Determinants of Music Preference (Bestimmungsgrößen für Musikpräferenz) Dissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades doctor rerum naturalium (Dr. rer. nat.) vorgelegt der Philosophischen Fakultät der Technischen Universität Chemnitz am 05.11.2008 von Thomas Schäfer, geboren am 24.12.1978 in Rochlitz Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Peter Sedlmeier, Prof. Dr. Josef Krems, Prof. Dr. Herbert Bruhn Eidesstattliche Erklärung Hiermit erkläre ich, dass ich die vorliegende Arbeit selbstständig verfasst und keine anderen als die angegebenen Hilfsmittel verwendet habe. Chemnitz, 05.11.2008 Thomas Schäfer Danksagung Zum Gelingen der vorliegenden Arbeit haben einige Menschen beigetragen, denen ich danken möchte. Allen voran, danke ich Prof. Dr. Peter Sedlmeier, der mir die Möglichkeit gab in einem sehr spannenden und mir persönlich sehr wichtigen Gebiet meine Dissertation anzufertigen: der Musikpsychologie. Größtmöglicher Freiraum für die Entwicklung meiner Ideen bei gleichzeitiger uneingeschränkter fachlicher Unterstützung haben die Art und Weise geprägt, wie er mich bei meiner Arbeit begleitet, gefordert und bestärkt hat. Ich danke ihm für die angenehme Zusammenarbeit seit mehr als drei Jahren, für stets konstruktive und verständnisvolle Kritik, neue Ideen und Anregungen, sowie für immer wieder vermittelten Optimismus und Neugier an der Sache. Ich danke meinen Kolleginnen, Isabell Winkler, Juliane Kämpfe und Friederike Brockhaus, für ein angenehmes Klima des Zusammenarbeitens in den letzten Jahren, für die persönliche Unterstützung und die fachliche Kritik an meiner Arbeit. Außerdem danke ich Doreen Drechsler, Frederik Haarig, Marcus Schenkel und Sebastian Hänsel für die jederzeit engagierte Unterstützung bei allen Aufgaben, vor allem bei der Durchführung von Studien. Auch sie haben stets zu einer angenehmen Arbeitsatmosphäre beigetragen und wertvolle persönliche Unterstützung gegeben. Dank auch an Tina Horlitz, die mein Arbeiten insgesamt mit Ideen, Anregungen und Kritik bereichert hat und immer ein offenes Ohr für Probleme hatte. Besonderer Dank gilt meiner Freundin Juli für bedingungslose und verständnisvolle Unterstützung bei meiner Arbeit, für zahlreiche lange Gespräche über neue Ideen und Methoden und den großen emotionalen Rückhalt, den sie mir jederzeit gegen hat. Außerdem danke ich meinen Eltern, die mir aus tiefstem Herzen meinen persönlichen Weg ermöglicht haben. Sie haben mich mit allen Mitteln unterstützt und meine konsequente, ruhige und zielstrebige Arbeitsweise geprägt. Nicht zuletzt danke ich Prof. Dr. Josef Krems und Prof. Dr. Herbert Bruhn, die sich bereit erklärt haben, die vorliegende Arbeit zu begutachten. Zusammenfassung Musik begleitet uns seit vielen Jahrtausenden und ist ein Teil der menschlichen Entwicklungsgeschichte. Mehr über den Ursprung und die Bedeutung von Musik zu wissen bedeutet mehr über uns selbst zu wissen. Die meisten Menschen mögen Musik und für viele ist es eine der wichtigsten Freizeitbeschäftigungen in ihrem Leben. Doch unterschiedliche Menschen mögen unterschiedliche Musik, und die Bindung an Musik kann stark oder schwach sein. Dieses als Musikpräferenz bezeichnete Phänomen hat in der Vergangenheit zahlreiche Studien innerhalb der Musikpsychologie angeregt, die eine Fülle von Variablen untersucht haben, welche das Zustandekommen unterschiedlicher musikalischer Vorlieben erklären helfen. Diese Forschungsergebnisse sind jedoch bis heute lückenhaft und konnten bisher nicht in ein allgemeines Modell über die Entstehung von Musikpräferenz integriert werden. Die bereits existierenden Vorschläge für solch ein Modell beschränken sich auf konkrete Gefallensurteile für ein gegebenes Musikstück. Sie erklären jedoch nicht, warum sich Menschen überhaupt entschließen Musik zu hören und nach welchen Kriterien sie diese Musik aussuchen. Das Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit ist die Untersuchung derjenigen Faktoren, welche die Motivation Musik zu hören und den Auswahlprozess von Musik aus verschiedenen musikalischen Stilen (Genres, Musikrichtungen) erklären können. Als entscheidend werden dabei die Funktionen von Musik erachtet, die in den bisherigen Modellen fast vollständig vernachlässigt wurden. Die Funktionalität – also der Nutzen – von Musik kann darüber Auskunft geben, welche (evolutionären) Vorteile sie für den Menschen hatte und wie sich diese Vorteile bis heute nutzen lassen um bestimmte Bedürfnisse zu befriedigen. Damit kann nicht nur die Frage beantwortet werden, warum jemand Musik hören möchte, sondern auch die Frage, warum jemand einen bestimmten Musikstil bevorzugt – denn Musik verschiedener Stilrichtungen kann für eine Person mit ganz unterschiedlichen Funktionen assoziiert sein. Wie die einzelnen Funktionen von Musik mit Musikpräferenz in Zusammenhang stehen und welche Funktionen eine entscheidende Rolle für die Entwicklung von Musikpräferenz spielen, ist das zentrale Thema dieser. In einem ersten Schritt wurde versucht die Liste der Faktoren, welche Musikpräferenz kausal beeinflussen, zu vervollständigen: Bisher ist bekannt, dass Musikpräferenz mit kognitiven, emotionalen, physiologischen, sozialen, entwicklungsbezogenen und persönlichkeits‐
bezogenen Variablen zusammenhängt. Von den physiologischen Variablen weiß man jedoch noch nicht, ob sie stets nur ein Effekt des Musikhörens sind oder ob sie auch ursächlich auf Musikpräferenz wirken können. In zwei Studien wurde gezeigt, dass das Hören von Lieblingsmusik mit erhöhter Erregung einhergeht und dass erhöhte Erregung umgekehrt Musikpräferenz verstärken kann. In zwei weiteren Studien über die Funktionen von Lieblingsmusik zeigte sich, dass Musik vor allem zur Stimmungs‐ und Erregungsmodulation eingesetzt werden kann. Es zeigte sich aber auch, dass diese am höchsten bewerteten Funktionen nicht gleichzeitig diejenigen sind, die für eine starke Präferenz für die eigene Lieblingsmusik verantwortlich sind. Stattdessen spielen für eine starke Präferenz eher soziale und kommunikative Funktionen eine große Rolle (z.B. die Möglichkeit mit Musik die eigene Identität auszudrücken). Die beiden abschließenden Studien zeigten, dass für Musikpräferenz generell – also über verschiedene Musikstile hinweg – kognitive Funktionen (wie Kommunikation oder Selbstreflexion) sowie physiologische Erregung die größte Rolle spielen, während emotionale Faktoren und die Bekanntheit der Musik keinen besonders großen Einfluss haben. Am Ende der Arbeit wird für eine Integration der gefundenen Ergebnisse in die bereits bestehenden Modelle über die Entwicklung von Musikpräferenz argumentiert, mit dem Ziel dieses Phänomen umfassend zu verstehen und die Befunde für eine erfolgreiche Anwendung in Bildung oder Therapie nutzen zu können. Determinants of Music Preference Preface More than 2500 years ago, the Greek philosopher Pythagoras explored the sound of swinging chords and made an intriguing discovery: the simultaneous tones of chords that are divided in their length in integer ratios produced a sound which people perceive as harmonic. Pythagoras was able to describe a subjective phenomenon of the human mind by means of simple mathematical ratios. With this principle he formulated the program of natural science, and it is still the way how scientists try to explain the human mind in terms of mathematical principles and laws. In fact, one of the youngest disciplines in modern sciences – the psychology of music – is tied to the ancient findings of Pythagoras and investigates human perception, cognition, emotion, and behavior related to music. There are three ways how people relate to music. They can create music as a composer, they can perform music by means of their voice or an instrument, and they can listen to music. Although all three aspects are interesting, the work in hand will concentrate on music listening because it is the most ubiquitous activity which concerns every single individual. Music psychology is related to music listening is several respects which will accompany the whole work: Why do we listen to music at all? What kind of music do we listen to and why? How strong is our relation to specific music and why? These fundamental questions guided the present research and root in evolutionary considerations about music listening and end up at the concrete use of music in people’s everyday life. The central issue which is surrounded by these questions is referred to as music preference. ‘Which music do you like?’ has become one of the most often used questions in psychological research, for two reasons: First, since every person (at least in the western world) is in contact with music everyday and most people see music as one of the most important things in their daily life, the study of music listening provides an authentic and fruitful avenue to their experiences and behavior in a variety of situations and contexts. Second, because music has been recognized as a tool for expressing and inducing moods and emotions and also as a means to convey information in social environments, music is by now often used as an essential implement in personality, emotion, and social psychology research. Thus, research on music preference is going on to provide us with deep insights into many psychological questions. The dissertation addresses the investigation of music preference in a series of experimental studies. Chapter 1 provides an introduction in theory and research about music preference and points at open questions which appear in both content and methodology of the current research. Chapters 2 to 4 present three empirical papers which addressed these open questions in a total of six studies. Chapter 5 summarizes the findings of these studies and provides some preliminary suggestions about a comprehensive model of music preference. Contents Preface 1 Theory and Research on Music Preference: An Introduction 1 1.1 Why study music preference? 1 1.2 How to study music preference? 3 1.3 Models and theories on the development of music preference 5 1.4 Open questions and outline of own research 13 2 Paper 1: Arousal and Music Preference: Does the Body move the Soul? 18 3.1 Study 1 – Changes in arousal when listening to favorite music 24 3.2 Study 2 – The influence of induced arousal on music preference 31 3.3 General Discussion 36 3 Paper 2: From the Functions of Music to Music Preference 39 2.1 Study 1 – How well known are musical styles? 44 2.2 Study 2 – The functions of music and their relationship to music preference 47 2.3 General Discussion 65 4 Paper 3: What makes us like Music? 68 4.1 Study 1 – A laboratory study on the factors determining music preference 78 4.2 Study 2 – An online survey on the factors determining music preference 84 4.3 General Discussion 87 5 Summary and Conclusion 91 6 References 96 Curriculum Vitae 116 1 1 Theory and Research on Music Preference: An Introduction 1.1 Why study music preference? Music is ubiquitous. It is present in public places such as supermarkets or in social gatherings such as weddings, and it is in the focus of many activities such as visiting concerts or discotheques, and it is one of the most frequent leisure time activities, especially among adolescents. Due to the easy access to all imaginable musical pieces via the internet and due to the easy ways of storing and taking away this music per Discman or mp3‐player, people are free to listen to the music they love as often as they want and in every possible situation. The music industry is still growing and people all over the world pay amazing amounts of money for music. Why? Psychology is confronted with this question since its beginning about 150 years ago. Although some well known and important findings in the first steps of psychological research dealt with music perception (think of Fechner, Stumpf, or Helmholtz), music has never been a prominent topic within psychology. The rejection of music as a topic of research was due to the fact that music appreciation is a subjective phenomenon and therefore it was not appropriate for an objective investigation of the human mind, especially in the course of behaviorism (de la Motte‐Haber, 2002). Thus, there is a lack of psychological findings about music through the history of psychology, with few exceptions (e.g., Farnsworth, 1967; Hevner, 1935, 1936)―a trend that held up until the 1970’s after cognitivism had found its way into psychology and music started to become an interesting entity that can reveal insights into aesthetic judgments, social behavior, or emotional processes (LeBlanc, 1982). For example, music has been used as a valuable tool in the investigation of aesthetic perception (e.g., Berlyne, 1971, 1974), interactive behavior of individuals within groups (e.g., Salganik, Dodds & Watts, 2006), developmental processes in adolescents (Arnett, 1995; Larson, 1995; Schwartz & Fouts, 2003), expression and induction of emotions (Juslin & Laukka, 2003, 2004), and the mapping of reward processes in the human brain (e.g., Blood & Zatorre, 1999, 2001). 2 On the other hand, psychologists did not only recognize that music is a helpful tool in the investigation of psychological processes, they also began to take music listening in the focus of their research. The interest in music preference arose mainly from the call for attention to real‐world behavior within psychology, and thus, “there is a growing concern that the breadth of topics studied by many research psychologists is too narrow and excludes many important facets of everyday life that are worthy of scientific attention. Music is one such facet.” (Rentfrow & Gosling, 2002, p. 1236) This line of research has revealed a great amount of findings on the psychology of music in general (see Bruhn, Kopiez & Lehmann, 2008; de la Motte‐Haber, 2002; Deutsch, 1999; North & Hargreaves, 2008; Stoffer & Oerter, 2005). However, findings about music preference―why we prefer one piece of music over another―are still very rare. And this may be one reason why to date there is still no conclusive theory on music preference. Such a theory is necessary to integrate the findings on music preference accumulated through the last decades, to organize (further) research in this area, and to gain a deeper understanding of why we listen to music at all which may, in turn, help to understand the role of music in human evolution. Not least, “a workable theory would assist teachers who need to know how preferences develop, and would help music therapists profit from new insights into the workings of a basic tool of therapy” (LeBlanc, 1982, p. 29). The challenge which we are confronted with when studying music preferences has been tellingly described by North and Hargreaves in their recently published book on the social and applied psychology of music: “If you and your friends were each to nominate your favorite piece of music it is virtually certain that you would nominate very different pieces. If you were then to say why you like each piece so much then the reasons would probably be even more diverse in both their nature and their degree of sophistication. Some people, for instance, would state that their favorite music evokes certain emotions, others would attribute their preference to memories they have associated with the music, and others would say that they ‘simply like it’. All this diversity, of course, poses a considerable challenge to music psychology. How could such a varied set of responses be explained?” (North & Hargreaves, 2008, p. 75) In order to answer this question music psychologists examined different factors that may influence music preference. To know more about the foundation and development of music preference means to know more about a phenomenon which accompanies all individuals 3 allover the world and which is one of the most common and most pleasant activities humans are engaged in. 4 1.2 How to study music preference? Before considering the past findings on the determinants of music preference and the open questions, it is necessary to give a short definition of music preference and how it can be measured. In all research papers and books, music preference is understood as the degree of liking of a musical piece/style, together with the behavioral tendency to listen to that piece/style rather than to others. Such a preference judgment can either be a single short‐
term decision or a stable long‐term attitude towards musical pieces/styles. In most cases, music psychology refers to music preference as a long‐term phenomenon, with few exceptions which will be discussed later on. Music preference has two dimensions: type and strength. The type of preference refers to the question which musical style a person likes best. The strength of preference refers to the degree to which one likes a musical piece/style. Music psychology has mainly concentrated on the type of music preference and asked for the reasons why different people prefer different kinds of music. The strength of music preference has widely been ignored, however. This is peculiar because the strength of music preference represents how strongly one is involved in music and thus is linked with the question why one actually listens to music. The lack of attention to the strength of music preference will be addressed and discussed in detail in the present work. Note that the older term musical taste is not commonly used any longer and has been replaced by the term music preference, “which is more widely understood and does not convey the impression that preference for one kind of music is necessarily better than preference for another” (LeBlanc, 1982, p. 29). In the literature, however, both terms often have been used synonymously. How can music preference be measured? Rentfrow and Gosling (2003) pointed out that people can say what they like referring to several levels: specific songs, bands or artists, subgenres (e.g., jungle), genres (e.g., rap), or general musical attitudes (e.g., relaxing music). The authors found that when people discuss their music preferences they do so mainly on the level of genres, and so they suggest that musical genres provide the optimal level for research. Please note that the terms genre and style mean the same and will be used synonymously in the following. Music preference is usually measured via questionnaires by means of Likert‐type rating scales. 5 Not least, music preference can be measured as either verbal or sounding preference (Müller, 2000). Verbal preference refers to a research setting in which respondents are asked to think of a certain musical piece or style and rate how much they like it. In contrast, sounding preference refers to a research setting in which respondents are to listen to concrete musical pieces and then rate how much they enjoyed it. Whether both kinds of measurement yield different results has barely been investigated so far; but one could argue that sounding preferences are closer to real music listening (Müller, 2000). However, in the vast majority of studies preference was measured verbally. 