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EMOTIONS PLAY A CRUCIAL ROLE IN MUSIC LISTENING and may also have far-reaching implications for listeners' well-being and health. However, it remains a challenge to explain how musical emotions occur. This paper offers a critical review of major theories of emotion causation in psychology with a view to their possible application to music. First, I discuss five theoretical approaches that currently dominate the emotion domain (basic emotion theories, appraisal theories, associative theories, dimensional models, and constructionist theories). I argue that although each approach has merits, none of them offers a satisfactory account of how music induces emotions. Thus, I consider an alternative approach in terms of multiple mechanisms, represented by the currently most frequently adopted music-specific theory: BRECVEMAC. I conclude that although such a theory presents its own unique challenges, it is better able to explain how music becomes an intentional object of emotions. Future directions for research and application of musical emotions are discussed.

Music is heard as expressive. This phenomenon is almost univer­sally acknowledged across the disciplines in writings on music. Indeed, emotional expression is often regarded as central to the purpose and meaning of art, more generally. Yet, the term expressivity has been used in at least three ways (only partially overlapping), which may be a source of confusion. A first sense of term refers to the common observation (and empirical finding) that music is often regarded as expressive of emotions that can be perceived and recognized by listeners. A second use of the term is when people describe music as ‘expressive’ and mean that they are ‘moved’ by the music; that is, that they experience felt emotions. A third sense of the term is more specifically linked to the performance of music. Sometimes, people claim that a performer is ‘playing with great expression’, in which case they seem to be referring to the musical sensitivity of the performer; that he or she knows exactly how to play a given phrase. The present chapter deals with each of these ways of viewing music as expressive. First, I briefly ponder parallels and contrasts between language and music. Although the two domains share some general characteristics, they also differ significantly in ways that can help to explain how musical expression is ‘special’. This discussion paves the way for the following sections, which review empirical studies on how music expresses emotions, induces emotions, and is performed in an expressive manner. Each section outlines theoretical models that may explain the findings. In the final section, I address some unresolved issues in the field. I also return to the issue of how expressivity in music may differ from that in language.

Music is commonly regarded as one of the fine arts, but aesthetic responses to music are still poorly understood. The aim of  this study was thus to shed light on the psychological process through which listeners use subjective and differentially weighted criteria to assign aesthetic value  to pieces of music, with particular focus on judge reliability, consistency, criterion use, self-insight, and impact of expertise. 74 participants varying in musical expertise took part in a study consisting of two parts: In the first part, participants were required to rate the relative importance of ten criteria in their aesthetic judgments of music in general. In the second part, the same participants listened to 50 musical excerpts from 12 different genres and rated them with regard to ten criteria and overall aesthetic value. Individual multiple regression analyses were used to model their judgments. The results revealed that (a) there was a low inter-judge agreement amongst listeners (ICC  = .16), (b) listeners’ judgments were internally consistent, as suggested by multiple correlations (M = .88), (c) listeners tended to use only a few criteria (1-4) in their judgments, (d) most listeners showed poor self-insight with regard to their own judgment strategies (shared variance between subjective and objective measures = 32%), and (e) musical expertise was not significantly correlated with either judge reliability, consistency, criterion use, or self-insight, although the number of criteria the listener used was moderately correlated (r = .33) with the number of years he or she had played a musical instrument.

Performance evaluation is of great importance to the development of musical performance. Yet, we know little about the psychological process that underlies such evaluations. In this essay, I argue that performance evaluation is essentially a form of  aesthetic judgment, and that recent findings from psychological studies of aesthetics may provide valuable insights. First, I present a preliminary model of aesthetic judgment. Then, I outline a methodological paradigm which has proved useful in capturing the judgment process. This is followed by a consideration of ten insights about aesthetic judgment of music from recent studies. Finally, implications for music education are discussed. I ask whether there is such a thing as ‘good’ performance evaluation, and - if so - what this might entail. It is proposed  that evaluation is a skill that can be trained based on feedback from analytic models which make the aesthetic judgment process transparent to musicians and listeners alike.

