Music creates universal emotions

The influence of music on us humans has been studied before. It creates feelings and associations. You can also see that music activates the emotional part of the brain.

In a new study from Berkeley University, researchers have now studied how music can be experienced by listeners and whether these experiences are general. The researchers also wanted to see what influence cultural belonging can have in the experience of the emotions that a particular music gives.

"Subjective experiences of music have been investigated in a very thorough way with large groups of subjects from both the US and China," says Fredrik Ullén, who himself researches questions about music and the brain at the Karolinska Institute.

In the new study, there were 2,777 people from both the US and China who listened to more than 2000 different music songs. The selected music notes were chosen based on both modern and classical Western, respectively traditional Chinese music. The people then had to classify what feelings they experienced from the music. They could also tell if they perceived the music as positive or negative and if it had high or low energy levels.

- The results are very rich, but one main finding is that you present evidence that musical experiences are much richer than what has often been taken into account in previous studies. A common approach is to estimate emotion responses in a two-dimensional diagram where the axes correspond to positive or negative emotion, as well as "arousal" (energy level), says Fredrik Ullén.

In this way, much of the research so far has failed to chart how certain music can create more precise emotional effects, says Fredrik Ullén.

The new research shows that there are at least 13 independent dimensions of musical emotional experiences. The dimensions correspond to roughly adjectives that the researchers in English named "amusing", "annoying", "calm", "dreamy", "erotic / desirous", "scary" / fearful, "(scary) and" triumphant / heroic ".

- In addition, these different basic dimensions can be mixed into a certain music experience. So it is not about distinct either / or categories. So the new research shows that music experiences are emotionally incredibly multifaceted and nuanced, explains Fredrik Ullén.

- In a way, I think this is pretty obvious for all music lovers. But it is neat that it is scientifically displayed, says Fredrik Ullén.

The study is published in the journal Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences.