Research by Cowen, Keltner, Fang and Sauter indicates that there are 13 consistent emotional responses to music; future research, indicating if these findings can be generalized to experiences beyond hearing music, will be useful.
Researchers “surveyed more than 2,500 people in the United States and China about their emotional responses to…songs from genres including rock, folk, jazz, classical, marching band, experimental and heavy metal. The upshot? The subjective experience of music across cultures can be mapped within at least 13 overarching feelings: amusement, joy, eroticism, beauty, relaxation, sadness, dreaminess, triumph, anxiety, scariness, annoyance, defiance, and feeling pumped up.”
Also, “While both U.S. and Chinese study participants identified similar emotions – such as feeling fear when hearing the ‘Jaws’ movie score – they differed on whether those emotions made them feel good or bad…Across cultures, study participants mostly agreed on general emotional characterizations of musical sounds, such as anger, joy and annoyance. But their opinions varied on the level of ‘arousal,’ which refers in the study to the degree of calmness or stimulation evoked by a piece of music.” This study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Ooh La La! Music evokes at Least 13 motions. Scientists Have Mapped Them.” 2020. Press release (written by Yasmin Anwar), University of California Berkeley, https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/01/06/music-evokes-13-emotions/
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.