6 1.3 Models and theories on the development of music preference The question why one likes a certain musical style and why different people like different styles has received many different answers throughout the history of music psychology. Unfortunately, these findings have barely been integrated into a model of music preference. To the best of my knowledge, there are only two reasonable theoretical approaches which will be discussed below. Before that, the variety of factors that have been shown to have an influence on music preference will be presented. They can be divided into four groups of factors: the music, the listener, the context, and the use of music. The music Most obviously, the preference for musical sounds depends on the characteristics of the music. There are many such characteristics that account for the variance of music preferences across different people. For a particular person, musical pieces are preferred when they are played at a comfortable level of loudness (e.g., Cullari & Semanchick, 1989), when they have a moderate tempo (Kellaris, 1992) and an optimal level of complexity (Berlyne, 1971, 1974; Heyduk, 1975; North & Hargreaves, 1996b), and when they are at a moderate level of familiarity (Jakobovits, 1966). Moreover, the listener should be able to recognize a piece as prototypical for a certain musical style (Martindale & Moore, 1989). Music appreciation also depends on the performance quality (Radocy, 1976) and the type of media that presents the music (Rose & Wagner, 1995). In addition, musical sounds convey referential meanings: mode, rhythm, harmony, and melody are associated with certain ideas and emotional content which in turn have an influence on music appreciation (see Finnäs, 1989; Jungaberle, Verres & DuBois, 2001). For instance, one of the pioneer work in music psychology (Hevner, 1935, 1936) showed that people highly agree when asked which (emotional) content is expressed by different musical sounds. Whether preferences for particular values of these parameters are innate is still discussed very controversially, whereas at least the human preference of consonance over dissonance seems to be an innate phenomenon (see McDermott & Hauser, 2005). The listener The characteristics of music―such as complexity―lead to a higher preference when they are on an ‘optimal’ level. But what the term ‘optimal’ means depends on the characteristics of the 7 listener: age, gender, personality, ethnic group, socio‐economic status, musical ability and training. Research findings on the influence of the listener’s characteristics on music preference are very numerous and will be discussed here by prototypical examples. The meaning of music in people’s life seems to increase until adolescence and then decrease slowly over life‐span (Mende, 1991; for an overview see Hargreaves, North & Tarrant, 2006). Holbrook and Schindler (1989) showed that people keep preferring music that was popular when they were about 20‐25 years old, indicating that this is the critical time of establishing a stable music preference (see also North & Hargreaves, 2002). Though, there appears to be an increase in the preference for music which is more complex when people get older (Hargreaves & Castell, 1987). The authors suggest that familiarity and musical knowledge increase over life‐span and thus the subjective complexity of repeatedly heard musical pieces decreases. The relationship between complexity and preference follows an inverted U‐shape, and the complexity of well‐known pieces then falls back at a very low level of complexity which in turn is associated with a lower level of preference. In addition, people with a higher degree of musical ability or musical training tend to prefer more complex music (North & Hargreaves, 1995) which is also a finding consistent with the complexity theory (Berlyne, 1971, 1974): increased musical ability or training goes along with decreased subjectively perceived complexity, so that pieces of music which were initially at an optimal level of complexity shift to the left half of the inverted U‐shape relationship between complexity and preference. Regarding the influence of gender, research findings are still not conclusive (see North & Hargreaves, 2008). However, there seems to be a tendency that females prefer softer musical styles (such as pop) and males prefer harder styles (such as rock or rap) (Christenson & Peterson, 1988). Music preferences have shown to be a reflection of listener’s personality in several respects. People who score high on the sensation seeking trait prefer more arousing music (Arnett, 1991; McNamara & Ballard, 1999), conservative people dislike rock and rap music (Lynxwiler & Gay, 2000), and fans of ‘intense and rebellious’ music (such as rock) tend to be more open to new experiences (Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003) while extraversion is associated with preference for pop music (Rawlings & Ciancarelli, 1997). Note, however, that findings about the association between personality and music preference are not yet conclusive and often just refer to ‘problem music’ such as rap or heavy metal. 8 Research on the association between socio‐economic status or life‐style and music preferences is very rare and “much of the existing research is outdated, and it is possible that taste publics no longer exist in many western societies” (North & Hargreaves, 2008, p. 106). Nevertheless, recent studies by North and Hargreaves (2007a,b,c) revealed, for instance, that fans of sophisticated music such as classical had higher incomes and higher levels of education, while fans of rap or electronic music tended to have a lower socio‐economic status. The context The interaction between the listener and the music does not occur in a vacuum. Rather this interaction highly depends on the context in which it takes place: the presence of other people, the concrete situation, simultaneously ongoing activities, and the cultural context. As one of the first, Farnsworth (1967) argued that music listening is a social activity: it often takes place on concerts, festivals, in discotheques, or just in groups of friends; and therefore music preference is a social phenomenon as well. More recently, Salganik, Dodds, and Watts (2006) could show that people’s music preference―as indicated by song ratings at an artificial market in the internet―highly depends on the judgment of others, even though the respondents did not know the others. There are two approaches that try to explain such conformity in the development of music preference. The first of which is compliance: people seek to belong to a particular social group (such as a group of friends) that shares the same opinions, values, beliefs, or habits. One possibility to express the membership to this group is to hold the same music preference as their members do (see also Finnäs, 1989b). The second type of explanation is called “informational influence” or “prestige effect” by North and Hargreaves (2008): if a certain piece of music