Emotions have been found to play a paramount role in both everyday music experiences and health applications of music, but the applicability of musical emotions depends on (1) which emotions music can arouse, (2) how it arouses them, and (3) how individual differences may be explained. These questions were addressed in a listening test, where 44 participants (aged 19-66 years) reported both felt emotions and subjective impressions of emotion mechanisms (MecScale), while listening to 72 pieces of music from 12 genres, selected using a Stratified Random Sampling procedure. The results showed that (a) positive emotions (e.g., happiness) were more prevalent than negative emotions (e.g., anger); (b) Rhythmic entrainment was the most and Brain stem reflex the least frequent of the mechanisms featured in the BRECVEMA theory; (c) felt emotions could be accurately predicted based on self-reported mechanisms in multiple regression analyses; (d) self-reported mechanisms predicted felt emotions better than did acoustic features; and (e) individual listeners showed partly different emotion-mechanism links across stimuli, which may help to explain individual differences in emotional responses. Implications for future research and applications of musical emotions are discussed.

Musik förekommer i alla kulturer och väcker starka känslor hos lyssnare. Känslorna berikar människors liv och kan även ha konsekvenser för deras fysiska hälsa. Men att musik väcker känslor har ofta betraktats som ett av livets mysterier som har fascinerat tänkare från Platon och Darwin till moderna hjärnforskare. Författaren presenterar en teori som kan förklara hur musik väcker känslor och argumenterar att det finns en outnyttjad potential när det gäller att tillämpa teorin i syfte att främja hälsa. De flesta studier av musik och hälsa letar efter direkta samband mellan musik och respons, men musikens effekter medieras av en rad mekanismer på olika nivåer i hjärnan, som reagerar på information i musiken, lyssnaren samt situationen. Tidigare musikaliska interventioner har ofta uppvisat inkonsekventa resultat, och författaren föreslår att mer konsekventa effekter skulle kunna uppnås, om praktiker aktivt manipulerade specifika mekanismer i enlighet med teorier.

Music is frequently regarded as a unique way to connect with dementia patients. Yet little is known about how persons with dementia respond emotionally to music. Are their responses different from those of healthy listeners? If so, why? The present study makes a first attempt to tackle these issues in a Portuguese context, with a focus on psychological mechanisms. In Experiment 1, featuring 20 young and healthy adults, we found that musical excerpts which have previously been shown to activate specific emotion induction mechanisms (brain stem reflex, contagion, episodic memory, musical expectancy) in Sweden were valid and yielded predicted emotions also in Portugal, as indexed by self-reported feelings, psychophysiology, and post hoc mechanism indices. In Experiment 2, we used the same stimuli to compare the responses of 20 elderly listeners diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) with those of 20 healthy listeners. We controlled for cognitive functioning (Mini-Mental State Examination) and depression (Geriatric Depression Scale). Our predictions about how mechanisms would be differentially affected by decline in brain regions associated with AD received support in that AD patients reported significantly lower levels of (a) sadness in the contagion condition, (b) happiness and nostalgia in the episodic memory condition, and (c) anxiety in the musical expectancy condition. In contrast, no significant difference in reported surprise was found in the brain stem reflex condition. Implications for musical interventions aimed at dementia are discussed.

I support the MSB framework, but submit that the authors’ predictions lack discriminative power, and that they do not engage sufficiently with the emotion mechanisms that mediate between musical features and social bonding. I elaborate on how various mechanisms may contribute in unique ways to social bonding at various levels to help account for the socio-emotional effects of music.

Emotional expression is crucial for social interaction. Yet researchers disagree about whether nonverbal expressions truly reflect felt emotions and whether they convey discrete emotions to perceivers in everyday life. In the present study, 384 clips of vocal expression recorded in a field setting were rated by the speakers themselves and by naïve listeners with regard to their emotional contents. Results suggested that most expressions in everyday life are reflective of felt emotions in speakers. Seventy-three percent of the voice clips involved moderate to high emotion intensity. Speaker–listener agreement concerning expressed emotions was 5 times higher than would be expected from chance alone, and agreement was significantly higher for voice clips with high emotion intensity than for clips with low intensity. Acoustic analysis of the clips revealed emotion-specific patterns of voice cues. “Mixed emotions” occurred in 41% of the clips. Such expressions were typically interpreted by listeners as conveying one or the other of the two felt emotions. Mixed emotions were rarely recognized as such. The results are discussed regarding their implications for the domain of emotional expression in general, and vocal expression in particular.