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Giornata di studio sulle Emozioni 19 Novembre 2007, Facoltà di Psicologia, Università di Padova 1 ___________________________ Subtle emotional …. (esempio di paper ) per il CD Vanda L. Zammuner a and Elisabetta Petitbon a Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, Padua University, Padua, Italy, e­mail: [email protected] The study tested the hypothesis that people’s emotion knowledge enables them to recognize subtle differences in the emotional quality expressed by a musical piece, and thus to distinguish Tendenerness (T) from Sadness (S), and both from Other emotions (O), such as Joy or Fear. To test the hypothesis, we designed an experiment in which subjects (N=24, half of whom musicians) expressed their perception, while listening to the music, at two points in time for each piece, i.e., at 40sec and at 80 sec. Their latency in response time (reaction time, RT), as well as their verbal rating on a 7­ point T­0­S Likert­type scale, were recorded. Experimental stimuli were 40 classical music pieces, for orchestra or solo instruments (e.g., piano; violin and piano), each lasting 85 seconds, selected from XVII­XX century repertoire, by several authors (Fauré, Grieg, Beethoven, Chopin, etc.) that contained the structures characterizing (Sloboda & Juslin 2001) either S or T (e.g., Slow tempo for both; Soft timbre for T; Dull timbre for S), or structures expressive of O. Pieces either expressed a single emotional quality, namely T­T, S­S, O­O, or changed it midway, i.e. had the sequence T­S, T­O, and S­O. 28 new stimuli were created, by reversing original sequences, to obtain S­T (N=20), O­T (N =4), and O­S (N=4) sequences, none of which was exhibited by the original pieces. The final stimuli therefore comprised 68 musical pieces, subdivided in 9 Types as a function of what emotion the piece expressed at 40'' and 85''. The results overall confirmed the hypothesis, but also showed that perception is influenced by such variables as musical expertise, and 'location' of an emotional quality within a musical piece (e.g., Tenderness is most easily perceived in single­emotion pieces, and least distinguished from Sadness when it follows it rather than preceding it). The most general hypothesis of this study, coherently with results reported in the literature (e.g., Gabrielsson & Juslin, 2003) is that emotion knowledge does includes the ability to recognize different emotions that might be expressed by a musical piece. Emotions and music are phenomena that seem to share a number of features ­ possibly testifing their functional importance. For instance, both are universal, that is, are present in very different cultures, from the pre­literate ones to our 'advanced' one; emotions and vocal­musical expression of some sort characterize mammals, humans included, although in different forms (e.g., consider facial and acoustic expressions/signals of anger, or of distress or sorrow; see e.g., Gabrielsson & Juslin, 2003; Scherer, Johnstone, & Klasmeyer, 2003). According to a viewpoint expressed both by lay people and scientists, the relationship between emotions and music is so intimate that music "is the expression of emotions" (Cooke, 1959), "is the language of passion" (Benestad, 1978), and "can reveal the nature of feelings with a detail and truth that language cannot apporoach" (Langer, 1957, 235; all three quotes are taken from Gabrielsson & Juslin, 2003). If this relationship is indeed so strong, then we have one reason more to expect that people ­ leaving for a moment cultural and personal variables aside ­ have no difficulty recognizing whatever emotion is expressed by a musical piece. We should consider, furthermore, that musical expressiveness can count on a wide range of dynamic factors to convey its emotional point
Emotional competence and the perception of emotions in music The focus of this study is on the extent to which people are able to recognize the emotional quality of a musical piece. A relevant assumption here is that people have a rich emotion knowledge, mostly developed during their life course, that enables them to understand, as well as to manage, their transactions with the world as regards emotional aspects of such transactions (e.g., Zammuner 2000). Emotion knowledge is likely to be extensive because emotional experiences pervade our entire life, both directly and indirectly. The occasions to learn about emotion(s) are countless, based both on our own experiences, and on others’; e.g., when we observe how, when and why others (even fictitious ones, as in movies) experience emotions. Moreover, we are motivated to become emotionally competent, that is, to learn as much as possible in this domain (revising our knowledge if necessary) because emotional incompetence is likely to make us feel bad, or result in social rejection and loneliness, greater stress, and so forth [e.g., Saarni 1990]. Emotion knowledge includes knowledge about different aspects pertaining to emotions, such as, what events trigger this or that emotion, and what emotions are expressed by different facial expressions, or by different words, or by a certain posture (see, for instance, Lewis and Haviland 2003). 