or a musical style is not known people may try to get some information through the judgment of others or through a description of the composer and so will be influenced in their own preference judgment (see also Rigg, 1948; Rodocy, 1975). The conformity effect on music preference is much greater with regard to friends and peers than with regard to teachers and parents, especially if the adults do not share the preference of the young people for pop and rock music (Finnäs, 1989). Besides the presence or absence of other people, the listening situation has a great impact on which music we like to hear. To explain how the selection of preferred music depends on the listening situation―where we are and what we do―there are two theoretical approaches: an 9 arousal based model and the idea of appropriateness. The arousal based model was suggested by Konečni (1982) who further developed the theory of Berlyne (1971, 1974). In Berlyne’s complexity theory the arousal elicited by a stimulus determined how pleasing this stimulus should be perceived. Konečni, however, suggested that there is another source of arousal in the concrete situation, which will be added to the arousal induced by the stimulus. Hence, which music is preferred in a particular situation depends on its associated arousal level: in situations associated with a low arousal level (such as driving on an empty motorway) we may like to listen to rather complex or arousing music, in situations associated with high levels of arousal (such as writing a thesis) we may listen to simple structured calm music or we may avoid listening to music at all (Konečni & Sargent‐Pollock, 1976; North & Hargreaves, 2000). The arousal based approach, however, was not able to explain why people sometimes prefer to listen to low‐arousing music in situations that are not arousing themselves or vice versa. Hence, there must be another mechanism that determines what we like to hear in a particular situation. This mechanism seems to be the judgment about the typicality or appropriateness of music for a specific situation. For example, on a wedding we like to listen to another type of music than on a funeral, or while doing relaxation exercises we like to listen to another type of music than while dancing in a discotheque—independent of its arousal potential (see North & Hargreaves, 1996, 2000). Finally, our music preference is embedded in a cultural environment (Merriam, 1964). The cultural background and ethnicity of a listener may influence the perception of musical pieces or styles (see Tekman & Hortacsu, 2002). However, research about the link between cultural background and music preference is very rare (e.g., McCrary, 1993) and has not revealed clear‐
cut findings to date. Nonetheless, especially adolescents have been shown to use music to define their own subculture (Baacke, 1993; Rill, 2006). The use of music Listening to music can have a great benefit in several respects. It is somewhat peculiar that music psychology has attended to the benefit of music only since the 1990’s—with few exceptions before that time, e.g., Merriam (1964)—because it is obvious that music is used to fulfill several needs of the listener. The use of music takes an exceptional position because it refers to the music as well as to the listener, i.e., the use of music arises from the interaction of the music and the listener over time. 10 The use of music―which will be a central issue in the present work―refers to the variety of functions it can serve for the listener: cognitive, emotional, cultural, and physiological functions. The cognitive functions are best investigated and refer to aspects of communication and self‐reflection. For example, music is used to express people’s social identity, their values and beliefs―who they are—and it may help them to get into contact with other people through places or activities that are associated with music (Arnett, 1995; Hargreaves & North, 1999; Hargreaves, North & Tarrant, 2006; North & Hargreaves, 1999; Steele & Brown, 1995; White, 1985). Moreover, especially adolescents use music to shape their own identity, to reminisce, and to learn more about themselves (Arnett, 1995; Larson, 1995; Markus & Nurius, 1986). Music is also used to elicit and keep up pleasant emotions or to mitigate and change negative emotions, depending on the situation (Juslin & Laukka, 2003, 2004; Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007; Schramm & Wirth, 2006; von Georgi et al., 2006; Waterman, 1996; Zillmann, 1988). In a similar vein, people use music to regulate their physiological arousal level (Arnett, 1992; Iwanaga & Moroki, 1999; McNamara & Ballard, 1999) according to the above mentioned theories by Berlyne (1971, 1974) and Konečni (1982). And some findings revealed an association between music appreciation and strong physiological responses to music such as ‘chills’ (Gabrielsson, 2001; Panksepp, 1995; Rickard, 2004). Finally, music can be used to express the identity and values of whole cultures (Frith, 1996; Merriam, 1964; Tekman & Hortacsu, 2002), of subcultures (Baacke, 1993; Rill, 2006), or even the personality of other people (Rentfrow & Gosling, 2006). Models on the integration of the influential factors on music preference It is surprising that the remarkable amount of research findings discussed above has scarcely been integrated into theoretical approaches. To date, there are only two reasonable approaches to integrate and systemize these findings in a theoretical model, and only one of them focuses directly on music preference. The first model was developed by LeBlanc (1982) who suggested an “interactive theory of music preference”, which is shown in Figure 1.1. LeBlanc’s model combines most of the factors that influence music preference discussed above and suggests that these factors interact on different levels in a hierarchical process. On the lowest level, variables of the “musical environment” (such as complexity or referential meaning) interact with variables of the 11 “ccultural enviironment” (such as thee influence of parents or peers) aand build th
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h “the interaactive naturee of these influences […
