Music is in the Muscle
M usic I s
M uscle : H ow E mbodied C ognition M ay
I nfluence M usic P references
in the
P eter S edlmeier and O liver W eigelt
Chemnitz University of Technology, Chemnitz, Germany
E va W alther
University of Trier, Trier, Germany
music is intimately connected with body movements. Until recently, research has almost exclusively
examined the impact of music on body movements. Yet
findings on embodied cognition in other domains suggest that the influence might also work in the opposite
direction: Real or imagined body movements during
music listening may codetermine music preferences. We
had participants listen to music and concurrently activate muscles whose innervation has been shown to be
associated with “positive” and “negative” affect (activation vs. inhibition of smiling muscles, vertical vs. horizontal head movements, and arm flexion vs. arm
extension). Activation of the positively associated muscle groups led to higher preference ratings for the music
pieces than activation of the negatively associated ones.
A first exploration of candidate explanations for the
effect suggests that it is most likely due to conditioning
processes. It is concluded that body movements, both
real and imagined, may play an important role in the
development of music preferences.
Received January 12, 2010, accepted June 22, 2010.
Key words: music preference, embodiment, body
movement, conditioning, dance
W
hy do we prefer one piece of music over
another? This simple question has a surprisingly complex answer that as yet seems to be
far from complete. Among the factors that influence
whether we like a given piece of music are personality
(Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003), social issues (Hargreaves &
North, 1997), culture (McDermott & Hauser, 2005),
physiological arousal (Blood & Zatorre, 2001; McNamara
& Ballard, 1999; Salimpoor, Benovoy, Longo, Cooperstock, & Zatorre, 2009), and the individual benefit of
Music Perception volume 28,
issue
3,
297
pp .
297–305,
issn
0730-7829,
listening to music (Schäfer & Sedlmeier, 2009, in press).
In addition, the characteristics of the music itself, such as
tempo, pitch, rhythm, complexity, familiarity, and consonance, also codetermine our liking of a given piece of
music (Finnäs, 1989; Trainor, Clark, Huntley, & Adams,
1997; Trehub, 2003; Trehub, Schellenberg, & Hill, 1997).
Interestingly, the potential influence on musical preferences of one kind of behavior often connected with the
listening to music—body movements—has so far been
largely neglected. Although the ancient origin of the
term music implies a unity of melody and dance, and
although in indigenous cultures music and body movements are often intimately connected, contemporary psychology of music has been concerned almost exclusively
with the mind behind musical experiences (DogantanDack, 2006). In fact, in all known cultures, people move
their bodies to the rhythms of music in a variety of ways,
such as drumming, plucking, tapping, or performing
other kinds of rhythmic movements (Wallin, Merker, &
Brown, 2000). This strong connection between music
and body movements can be observed even in young
children (Kirschner & Tomasello, 2009; Scott & Panksepp, 2003). If music and movement are so intimately
connected, this should not be a one-way issue—how we
move might indeed influence what we hear. This is what
Phillips-Silver and Trainor (2005, 2007) recently found:
The movements of both infants and adults (in either a
march-like or a waltz-like rhythm) influenced the listeners’ auditory perception. In particular, in a test phase,
infants listened longer to the rhythm to which they were
bounced in a training phase, which might be interpreted
as an increased liking of that kind of rhythm (PhillipsSilver & Trainor, 2005). Adult participants (PhillipsSilver & Trainor, 2007) were trained to bend at the knees
according to either a duple (march-like) or a triple
(waltz-like) rhythm, although the auditory stimulus was
identical in the two conditions. Subsequently, they had
to listen to both a duple and a triple test stimulus and
choose which one was closer to the music they had heard
during training. Choices were strongly biased by the
movements performed during training.
These studies have shown that body movements can
focus our attention on specific aspects of music such as
electronic issn
1533-8312 © 2011
by the regents of the university of california . all
rights reserved . please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the university of california press ’ s
rights and permissions website , http :// www . ucpressjournals . com / reprintinfo . asp .
MP2803_05.indd 297
DOI:10.1525/mp .2011.28.3.297
1/6/11 4:30:33 PM
298
Peter Sedlmeier, Oliver Weigelt, & Eva Walther
rhythm, but can they also sculpt our music preferences?
Why should this be the case? A fast growing number of
studies have indicated that bodily states, both real and
imagined, can influence cognitive states (Barsalou, 2008).
There are several theories about such an “embodied cognition” but the general underlying idea is that cognition
relies heavily on bodily states (or the brain’s modalityspecific systems); that is, cognitions are grounded in
their physical context (e.g., Niedenthal, Barsalou,
Winkielman, Krauth-Gruber, & Ric, 2005). According to
Barsalou, Niedenthal, Barbey, and Ruppert (2003),
embodiments become established in memory as parts of
representations of familiar situations, such as the
sequence of receiving a gift, feeling positive affect, and
smiling. When only part of this situation occurs (e.g.,
smiling), the remainder of the situational pattern is activated (e.g., positive affect). In line with this argument,
one might expect that if body movements (actual or
imagined) that are usually associated with positive affect
are performed when listening to a given kind of music,
a preference for that kind of music might develop. Such
an effect might be especially strong with music because
of its hypothesized origins as “the rhythmic movements
of our instinctual/emotional motor apparatus, that were
evolutionarily designed to index whether certain states
of being were likely to promote or hinder our well-being”
(Panksepp & Bernatzky, 2002, p. 134). Recent evidence
for the claim that movements might have been especially
good indicators of fitness and therefore of high adaptive
value comes from a study by Brown et al. (2005), who
found that dance movements may reveal information
about the degree of bodily symmetry, which indicates
developmental stability.
Although to the best of our knowledge, the relationship between bodily states and music preference has not
yet been examined, the connection between bodily states
and emotional states during music listening (which might
influence preferences, see Schäfer & Sedlmeier, in press)
has already received some attention. For instance, Dibben
(2004) found that physiological arousal induced by bodily
exercise prior to music listening can intensify emotions.
It has also been found that singing, which can be seen as
a rudimentary form of body movement, has more positive effects on emotional states than mere listening to the
same music (Kreutz, Bongard, Rohrmann, Hodapp, &
Grebe, 2004). Moreover, in a recent study, Murcia, Bongard, and Kreutz (2009) showed that dancing with a
partner (tango argentino), which includes body movements and additional muscle innervations to hold and
lead the partner, yielded more positive emotional
responses compared to only listening to music, moving
without music, or dancing without a partner. It is an
MP2803_05.indd 298
open question, though, whether these more positive
emotional states might also have led to higher preferences for the respective music.
There is, however, ample evidence that body movements or muscle innervations can systematically induce
positive as well as negative attitudes toward objects and
therefore modify preference judgments in general. For
instance, participants who performed a positively associated head movement (nodding) evaluated the editorial
content of a simulated radio broadcast more positively
than those who performed a negatively associated headshaking movement (Wells & Petty, 1980). In another
demonstration of the effect, participants who activated
the muscles typically associated with smiling, by holding
a pen with their front teeth, judged cartoons to be more
humorous than participants whose smiling muscles were
inhibited by holding a pen with their lips (Strack, Martin,
& Stepper, 1988). Comparable results were obtained with
“positive” and “negative” arm movements; that is, flexion
(an approaching movement) versus extension (a pushing-away movement) on attitudes toward Chinese ideographs (e.g., Cacioppo, Priester, & Berntson, 1993).
Outside music psychology, the effect of body movements on attitudes is firmly established, although the
exact mechanisms that induce changes in attitudes
remain somewhat unclear and might also depend on the
specific kind of body movement. One of these mechanisms, as, for instance, postulated by Tom, Pettersen,
Lau, Burton, and Cook (1991), refers to conditioning
processes via emotions or affect: head movements, for
instance, might induce positive or negative affective
states that become associated with preferences. Such
conditioning processes might work best with neutral
(Cacioppo et al., 1993) or novel stimuli (Priester,
Cacioppo, & Petty, 1996) but in general, “positive” body
movements should increase preferences and “negative”
body movements should decrease them.
Another mechanism, termed self-validation (Briñol &
Petty, 2003), refers to the consistency between one’s attitudes and body movements. If, for instance, one’s
thoughts are primarily positive, the positiveness should
be enhanced by nodding and reduced by shaking one’s
head. However, if the thoughts are primarily unfavorable,
increasing confidence induced by a positive head movement should make thoughts even more unfavorable than
shaking one’s head. So far, this explanation does not seem
to have been applied to preference judgments but one
possible extension of the model would be that “positive
movements,” signaling validation, might increase the
intensity of both positive and negative preferences,
whereas “negative movements,” signaling invalidation,
might decrease preferences toward a neutral evaluation.
1/6/11 4:30:34 PM
Music is in the Muscle
Förster (2004) postulated that a third mechanism,
conceptual-motor compatibility, could induce a change
in attitude. He suggested the existence of learned associations between positive (approach reactions) and negative
(avoidance reactions) body movements and positive and
negative information. Förster’s conceptual-motor compatibility model predicts, for instance, that nodding
should increase positive evaluations for positive objects
and that shaking one’s head should make negative evaluations even less favorable. If, however, motor behavior
and evaluation are not compatible (e.g., positive motor
behavior but negative or neutral evaluation) no effect is
expected.
To date, to the best of our knowledge, the hypothesis
that body movements during music listening might have
an effect on the preference for that music has not yet been
examined. Therefore, our study has a more exploratory
character. We wanted to find out whether participants’
music preferences were influenced by having them perform “positive” and “negative” motor behaviors during
music listening. In addition, we intended to give a tentative
answer to the question of how such an effect, if it exists,
can best be explained. What should one expect for a given
piece of music? According to the “conditioning explanation,” positive motor behavior should increase preferences
and negative motor behavior should decrease them,
largely independently of the a priori preference for that
piece of music.1 Following the (extended) self-validation
hypothesis, positive motor behavior should lead to more
positive evaluations if a piece of music is judged positively
a priori and to more negative evaluations of already negatively judged music, whereas negative motor behavior
should make judgments more neutral in both cases. And
finally, according to the conceptual-motor compatibility
model, one should expect an increase in preference for an
already liked piece of music if the listening to that music
is accompanied by positive motor behavior, and a decrease
in preference for an already disliked piece of music if it is
associated with a negative motor behavior; in the two
other combinations of motor behavior and a priori preference, nothing is expected to happen. As this study is of an
exploratory nature, we did not concentrate on only one
kind of bodily movement but included three kinds that
seem to have been studied most extensively. These have
also have been described above: nodding vs. head shaking, activation vs. inhibition of smiling muscles, and arm
1
For this and the other hypothesis, “a priori preference” means a
spontaneous preference for an unknown piece of music. If preferences
are based on extensive listening experience, one probably cannot
expect much impact of motor behavior or any other potential impact
factors (see also Discussion).
MP2803_05.indd 299
299
flexion vs. arm tension. Our main aim was to find out
whether motor behavior can have an impact on music
preferences. Moreover, if such an effect could be found,
we looked for preliminary evidence that would support
one of the three explanatory approaches discussed above
that might be responsible for it.
Method
Participants
Ninety-six students (82 females) from the Chemnitz
University of Technology participated for course credit.
Five of the participants were excluded from further analysis because they indicated that they had been aware of
the experimental manipulation and one participant did
not comply with the experimental procedure. All the
analyses are based on the remaining 90 participants (77
females).
Materials
Because the conditioning explanation outlined above
might be hard to examine otherwise, we looked for “neutral” and little-known music but also for some variation
among the pieces. We decided to use three pieces that
had been judged neutral in an earlier study (StrahijaProsche, 2005). These were two pieces of French
baroque music (Marais, Sainte-Colombe, The Greatest
Masterworks: Spectre de la Rose, Naxos)—a moderately
fast one (“Le Labyrinthe”) and a slow one (“La Rêveuse”),
and a lively Latin American piece (“Encuentros,” Libertad
para mi pueblo. . . , Jark’ay, Bolivia). The three pieces
were transformed into mp3 files to be used on a computer and they were all faded out after 3 min 24 s for easy
permutation through conditions.2
Design
Three kinds of body movements were used in the experiment, always in their “positive” and “negative” versions:
(a) activation of the “smiling muscles” or inhibition of
that activation (by holding a pen between the front teeth
or with the lips only, respectively), (b) performance of
vertical or horizontal head movements (nodding or shaking the head), and (c) flexion or extension of the arms
(by exerting hand pressure on a table top from either
below or above). All participants performed all three
kinds of movements but half of them only in the positive
and the other half only in the negative version. This was
done to minimize demand effects. If participants had to
2
After comparing the three pieces, it turned out that all three of
them could be conveniently cut around this time without interrupting
a musical phrase.
1/6/11 4:30:35 PM
300
Peter Sedlmeier, Oliver Weigelt, & Eva Walther
perform different movements using similar collections
of muscles, they might infer that their corresponding
judgments also should differ. The order of body movements and their pairing with the three pieces of music
were completely counterbalanced using a Latin square
design. The experimental procedure was controlled by a
computer program written with the software Authorware
7 (Authorware 7.0 Win Commercial, 2003).
To measure the degree of music preference, six Likerttype 10-point scales were used to improve the reliability
of the measurement. The questions were (in German)
“Would you like to listen to this piece of music again?”
“Would you remove this piece of music if you had it on
cassette?” “How did you like this piece of music?” “Would
you want to have a CD copy of this piece of music?”
“Would you recommend this piece of music to somebody else?” and “Would you like to take this piece of
music with you if the experimenter did not need it any
longer?” The endpoints of the scales were labeled not at
all and I would love to, for questions 1 and 6, very much
and not at all, for question 3, and very likely and very
unlikely for the other questions. The mean value of the
six items (after correction for the “direction” of the question) was used as the main dependent variable.
Procedure
Upon arrival, participants were told that this was an
experiment about “body movement and music.” They
were each seated in front of a Windows PC in a separate
cubicle and told to follow the instructions that would be
displayed on the computer screen. Then they were asked
to put on stereo headphones (Sennheiser HL 270)
through which the music would be played for them.
They learned (from the text displayed on the computer
screen) that the study was about the impact of muscle
innervations on reasoning and judgments elicited by different kinds of auditory material (for a similar instruction, see Cacioppo et al., 1993). On a subsequent screen
they read that they had randomly been chosen to listen
to three pieces of music (instead of other kinds of auditory material) and that they would later be asked to make
judgments about these pieces of music.
Thereafter, the procedure differed according to the
condition participants were randomly assigned to. Due
to the Latin square design, we had six possible sequences
of body movements, in both the “positive” and the “negative” condition. For instance, in one of the “positive”
conditions, participants first were instructed to take the
pen that lay in front of them, clean it with a tissue (which
was replaced after every participant), and hold it between
the front teeth without touching it with the lips. Then
they were told that after they pressed the “Enter” key, a
MP2803_05.indd 300
piece of music would start and that they should keep the
current position (pen between teeth) until the music
ended. After the music ended, participants were asked to
resume their normal position and answer some questions about “Piece 1” on a questionnaire that lay on the
table next to the computer. This procedure was repeated
twice with the other two “positive” kinds of movement
during listening to music; that is, continuously moving
the head vertically about once per second, and placing
the palm of the left hand on the bottom of the table in
front of them and lifting lightly so that they felt a slight
tension in their arm and maintaining this tension. In the
corresponding “negative” condition, participants were
told first to hold a pen with their lips (thereby inhibiting
their smiling muscles). Then they were asked to “shake
their heads,” and finally, they were told to place the palm
of the left hand on the upper side of the table in front of
them, press lightly, and maintain that pressure.
In addition, participants were asked what their dominant hand was, and some questions about their musicality (member of a choir? play an instrument?). They were
also asked to indicate their general music preferences for
several musical genres, including classical music, on
Likert-type scales. The latter was done because two of
the pieces used could be classified as classical music. The
results of this question were later used to examine the
validity of the three theoretical approaches. At the end
of the session, participants had to indicate whether they
experienced any problems in performing the required
body movements and what they thought the experiment
was really about. After that they were informed about the
true purpose of the study and dismissed.
Results
Preliminary Analysis
As expected, none of the pieces of music were known. The
six items used to measure preference for the experimental
pieces were subjected to a reliability analysis and yielded
a Cronbach’s alpha of .93. Therefore, in the following, all
analyses are based on the means of the six items. An
inspection of the data revealed a substantial correlation
between participants’ preference for classical music and
their combined preference ratings for the three current
pieces, r = .50; t(88) = 6.53, p = 2*10–9; that is, participants
who liked classical music tended to give higher preference
ratings for the music in the current experiment. Therefore,
in all following analyses involving the comparison of
groups, we calculated analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs)
instead of analyses of variance (ANOVAs) with preference
for classical music as a covariate. All means reported are
1/6/11 4:30:36 PM
Music is in the Muscle
301
adjusted means with the impact of liking of classical music
removed. The three pieces of music received different
mean ratings (“Encuentros”: 5.47, “Le Labyrinthe”: 4.73,
and “La Rêveuse”: 3.96), F(2, 176) = 5.03, p = .007, but
neither the type of music nor the order of presentation
(first, second, or third piece) interacted with the mean
preference ratings in the positive and negative conditions, both Fs (2, 174) < 1. Only 2 of the 90 participants
were left-handed but they did not deviate from the others
in any systematic way. Musical expertise did not influence
ratings.3
“Positive” Versus “Negative” Body Movements:
The General Effect
Did it make a difference whether participants performed
a positive kind of movement (e.g., activate the smiling
muscles) or a negative one (e.g., inhibit that activation)
when listening to a given piece of music? That was indeed
the case. Combined over all three kinds of movements,
a positive movement yielded considerably higher preference ratings than a negative one (adjusted means: 5.12
vs. 4.33), d = .60, F(1, 87) = 7.72, p = .007. A detailed
analysis reveals that the three kinds of body movements
differed somewhat in their effectiveness (Figure 1). There
was a tendency for preferences to be more strongly influenced by the activation versus inhibition of the smiling
muscles and less by head movements or arm flexion versus extension, with effect sizes of d = .52 (mouth: “smile”
vs. “no smile”), d = .26 (head: nod vs. headshake), and
d = .25 (arm: flexion vs. extension).
