what factors can intensify or decrease chills, as well as question how different listening situations; such as being separated from surroundings, or social outings contribute to automatic reactions. Levitin and Tirovolas’s study ‘Current advances in the cognitive neuroscience of music’ builds on this article by actively exposing ‘the physical reaction of a chill as a consequence’ through investigating the cognitive implications of music listening. As a result, they add onto Grewe’s discussion in suggesting how pleasurable feelings may lead to positive musical experiences. The authors identified the need to improve current medicinal trends, by looking into drugs that may aid in emotions regulation and improve mood and memory for patients. Thus, it is relevant to state that physiological responses are a strong indicator towards the extent of engagement within music listening.

On the contrary, the arousal of strong emotions may negatively increase stress reactivity and difficulty in regulating emotions. Thoma’s article: ‘Listening to music and physiological and psychological functioning: The mediating role of emotion regulation and stress reactivity’ attempts to contribute to the conversation by asserting the role of habitual listening in benefiting long-term complications within ‘emotion regulation, stress reactivity, as well as physiological and psychological functioning.’ It again follows both Grewe and Vink’s studies on the effects of music, however, maintains a focus on aggression and loneliness, which may intensify and negatively enforce stress-related health outcomes. Mitchell’s study was referred to frequently, to discuss how ‘…specific aspects of music listening behavior… are concerned with pain-related coping’ drawing upon the idea that reasons for listening and the average time spent on listening per day were relevant to improving aspects of quality of life and mental health. This was also suggested by Sloboda and Sarkamo discussing the benefits of music listening that may improve patients after a stroke. Thoma attempts to join the scholarly conversation in exploring long-term mediation from habitual music listening to reduce intense emotions such as aggression or depressive feelings. Moreover, Schellenberg was mentioned towards identifying long-term results of formal music training and cognitive benefits, however, again fails to discuss the implications of these emotional effects on health. By actively conducting their own study, the author bridges the understanding of habitual music listening behavior through assessing how frequently individuals feel intense somatic symptoms. The results revealed that factors including; ‘average duration of music listening, reasons for motivations for listening to music… emotional regulation, stress variables’ identified higher range responses, leading towards further feelings of distress-augmenting regulation. It was also indicated that short, immediate music seemed to have higher stress reactivity and uneasy experiences compared to longer excerpts. Furthermore, it promoted that ‘listening to music in order to reduce… aggression may also experience it more often’ This suggested that the reasons to which individuals choose to listen to music, provide more of a detrimental effect, as Vink suggests because of the sole purpose of arousing or intensifying existing emotional responses. It suggested that the emotions aroused within music listening may be unrelated to the listening itself, but a result of past experiences, and reasons for arousal that can influence the outcome. Nonetheless, Thoma was able to gather a direct association between emotion regulation processes and individual stress reactivity from musical stimuli. Further factors may also be investigated such as physical exercise, diet, and personality, as well as expanding the demographic to other individuals in order to examine the short and long-term implications. Moreover, the article: ‘Young people’s uses of music for well-being’ discuss the influence of music towards modifying adolescents’ emotional well-being. As such, they reference Thoma to assess the influence of music in relevance to ‘relationship building, modifying emotions, modifying cognitions, and emotional immersion’ to apply strategies and improve mental health. Thus, Thoma provides a relevant argument towards mediating strong emotions and investigating factors to improve quality of life.

Throughout various studies, each researcher put forward an application of the emotional effects of music listening, as well as building a greater musical conversation upon the role of music listening in improving one’s emotions. The physiological, cognitive and psychological responses from each author allowed for an in-depth understanding of the immense implications that arise in music listening experiences and regulate emotional responses. Hence, this conversation directly supports my musical practice through combining elements of performance, interpretation, and musical technique in understanding how the output of music may arouse or intensify emotions. The musical phenomenon was useful within my performance practice, where I am able to assess the role of expression and technique from my personal interpretation may evoke contrasting emotions. This has made me more aware upon the details from my performance choices that can have a significant effect on the listener as well as gage an open mind towards altering a piece. The research undertaken by Vink was highly relevant towards my goals as a musical artist as I seek to understand the application of musical features that can stimulate musical responses. As a piano player, it is often easy to forget about the audience and focus on the music, however, the responses generated within the audience are important towards the level of engagement with the musical experience. This is vital towards improving my practice and informing other performance choices. Furthermore, the information gathered relating to chills also fed through my understanding in revealing the extent of psychoacoustical parameters that can impact intense peak experiences; generating a strong bodily reaction. This is important within both the listener and the performer, to proactively seek new ways to communicate the composer’s musical purpose, narrative or perspective. Similarly, the findings on the mediating effects of music proved again how music can be used to monitor and help shape scientific developments of mental health, whilst also promoting habitual music listening to assist with arousing emotional responses. Moving forward, I will continue to generate questions on how individuals are able to change their way of listening and empathetically look at other perspectives to communicate in my performance. Within music listening, I am able to broaden my interpretation from observing other performances of the same piece and how it affects the audience. This conversation generated new questions not just in other units of study, but within the application in real life as music listening remains evident towards improving and being inspired by others. However, within the university’s course, it is helpful towards igniting discussion of how music has evolved and how it may be progressed to improve psychological research. All in all, this study resembles how music is always evolving with the potential to put forward strong impact upon the listener.     

Conclusion

In conclusion, the research on music listening and its impact on emotional responses, psychological well-being, and physiological changes has shed light on the powerful effects of music on individuals. The studies reviewed in this essay, including Vink's article on music and emotion, Grewe's research on chills and strong emotions, and Thoma et al.'s investigation of music's role in stress regulation, have contributed to our understanding of how music can evoke various emotional experiences and influence behavioral tendencies. The authors build on each other's findings and perspectives, providing insights into the different ways music can affect individuals, from the arousal of intense emotions to physiological responses such as changes in heart rate and breathing.

The research discussed in this essay has also highlighted the importance of musical features and interpretation in shaping the emotional impact of music, suggesting that factors such as tempo, mode, familiarity, and complexity can influence listeners' emotional responses. Additionally, the use of technology in studying music's effects on emotion and cognition has opened up new avenues for research and interventions, such as using functional magnetic resonance imaging to understand the neural mechanisms underlying music-induced emotions.

The findings of these studies have implications for music therapy and clinical practices, providing insights into how music can be used as a tool for emotional regulation, stress reduction, and improving psychological well-being. The research also resonates with the author's artistic aims, emphasizing the importance of considering the emotional impact of music in performance and feedback processes. However, while the research on music and emotion has advanced our understanding, there is still much to explore and uncover, and further research is needed to fully comprehend the complexity of the relationship between music and emotions. Overall, the research reviewed in this essay highlights the significance of music listening as a powerful and multifaceted experience that can impact individuals in various ways, from emotional and physiological responses to cognitive and behavioral changes.