…] makes 12 each influence difficult to isolate and measure” (LeBlanc, 1982, p. 38). However, when attempting to apply the model to the development of music preference it reveals several shortcomings. First, it only describes short‐term preference decisions at one point in time. It can help to understand how one decides for or against an actual piece of music, but it is not appropriate to explain the development of long‐term preferences, which may be a result of a change in the interactions over time. Second, the model nearly ignores the influence of the use of music on music preference. The variable “incidental conditioning” refers to the meaning of music, but LeBlanc does not discuss whether such meaning also refers to the possible use of music. Third—and this is mainly a consequence of the first two points—the model does not refer to the question why we listen to music at all. It does not describe the selection process of listeners who are confronted with an amount of musical styles, interpreters, and pieces. So we learn nothing about why people want to listen to music in several situations and why they select the pieces they do. The second model was suggested by Hargreaves, Miell, and MacDonald (2005; see also Hargreaves, North & Tarrant, 2006; North & Hargreaves, 2008). This “reciprocal response model” (see Figure 1.2) adopts many of the influential factors from LeBlanc (1982), but it does not focus especially on music preference. Rather it describes a group of responses to music which interact with the music, the listener, and the listening context. In contrast to LeBlanc’s approach, this model is not hierarchical but it is recursive: the responses to music can influence variables in the listener, the influence of the listening context, and the perception of music over time. Music preference appears as part of the affective response to a musical piece and also as an immediate (short‐term) or a medium (long‐term) preference pattern of the listener. Therefore, the interaction between the music, the listener, and the responses to music can help to explain how music preference evolves over time. In addition, the use of music is at least indicated in the interaction between the listener and the listening situation or context and, thus, the reference to the question why people listen to music at all is already visible. But yet—despite the noticeable references to the use of music and to the reasons of music listening—the focus of the model is to describe “the determinants of an immediate response to a specific musical stimulus at a given point in time” (Hargreaves, North & Tarrant, 2006, p. 136). Moreover, it is hard to know from the model how the different variables interact and where there are concrete causal processes. Because the model is formulated in a rather vague fashion it is also hard to derive concrete predictions about how single factors interact in the formation of music preference. 13 Figure 1.1. The reciprocal feedback model of musical response (Hargreaves, Miell & MacDonald, 2005). 14 1.4 Open questions and outline of own research So far, there is a great amount of research findings on the multitude of factors that can have an influence on music preference. And the two theoretical models by LeBlanc (1982) and Hargreaves et al. (2005) provide a first basis for explaining how all these factors interact. However, while inspecting both models we have seen that they refer to single preference judgments at one point in time. So they are appropriate to describe the judgment process which goes on when a person is to give a decision on accepting or rejecting a given piece of music. Both models therefore treat the listener as someone passive who only responds to a given stimulus, whereas they ignore the active selection process: why does someone want to listen to music, and why does someone decide to listen to a particular piece or style? Both questions refer to one single—more fundamental—question: why do we listen to music at all? In the present work, the claim is made that a conclusive model on music preference should incorporate this question in order to embed the preference judgment in a theory about the foundation of music listening. Indeed there are many approaches to explain the foundation of music listening, most of them referring to the possible role of music in human evolution. These approaches will be discussed in more detail in the third paper, but we can sum up here that they all refer to the functions that music can have for the listener (use of music). Bearing this in mind, it is again curious that (1) no attempt has been made to integrate these assumptions about the foundation of music listening and the models on the decision process of music preference, and (2) that the functions of music still lack investigations on how they are related to music preference. The functions of music may be the missing concept in the existing models on music preference, and the ignorance of the functions may be reason why the existing models are not very popular in the present research on music psychology and music preference—especially because the functions of music may be the key for understanding music listening as real‐world behavior in people’s everyday life (see Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003). Thus, what we have to date are two approaches to the passive preference decision on the one hand and some approaches to why we listen to music at all. Both approaches call for integration. Therefore, the aim of the research presented here was to investigate the functions of music in order to prepare for a conclusive theory on the development of music preference which is linked to the fundamental question why we listen to music at all: a theory that explains the real music listening behavior and experience in people’s life. In order to prepare 15 for such a theory, a number of questions on the functions of music and music preference have to be solved. These questions and how they will be investigated in the three papers will be outlined in the following. (1) Paper 1. As discussed above, a variety of functions which the listener can benefit from has been revealed in prior research. These functions can be categorized into cognitive, emotional, social‐cultural, and physiological ones. The general belief is that the functions interact with music preference, i.e., if a particular music is able to serve certain functions the preference for this music increases and, on the other hand, music which is already liked (or is even one’s favorite music) is likely to take over other particular functions. For example, an adolescent who wants to be a member of a certain group of people, may adopt the expressed favorite music of this group. The same person may later learn that this music can help to regulate