Comparison of Theoretical Approaches
The preceding analysis suggests a general impact of
valenced body movements on musical preference judgments, but this general result does not allow us to draw
any conclusions about the underlying mechanism. The
present study did not provide for direct tests of the three
theoretical approaches discussed above but the setup
allows for a tentative comparison. The basis for deciding
among the three approaches is a consideration of the
impact of prior preferences on actual judgments. We did
not repeatedly (before and after the intervention) ask for
preference judgments because such a procedure might
have influenced judgments due to repeated exposure to
3
To obtain indicators for musical expertise, we asked participants
whether they sang in a choir or played an instrument. If so, they were
to indicate how often they usually did that on scales from 1 (very
seldom) to 10 (very frequently). We correlated both the dichotomous
variables (“no” = 0, “yes” = 1) and the frequency ratings (for the
respective selections of participants who had answered “yes”) with
preference ratings and found no significant relationships, along with
negligibly small correlations.
MP2803_05.indd 301
Figure 1. Differences in music preference for positive (pos) and negative (neg) body movements, divided for the three kinds of body movements examined. Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals.
the music (Witvliet & Vrana, 2007). Instead, we asked
about preferences for specific genres of music. We did
not ask participants only about their classical preference
to avoid having them think about the potential role of
this specific music preference and thereby possibly influencing their later preference judgments. The judged classical preference was used as an indicator of participants’
a priori preference for the two pieces by Marin Marais.
What kinds of relationships can one expect between a
priori preferences and judged preferences, for each of the
three explanatory approaches? The respective predictions are shown in Figure 2. For the conditioning explanation, one would obviously expect that judgments
would covary with a priori preferences but one would
also expect a difference in levels for positive and negative
body movements (Figure 2, top). (There might be some
ceiling and floor effects—if music is a priori liked very
much or not at all—which were not considered here.)
For the (extended) self-validation hypothesis one would
expect more pronounced effects for the positive body
movement, because this kind of movement validates preexisting tendencies (both liking and disliking), whereas
a negative body movement should decrease preferences
in either direction (Figure 2, middle). And finally, the
conceptual-motor compatibility model posits an effect
only if body movement and a priori preference are consistent. Otherwise, body movements should have no
impact and preference judgments should follow a priori
preferences (Figure 2, bottom).
1/6/11 4:30:38 PM
302
Peter Sedlmeier, Oliver Weigelt, & Eva Walther
Conditioning-Explanation
Pos. Body
Movement
Neg. Body
Movement
Negative
Neutral
Positive
Preference Preference Preference
Self-Validation Hypothesis
Pos. Body
Movement
Neg. Body
Movement
Negative
Neutral
Positive
Preference Preference Preference
Figure 3. Relationship between a priori preference for classical music
and actual preference judgments for the two classical pieces (mean values). The plus signs (+) show results for the positive body-movement
conditions and the circles show those for the negative body-movement
conditions. Lowess curves are also shown (with tension = .9). The solid
(upper) line describes the relationship for the positive body-movement
conditions and the dotted (lower) line describes the relationship for the
negative body-movement conditions.
the conceptual-motor compatibility model but corresponds well with the conditioning explanation.
Conceptual-Motor Compatibility Model
Discussion
Pos. Body
Movement
Neg. Body
Movement
Negative
Neutral
Positive
Preference Preference Preference
Figure 2. Predictions of the conditioning explanation, the self-validation hypothesis, and the conceptual-motor compatibility model.
