In recent scientific papers published in journals Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesresearchers have investigated how music’s structural features and emotional connotations can evoke sensations in different parts of the body, and whether these effects are consistent among individuals from different cultures. We investigated whether or not.
Their findings highlight the subjective nature of music listening, while also demonstrating that there are connections between music and the emotional and physical responses it evokes across cultural boundaries. is also shown.
Research: A cross-cultural bodily map of musical sensation. Image credit: fizkes / Shutterstock
background
Certain universal responses to music emerge early in childhood, such as tapping the foot or nodding the head. Music is known to activate areas of the brain that control sensorimotor responses, even without movement, and alter the autonomic nervous system (ANS) by influencing breathing, heart rate, and body temperature. At the same time, it can induce endocrinological responses, such as altering oxytocin and cortisol levels.
The ubiquitous nature of these responses suggests that music may serve an important but as yet unknown evolutionary function. This hypothesis is strengthened by the observation that music and dance are central to social life in cultures around the world. Although previous research has shown that there are cross-cultural similarities in non-music-related emotions, it has not been investigated whether the physical sensations evoked by music are consistent across cultures. did.
About research
In this study, researchers investigated how the acoustic and emotional features of music evoke different subjective physical sensations. To determine whether these effects were consistent across cultures, the study included both Western participants from Western Europe and the United States and East Asian participants from China.
The music database contained 72 songs, half of which were Western songs and the other half were Chinese songs. The songs were categorized into sad songs, happy songs, gentle songs, aggressive songs, gentle songs, and groovy songs (danceable). Each participant completed his 12 trials. In each one a music clip was played and a black outline of a human body was given. They were asked to mark the part of their body that they felt was stimulated by the music.
Topography of bodily sensations evoked by each song category for Western and East Asian listeners. The map shows regions where activation increased when listening to songs in each category (average of songs within each category, P < 0.05 FDR corrected). The correlation coefficients indicate the correlation between Western and East Asian participants' BSM for each emotion.
The researchers used these numbers to create a sensory map (BSM). These were analyzed to quantify the influence of different musical categories, taking into account the cultural group (Western/East Asian) of the listeners. In another experiment, different sets of participants were asked to rate songs from the same dataset on their likability, familiarity, sadness, happiness, aggression, kindness, groove, and how energy the song made them feel. We asked them to rate their feelings of relaxation, irritability, etc.
Investigation result
Subjective feelings toward music by East Asian and Western participants were highly correlated, suggesting that individuals across the two cultures have consistent emotional experiences. The main difference was in terms of familiarity, with Western participants being more familiar with Western songs than East Asian songs, and vice versa.
BSM findings showed that participants felt the effects of sad and gentle songs in their head and chest regions. Western participants in particular felt the effects of the terrifying songs in their guts. The effects of the danceable, happy songs were felt throughout my body, but mainly concentrated in my hands and feet. Music classified as aggressive was also felt throughout the body, but especially in the head.
The main difference between East Asian and Western participants in BSM was that the former reported more consistent activation of the head, legs, and arms across categories. Participants from Western countries also reported that they felt their chest area was more consistently activated when listening to sad and tender songs.
The similarity matrix showed high levels of correlation and intercorrelation across East Asian and Western participants for BSM and emotional ratings. Remarkably, the same musical characteristics were associated by individuals in both cultures with the dimensions of irritability, aggression, fearfulness, vigor, danceability, tenderness, sadness, and happiness. For example, kindness and sadness were associated with slight harmonic changes, low harshness, and clear keys, while unclear keys and complex rhythms were associated with fearfulness and aggression.
(A) BSM of PC1 (valence) and PC2 (arousal) in Western and East Asian participants (P < 0.05 FDR corrected). (B) PC score for each song.
conclusion
These findings indicate that the emotions and physical sensations that music evokes are consistent across cultures. They also highlight how music can elicit powerful but subjective bodily sensations that are closely related to emotional and auditory experiences.
The authors note that their study is limited by focusing only on two distant (but not isolated) cultures and therefore cannot capture other culture-dependent variations. are doing. Future research could add to this body of knowledge by considering several cultural groups and examining how their responses differ from each other along the distance continuum. Another fundamental limitation is that the information about bodily sensations is self-reported. Future research in this area may also collect data on physiological changes.