1 Giornata di studio sulle Emozioni 19 Novembre 2007, Facoltà di Psicologia, Università di Padova 2 ___________________________ (Stern, 1985), such as mode, tempo, tone, melodic direction, rhythm, armony, and pitch level (e.g., Hevner, 1936; Batel, 1976). For instance, minor mode is typically associated with low­arousal emotions such as sadness or yearning, whereas major mode is associated with pleasant, high­ arousal emotions such as cheerfulness and joy (for a review, see Gabrielsson & Juslin, 2003). Finally, music can convey much better than other expressive modes the dynamic, non­static nature of emotions themselves, and their evolution and changes in time as regards their intensity peaks and fluctuations, their strenght, their duration and so forth. Music can certainly convey not only the dynamic force of the emotional life, as suggested by Susanne Langer (1951, 202), but also express, we believe, specific emotions. Whatever the way by which music elicits emotions (and it does, as suggested by hundreds of successful mood­induction experiments; for a review see Vastfjall 2003), or whatever the emotions that a composer wanted his/her music to express, or a performer musician attempted to convey, music qualifies as an optimal emotional medium. As early as the thirties of the last century, and shortly afterwards, several researchers, including Gundlach (1935), Hapton (1945), Capurso (1952), and Sopchak (1955) studied the perception of emotions by having subjects listen to a music piece and then choose a descriptive term from a list. The results of these studies, and of similar ones that were carried out later (see Gabrielsson & Juslin, 2003), showed that a variety of emotions, including pleasant ones such as happy or glad, unpleasant ones, such as sadness, and high­ and low­arausal ones, such as angry and relaxing, were 'recognized' by most subjects. Research on emotions in music has never stopped, but it has boomed in the last few decades, characterized by a variety of methods and measurement options, including checklists, ordering in pairs, questionnaires, and physiological measures such as electroencephalogram, and electrocardiogram. The most recent conceptual and measurement advancement is the emphasis on the need for continuous recording of emotion perception. A few researchers have contributed much to this aim, for instance with the creation of the “Tensiotong”, by Nielsen (1983), that allows continuous measurement of perceived tension in music, or the of computer programs, such as the Continuous Response Digital Interface” (CRDI), used by Madsen e Fredrickson (1993) to measure the perceived tension, or, finally, the Two­dimensional emotion­space (2DES) by Schubert (1996) that allows continuous recording of emotion perception along both the dimensions of Valence (hedonic dimension) and Arousal. The most recent studies (see also Sloboda, Juslin, 2001) altogether confirm that 'basic' emotional qualities (e.g., sadness, joy) expressed in a music are readily perceived, whereas appreciation of emotional 'nuances' (e.g., yearning, calm, sorrow, tenderness) is less frequent, more troublesome, and seems to vary much as a function of, among others, selection of music subjects listen to, musical expertise, and response method. The study. The specific hypothesis tested in this study was that people are able to make fine discriminations of emotional qualities in music, and, more specifically, are able to distinguish sadness, a so­called 'basic' emotion, from tenderness, an emotion that is often described as a 'blended' or 'complex' emotion, and not as a 'basic' one. Both emotions are quite frequently experienced, directly or indirectly, in daily life: sadness, a dysphoric emotion, is typically associated with subjectively unpleasant events, whereas tenderness, a pleasant emotion, is likely to be felt mostly in association with people or 'objects' that move us, touch our sensitivity, our social bonds. Both emotions are very important for us at the social and personal level ­ just imagine what would happen if someone were not able to experience them, in fit circumstances, or to recognize them in others. A peculiar feature of sadness and tenderness as they are expressed in music is that they share most of their characterizing structures (see the Method section), a fact that might explain why people might find it difficult to discriminate among them, as indeed was found by Laukka & Gabrielsson (2000). However, how emotion perception is tested does matter, as suggested by recent developments in emotion­and­music research. We therefore used an experimental design, and an assessment method, whose features altogether could allow us to overcome past failures in support of the hypothesis that people are able to detect nuanced emotional qualities in music. More specifically, the study: (a) used a large set of carefully selected experimental stimuli, (b) employed a fine and robust measure, that is, latency in response time (reaction time, RT), a novel measure in this kind of experiment, as well as the more usual ratings on a Likert­type scale, (c) had subjects record their peception while listening to music, at two points in time for each musical piece, that is, using (a somewhat rough version of) continuous recording, (d) tested the effects of musical expertise (experts were expected to report more accurate perceptions than non­experts), (e) assessed the effects of emotional­quality changes within the musical piece (vs. single­emotion pieces, expected to elicit more accurate perception), (f) assessed the effects of direction changes (e.g., from sadness to tenderness, or vice versa ), and, finally, (g) assessed the effects of changes in main musical structures (e.g., from joy or fear to sadness, vs. from tenderness to sadness). The next section describes the method in greater detail.