Because regression lines would not allow us to detect
a nonlinear relationship as, for instance, predicted by the
conceptual-motor compatibility model, we used lowess
curves (Cleveland, 1985) that instead allowed us to
extract all kinds of bivariate relationships. The result is
quite clear (Figure 3): The pattern of covariation between
a priori preferences and actual judgments is consistent
with neither the extended self-validation hypothesis nor
MP2803_05.indd 302
In our study, “positive” body movements yielded consistently higher preference ratings for concurrently played
music than “negative” movements for identical pieces of
music. Thus, it seems that embodied cognition may play
an important role in musical preference judgments, and
that this effect is quite robust with respect to variations
in musical expertise (see Footnote 3). We also looked at
possible explanations for the effect and found a conditioning explanation to be most likely. Consistent with
this view, the body movements that are probably most
closely connected to emotions; that is, activation or inhibition of the “smiling muscles” also produced the largest
effect (see Figure 1). The conditioning explanation that
postulates affect as a necessary ingredient for musical
preference is consistent with the results in music studies
on the relationship between musical preferences and
arousal as well as the relationship between bodily states
and emotional states cited above. The existence of such
conditioning processes makes it also very likely that the
1/6/11 4:30:41 PM
Music is in the Muscle
effect found is not just of a transient nature. If one
assumes that music preference is learned, conditioning
processes might play a central role in that learning process. Our results indicate therefore that embodiments
might play an important role in the development of
music preferences.
Even though we have shown that body movements can
influence liking for a given piece of music, it is still not
clear how general the effect might be. We found an effect
with unknown and “neutral” music; would it also work
with unknown but “non-neutral” music and would it
work with familiar music? The results shown in Figure
3 might indicate a tentative “yes” to the first question. As
can be seen there, in our sample, a priori preferences for
classical music ranged from don’t like at all (= 1) to like
very much (= 10). Even for persons with a high a priori
preference for classical music there was some difference
in the liking of a novel (and presumably highly liked)
piece of music between the two conditions (compare
“positive movement” and “negative movement”), and
the same argument holds for persons with a low a priori
preference for classical music, although the effect seems
to decrease somewhat as the a priori preference increases.
However, as we are not aware of any other relevant results
concerning that question, the conclusion that body
movements might also have an impact on highly liked
or disliked music is very provisional.
What about the other question, the impact of the
familiarity of the music? There is one finding mentioned
in the literature en passant that suggests body movements might have little or no effect for familiar music.
Wells and Petty (1980) began and ended their simulated
radio broadcast with two well-known pieces of music
(Linda Rondstadt’s recording of “Blue Bayou” and music
from the Eagles’ Hotel California album). They did not
make predictions about ratings for the music nor report
exact numbers, but mentioned that the result of an
ANOVA with the factor movement (no head movement,
vertical head movement, and horizontal head movement) did not reach significance. This might have been
due to insufficient statistical power but could also mean
that once the preference for a piece of music is established—as is probably the case for familiar pieces—the
impact of body movements might be negligible.
This, however, would not be a strong argument against
the claim that embodied cognition plays an important
role in the development of music preferences. Familiar
music becomes familiar because it is frequently listened
to. When this music is listened to in situations in which
“positive” body movements and muscle innervations are
frequent, this positive affect could become strongly associated with the music. The learning of such an association
MP2803_05.indd 303
303
may need only a few stimulus pairings (Walther, 2002).
Smiling and dancing while holding a partner (involving
arm flexion) or dancing alone (often seen with a rhythmic nod of the head) is quite common in late adolescence
and early adulthood, which also seems to be the crucial
time for acquiring stable music preferences (Dollase,
1997; Holbrook & Schindler, 1989). If this explanation
holds, dancing might increase the liking for the music one
is dancing to and the results found by Murcia et al. (2009)
make such an expectation quite plausible.