moods and emotions or can be a good means to reminisce. However, there is one exception: regarding the physiological functions of music it is not yet clear whether they can also be a cause of music preference. Several studies have shown that arousal management or the experience of strong and pleasing physiological reactions to music such as chills are an effect of music listening (e.g., Blood & Zatorre, 2001; Gabrielsson, 2001; Panksepp, 1995) and that listening to music can go along with physiological changes (e.g., Bernardi, Porta & Sleight, 2006; Rickard, 2004). Thus, physiological arousal may play a crucial role in music appreciation; especially if one takes into account that music listening is often associated with activities that elicit arousal (e.g., dancing or meeting new people in public places). If music is able to moderate people’s arousal and bring it to a comfortable level, it may be considered as a determinant of music preference. However, no study has tried to show that varied states of arousal can affect the appreciation of music. Hence, the question whether physiological arousal can be a cause of music preference is still open; and this question has to be solved first to know if physiological arousal is indeed a factor that should be considered as a function of music having a causal influence on music preference. Two studies investigated the relationship between physiological arousal and music preference. The purpose of Study 1 was to analyze systematically which physiological changes go along with listening to either unknown neutral or preferred music (favorite music). Physiological changes were obtained by objective physiological measures (such as heart rate and skin conductance) as well as subjective experiences (such as chills/goose bumps and feelings of emotional tension). This was done to show whether objective and subjective measures of 16 arousal correlate with each other and whether listening to preferred music coincides with a systematic change in physiological arousal. In Study 2, the influence of changes in physiological arousal on music preference was analyzed: arousal was induced while a group of participants listened to unknown neutral music and their preference judgments for this music were compared with the preference judgments of another group of participants who listened to the same music but without arousal induction. If induced physiological arousal can lead to an increase in music preference then it can be added to the list of determining factors, besides cognitive, emotional, and social‐cultural factors. (2) Paper 2. As soon as there is a complete list of factors influencing music preference it is time to analyze the character of this relationship in more detail: How is the use of the single functions of music related to the strength of music preference? This question refers to a central issue, namely why people listen to music at all. As outlined above, the functions of music may be the central explanation for why people are so engaged in music listening. The strength of preference people report for their favorite music is thought to reflect how intensely they are involved in music listening, and this involvement, in turn, is closer to the question of why one listens to music at all than the simpler question of which musical styles one likes. Hence, the present work aims to incorporate the issue of the strength of music preference into music psychology research; and it is suggested that both the type of preference (which style or genre) and the strength of preference should always be investigated together. The research reported in Paper 2 incorporates the strength of music preference as a methodological innovation in research on music preference. The many studies on functions of music collected above indicated that people use music in several ways and that this use of music works best with people’s favorite music. However, the concrete relation between the functions and music preference has not yet been investigated. When the functions of music are the main reasons for music listening then this benefit should be reflected in music preference: music that can fulfill particular functions intensely for a listener should be preferred over music that is not able to do so; and people who know how to use music to fulfill their needs should be more involved in music listening, i.e., they should report a higher preference. To analyze this relationship between functions and preference, it is not enough to ask people which functions their favorite music can have, because they may recognize that their favorite music can have several functions, but this does not mean that they really make use of them. Thus, the degree to which particular functions are fulfilled by 17 people’s favorite music has to be correlated with the strength of music preference. Such a procedure can show which functions are most closely related with music preference and, thus, can shed some light on the most important reasons for music listening. In order to investigate the functions of music in relation to music preference, it was necessary to have a basis of investigating music preference, i.e., the first step was to analyze which musical styles people know and which styles they like. In Study 1, the knowledge of musical styles was obtained in a survey study. In Study 2, these styles were then reduced to six dimensions of musical styles. In addition, participants were provided with a list of possible functions their favorite music can have—which were derived from the variety of studies mentioned above—and they should rate how well each of these functions is fulfilled by their favorite music. These ratings were correlated with the strength of people’s preference for their favorite music. A hierarchy of the importance of functions of music for music preference was obtained this way—showing that there is indeed a reasonable difference in how music can be used to fulfill particular functions and how these functions correlate with music preference, which is an important finding for doing research on music preference. (3) Paper 3. The studies of Papers 1 and 2 completed the list of influential factors on music preference and investigated the relationship between the functions of music and music preference for people’s favorite music. The evidence provided by these studies is the basis for the question addressed in Paper 3: What is the relative importance of factors that influence music preference? As already