2 Giornata di studio sulle Emozioni 19 Novembre 2007, Facoltà di Psicologia, Università di Padova 3 ___________________________ Figur e 1. Spectre examples of the original (1a) and modified version (1b) of a selected music piece ­ from "Pavane pour orchestre" (Romances sans paroles, Op. 17) by G. Fauré. In 1a Tenderness is expressed in the beginning part, from 0'' to 40'', whereas Sadness is expressed in the second half of the piece, from 40'' to 85''. In the modified version in 1b, Sadness is expressed in the first half, and Tenderness in the last part of the listening period, from 40'' to 85''. Method Experimental stimuli. According to a review by Sloboda & Juslin (2001) of the determinants of perceived emotional quality, Sadness and (…) Dull timbre, Flat microintonation, and, for string and wind instruments, Slow and intense vibrato. As experimental stimuli we i selected, from XVII to XX century classical repertoire, 40 music pieces, each lasting 85 seconds; of these, 18 were for orchestra, 11 for piano, 4 for violin and piano, and the remaining ones for other instruments (e.g., violin and orchestra). A first selection criterion was that they contained the above listed structures characterizing either Sadness and Tenderness (36 pieces in total ii , including pieces by Fauré, Grieg, Ginastera, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Debussy, Villa Lobos, Sibelius, Ravel, Handel, W. Bird, Saint­Saens, and Telemann), or different structures, that is, structures expressing an Other emotion, such as Joy or Fear (4 pieces, by Grieg, Vivaldi, Mozart, and Paganini). An additional selection criterion was that the emotional­quality expressed by a piece would change midway. In 28 out of 40 selected pieces, changes occurred in one of 3 directions, namely: (a) from Tenderness to Sadness (T­S), and (b) from Tenderness or Sadness to an emotion that was neither Tenderness or Sadness (T­O, S­O). Changes not occuring in the original pieces were (…) n in Table 1. TENDERNES S 0" T 4.29 T 4.19 20 2 T 3.20 S 3.72 4 3 T 4.40 O 3.20 4 4 O 3.61 O 3.44 4 M 5 O 3.67 T 3.19 4 M 6 O 3.84 S 3.69 4 7 S 5.71 S 5.82 20 8 S 4.36 T 4.08 4 9 S 4.66 O 3.69 M 0" Type E 40' ' Rating E 85' ' Rating 1 85" experimental stimuli were pre­tested with 8 experts ­ musicians enrolled at the 8 th year of piano at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi (Milano, I) ­ who listened to them in a mp3 format from a stereo CD equipment and judged them using a 7­point bipolar Likert scale, with the extremes labeled Tenderness (left) and Sadness (right) ­ the ascending values 1, 2, 3 followed, left and right, an intermediate zero. Experts gave 2 paper­and­pencil ratings of each piece, at 40'', and at 80'' (i.e., while the music was still on for another 5"). Their ratings confirmed the SA DN ES S 4 40" SADN ESS Pre­Test of experimental stimuli. The 68 Table 1. The 68 musical stimuli categorized into 9 Types, as a function of the Expressed emotion E at 40'' and at 85'': T: Tenderness; S: Sadness; O: Other Emotion (e.g., Joy or Fear), and their mean Rating on a 1­7 scale (1=T, 4=O, 7=S). M : modified sequence) N 1a. Or iginal partial trace 1b.Modi fie dpar tia ltrac e 40" TE ND ER NES S 85"
presence of Sadness, Tenderness, and Other Emotion in the 68 pieces as hypothesized according to Table 1 categorization. Subjects, Experimental design, and Procedure. Subjects were 24 university students, 12 musicians and 12 non­musicians, whith a mean age of 26.2 years (range: 20­30). The experiment that took part in a laboratory room iii , began by asking subjects to fill in a questionnaire about their musical habits and preferences (e.g., How often do you listen to music? 0­4, Never­All the time; With whom …?; How much do you like each of the following (…) whose emotional quality at 80" did not change from that expressed at 40"), whereas 28 differed between the groups but were expected to be equivalent in expressed emotional quality. 