Recent research indicates that it is not even necessary
to perform the movements in order to change one’s attitudes; it suffices to imagine them or only watch others
performing them (see Niedenthal et al., 2005, pp. 192–
193). Although embodied cognition seems to play a role
in many aspects of our lives, music may be special: There
are strong arguments that music co-evolved with body
movements and that this relationship is fundamental to
our nature (see Bicknell, 2007; Todd, 1985). So due to
this preexisting strong relationship between music and
movements, music played in joyful company—which
means a lot of smiles and maybe some dancing—might
generally have a good chance of being liked better afterward. To arrive at a better understanding of the relationship between body movements and music appreciation,
it might be especially rewarding to follow up the pioneering study of Phillips-Silver and Trainor (2005) and
look at possible learning processes in infants and young
children. Could it be that body movements of young
children acquire, at least in part, their affective qualities
through a rhythmic expression of the music they listen
to? There is some evidence that music elicits expressive
movements in very young children (Moog, 1976) and
that children as young as four years are able to express
emotions conveyed by music by performing specific
body movements (Boone & Cunningham, 2001). The
exact relationship between body movements, music
appreciation, and emotional arousal is still far from clear
but the present study suggests that there is one and that
it is worthwhile to look deeper into that fascinating relationship to further our understanding of the genesis of
music preferences.
Author Note
We thank Gunter Kreutz, Thomas Schäfer, Anita Todd,
and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be
addressed to Peter Sedlmeier, Chemnitz University of
Technology, 09107 Chemnitz, Germany. e-mail: peter.
[email protected]
1/6/11 4:30:42 PM
304
Peter Sedlmeier, Oliver Weigelt, & Eva Walther
References
Authorware 7.0 Win Commercial [Computer software]. (2003).
San Francisco, CA: Macromedia.
B arsalou , L. W. (2008). Grounded cognition. Annual Review
of Psychology, 59, 1–2.
B arsalou , L. W., N iedenthal , P. M., B arbey , A. K., &
R uppert , J. A. (2003). Social embodiment. In B. H. Ross
(Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 43, pp.
43–92). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
B icknell , J. (2007). Explaining strong emotional responses to
music: Sociality and intimacy. Journal of Consciousness
Studies, 14, 5–23.
B lood , A. J., & Z atorre , R. J. (2001). Intensely pleasurable
responses to music correlate with activity in brain regions
implicated in reward and emotion. Proceedings of the National
Academy of Science of the United States of America, 98, 11818–
11823.
B oone , R. T., & C unningham , J. G. (2001). Children’s
expression of emotional meaning in music through expressive
body movement. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 25, 21–41.
B riñol , P., & P etty , R. E. (2003). Overt head movements and
persuasion: A self-validation analysis. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 6, 1123–1139.
B rown , W. M., C ronk , L., G rochow , K., J acobson , A.,
L iu , C. K., P opovic , Z., & T rivers , R. (2005). Dance
reveals symmetry especially in young men. Nature, 438,
1148–1150.
C acioppo , J. T., P riester , J. R., & B erntson , G. G. (1993).
Rudimentary determinants of attitudes. II: Arm flexion and
extension have differential effects on attitudes. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 5–17.
C leveland , W. S. (1985). The elements of graphing data. Pacific
Grove, CA: Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole.
D ibben , N. (2004). The role of peripheral feedback in
emotional experience with music. Music Perception, 22,
79–115.
D ogantan -D ack , M. (2006). The body behind music:
Precedents and prospects. Psychology of Music, 34, 449–464.
D ollase , R. (1997). Musikpräferenzen und Musikgeschmack
Jugendlicher [Music preferences and musical taste of
adolescents]. In D. Baacke (Ed.), Handbuch Jugend und Musik
[Handbook of youth and music] (pp. 341–368). Opladen,
Germany: Leske and Budrich.
F innäs , L. (1989). How can musical preferences be modified? A
research review. Council for Research in Music Education, 102,
1–59.
F örster , J. (2004). How body feedback influences consumers’
evaluation of products. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 14,
416–426.
H argreaves , D. J., & N orth , A. C. (Eds.). (1997). The social
psychology of music. New York: Oxford University Press.
MP2803_05.indd 304
H olbrook , M. B., & S chindler , R. M. (1989). Some
exploratory findings on the development of musical tastes.
Journal of Consumer Research, 16, 119–124.
K irschner , S., & T omasello , M. (2009). Joint drumming:
Social context facilitates synchronization in preschool
children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 102,
299–314.
K reutz , G., B ongard , S., R ohrmann , S., H odapp , V., &
G rebe , D. (2004). Effects of choir singing or listening on
secretory immunoglobulin A, cortisol, and emotional state.
Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 27, 623–635.
M c D ermott , J., & H auser , M. (2005). The origins of music:
Innateness, uniqueness, and evolution. Music Perception, 23,
29–59.