3 Giornata di studio sulle Emozioni 19 Novembre 2007, Facoltà di Psicologia, Università di Padova 4 ___________________________ P. N. (2001). Music and Emotion: Theory and research. New York: Oxford University Press. Gabrielsson, A. and Juslin, P.N. (2003). Emotional Expression in Music, in R.J. Davidson, H.H. Goldsmith and K.R. Scherer (eds) Handbook of Affective Sciences, pp. 503­ 534. New York: Oxford University Press. Langer, S. (1951). Philosophy in a new Key (2nd ed.). New York: New American Library. Laukka, P., Gabrielsson, A. (2000). “Emotional expression in drumming performance”. Psychology of Music, 28(2), 181­ 189. Madesen, C. K., Fredrikson, W. E. (1993). The experience of music tension. A replication of Nielsen’s research using the Continuous Response Digital Interface. Journal of Music Therapy, 30, pp. 46­63. Russell, J. A. (1980). A circumplex model of affect. Journal of Personalità and Social Psychology, 37, pp. 345­356. (…) Zammuner, V. L. (1996). Le Emozioni, in Arcuri, L. Manuale di Psicologia Sociale, Il Mulino, Bologna, Cap. 5, pp. 161­195. Zentner, M. R., Meylan,S., Scherer, K. R. (2000). Exploring musical emotions across five genres of music. Intervento presentato al 6 th Results Subjects' ratings at 40'' and at 85'' (see Table 1 for a summary), and related reaction times, were analyzed in several repeated measures analysis of variance. A first inspection of the results showed that although individual ratings spanned the entire scale, subjects mostly avoided the extremes: mean minimum recoded ratings, ranged from 2.17 to 2.92, and were obtained at 40" for stimuli expressing Tenderness (e.g., such as 7­17, 2­12, 3­ 13, 10­20, Type 2). Mean maximum ratings, from 5.79 to 6.29 were instead obtained for stimuli (e.g., 45 and 46) expressing Sadness at both 40" and 80" (Type 7). Average reaction times (RT) to individual stimuli ranged from 933 msec, for piece 51 at 40" (Type 4), expressing Other emotion, to 1813 msec, for piece 11 at 80" (Type 2), expressing Sadness. A first set of analyses showed that subject Groups ­who often judged equivalent stimuli ­ did not typically differ significantly neither in their ratings, nor in their reaction times RT, as exemplified by Figure 2 that shows how the two groups judged pieces categorized as Types.1, 4, and 7. In subsequent analyses thus Group was not included as an experimental variable. The analysis of all musical piece ratings at 40'' and 80”, that is, of what emotion was expressed in a piece, either in the beginning or the actually on average obtained.lower ratings than the former. Position of the expressed emotional quality within the piece was however a crucial variable in many cases, the most notable being related to Tenderness: it was perceived as such most clearly when it appeared at the beginning of a musical piece that then changed into Sadness (see Table 1). As regards the effect of musical expertise, results were varied but overall confirmed the hypothesis that musicians are better able to discriminate subtle emotional quality than non­musicians. In particular, musicians did perceive Tenderness more accurately than non­musicians (Emotional quality by Expertise, when comparing all Tenderness with all Other emotion pieces (F (1,22) = 4.28, p. .05). In sum, the obtanined results – of which here we report only some of the main ones ­ confirmed our hypothesis that people are able to make subtle music discriminations. International Conference of the society for Music Perception and Cognition (ICMPC). Agosto 5­ 10, 2000, Keele, UK. NOTES i All stimuli were selected, and modified, by E. Petitbon, who has had an extensive musical education. ii None of the pieces included either the structureFinal ritardandobecause none was selected from the end part of a composition, nor Slow and intense vibrato, typical of string and wind instruments.In sum, in theselected pieces 2 out of 9 structural characteristics could differentiate Sadness from Tenderness) iii We wish to thank Sandro Bettella, of the Depatment of General Psychology, for his kind help in preparing th
Refer ences Ekman, P. (1992). An argument for basic emotions. Cognition and Emotion, 6, pp.169­ 200. Gabrielsson, A. (2001). Emotions in strong experiences with music. In Sloboda, J. A., Juslin, 4