M c N amara , L., & B allard , M. E. (1999). Resting arousal,
sensation seeking, and music preference. Genetic, Social, and
General Psychology Monographs, 125, 229–250.
M oog , H. (1976). The development of musical experience in
children of preschool age. Psychology of Music, 4, 38–45.
M urcia , C. Q., B ongard , S., & K reutz , G. (2009).
Emotional and neurohumoral responses to dancing tango
argentino: The effects of music and partner. Music and
Medicine, 1, 14–21.
N iedenthal , P. M., B arsalou , L. W., W inkielman , P.,
K rauth -G ruber , S., & R ic , R. (2005). Embodiment in
attitudes, social perception, and emotion. Personality and
Social Psychology Review, 9, 184–211.
P anksepp , J., & B ernatzky , G. (2002). Emotional sounds and
the brain: The neuro-affective foundations of musical
appreciation. Behavioural Processes, 60, 133–155.
P hillips -S ilver , J., & T rainor , L. J. (2005). Feeling the beat:
Movement influences infant rhythm perception. Science, 308,
1430.
P hillips -S ilver , J., & T rainor , L. J. (2007). Hearing what
the body feels: Auditory encoding of rhythmic movement.
Cognition, 105, 533–546.
P riester , J. R., C acioppo , J. T., & P etty , R. E. (1996). The
influence of motor processes on attitudes toward novel
stimuli versus familiar semantic stimuli. Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, 442–447.
R entfrow , P. J., & G osling , S. D. (2003). The do re mi’s of
everyday life: The structure and personality correlates of
music preferences. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 84, 1236–1256.
S alimpoor , V. N., B enovoy , M., L ongo , G., C ooperstock ,
J. R., & Z atorre , R. J. (2009). The rewarding aspects of
music listening are related to degree of emotional arousal.
PloS ONE 4(10): e7487. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0007487
S chäfer , T., & S edlmeier , P. (2009). From the functions of
music to music preference. Psychology of Music, 37, 279–300.
1/6/11 4:30:43 PM
Music is in the Muscle
S chäfer , T., & S edlmeier , P. (in press). What makes us like
music? Determinants of music preference. Psychology of
Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.
S cott , E., & P anksepp , J. (2003). Rough-and tumble play in
human children. Aggressive Behaviour, 29, 539–551.
S track , F., M artin , L. L., & S tepper , S. (1988). Inhibiting
and facilitating conditions of the human smile: A nonobtru­
sive test of the facial feedback hypothesis. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 54, 768–777.
S trahija -P rosche , M. (2005). Die Auswirkungen der Dar­
bietun­gshäufigkeit auf die Entstehung von Präferenzen für
Musikstile. [The impact of presentation frequency on the genesis
of music preferences]. Unpublished master’s thesis. Chemnitz
University of Technology, Germany.
T odd , N. (1985). A model of expressive timing in tonal music.
Music Perception, 3, 33–57.
T om , G., P etterson , P., L au , T., B urton , T., & C ook , J.
(1991). The role of overt head movement in the formation of
affect. Basic and Applied Psychology, 12, 281–289.
T rainor , L. J., C lark , E. D., H untley , A., & A dams , B. A.
(1997). The acoustic basis of preferences for infant-directed
singing. Infant Behavior and Development, 20, 383–396.
MP2803_05.indd 305
305
T rehub , S. E. (2003). The developmental origins of musicality.
Nature Neuroscience, 6, 669–673.
T rehub , S. E., S chellenberg , G., & H ill , D. (1997). The
origins of music perception and cognition: A developmental
perspective. In I. Deliège & J. A. Sloboda (Eds.), Perception
and cognition of music (pp. 103–128). East Sussex, UK:
Psychology Press.
W allin , N. L., M erker , B., & B rown , S. (2000). The origins
of music. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
W alther , E. (2002). Guilty by mere association: Evaluative
conditioning and the spreading attitude effect. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 919–934.
W ells , G. L., & P etty , R. E. (1980). The effects of overt
head movements on persuasion: Compatibility and
incompatibility of responses. Basic and Applied Social
Psychology, 1, 219–230.
W itvliet , C. V. O., & V rana , S. R. (2007). Play it again Sam:
Repeated exposure to emotionally evocative music polarises
liking and smiling responses, and influences other affective
reports, facial EMG, and heart rate. Cognition and Emotion,
21, 3–25.
1/6/11 4:30:44 PM
MP2803_05.indd 306
1/6/11 4:30:44 PM