mentioned, the existing models on music preference (Hargreaves et al., 2005; LeBlanc, 1982) refer to the decision of whether a piece of music or a musical style is liked or disliked, but they do not refer to the active selection process people are engaged with when they decide to listen to music at all and when they decide to listen to a particular piece or style. The models do not refer to these questions because most of the variables they contain either do not vary across different styles or pieces (such as the characteristics of the listener) or they are music‐inherent features (such as loudness or complexity) and therefore not able to explain why one listens to music at all. What remains as variables that can explain why one starts listening to music, are the functions music can serve. As an easy example, one can imagine a person in a bad mood who starts listening to arousing or happy‐sounding music to change the bad mood into a pleasant one (e.g., Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007). 18 Paper 3 will also discuss how several theories on the origin of music listening try to explain the functions of music. There are theories that refer to an evolutionarily benefit of music listening and other theories that do not. Both kinds of theories not only refer to the functions of music but also to the fact that the impact of these functions can be enhanced by repeated listening. Thus, repetition and familiarity are incorporated as one factor that can influence music preference besides the functions of music: cognitive functions (which were divided in communication and self‐reflection), emotional functions, social‐cultural functions, and arousal and activation. The impact of these six factors on music preference was investigated in two studies. Study 1 was conducted under controlled conditions in the lab. Participants listened to different musical pieces (representing distinct musical styles) and rated how much several functions are fulfilled for them by these pieces in general. These ratings were used as predictors for the strength of music preference. The same procedure was repeated in an online survey with a larger sample of respondents. The results provide a pattern of the relative contribution of the six factors for the development of music preference, and they also provide the empirical evidence, which can be used for preparing a conclusive theory of music preference that includes not only variables influencing concrete decision processes at one point in time, but also variables influencing the decision to listen to music at all and the decision for a particular piece or style of music. 19 2 Paper 1: Arousal and Music Preference: Does the Body move the Soul? The following paper was written together with Peter Sedlmeier (Chemnitz University of Technology, Department of Psychology). It will be submitted for publication to a peer‐
reviewed psychological journal. The paper is presented here in its original form ready for submission, so that some repetitions of the introduction above in the paper were inevitable. 20 Arousal and Music Preference: Does the Body move the Soul? Numerous surveys and experiments over the past decades have shown that listening to music can go along with noticeable physiological responses, either reported by the respondents themselves or measured in a laboratory. Indeed, in research on the psychology of emotions music is increasingly used as a means to induce emotions (e.g., Bernardi, Porta, & Sleight, 2006; Blood & Zatorre, 2001), which are thought to be constituted of the specific combination of arousal and valence (e.g., Kreutz, Ott, Teichmann, Osawa, & Vaitl, 2008; North & Hargreaves, 1997; Scherer & Zentner, 2001; Schubert, 2004). However, studies about the systematic connection between subjective experiences and physiological measures as well as about the connection between arousal and music preference are very rare. Most interesting, it has not yet been investigated whether altered states of arousal are an effect of music appreciation in every case or whether altered arousal can also influence the liking for a piece of music—that is, in a broader sense, whether physiological arousal can be a causal factor in the development of music preference. In the following, we will first give an overview of the research that has been done on physiological responses to music and the potential connection with music preference. We will then present the results of two empirical studies. Subjective Reports about Physiological Responses to Music Subjective reports about the effects of music have been systematically analyzed since the investigation of special experiences by Maslow (1968), who found music to be one of the sources of “peak experiences,” which are characterized by, among other things, physiological changes reported by the respondents (see also Lowis, 1998). Panzarella (1980) investigated people’s intense experiences when they listened to music or looked at visual art. As one factor of such experiences he found “motor‐sensory ecstasy,” which consists of felt changes in heart rate and breathing and the experience of shivers or chills, as reported by the participants. Goldstein (1980) asked his respondents to describe situations in which they experienced “thrills.” Such thrills were most likely to occur as a reaction to music and they were perceived as a chill, shudder, tingling, or tickling, a feeling of hair standing on end, goose bumps, sudden changes in mood or emotion, sighing, palpitation, tension of the jaw and facial muscles, a feeling of lump in the throat, or incipient weeping (p. 127). Goldstein was one of the first to 21 suggest a connection between such strong subjective experiences and physiological arousal. In investigating the subjective effects of specific musical structures, Sloboda (1991) found that when listening to classical music “peak emotional experiences” are accompanied by physiological reactions such as shivers down the spine, lump in the throat, laughing, tears, or racing heart. In a series of studies, Panksepp (1995) found that students listen to music because it can elicit strong emotions or “chills” and that the occurrence of chills is a frequent phenomenon among them. To highlight the relationship between the subjective experience of chills and physiological responses, he labeled the chill phenomenon a “skin orgasm” (p. 203). In a large survey, Gabrielsson (2001; see also Gabrielsson & Lindström Wik, 2003) collected subjective reports of people’s “strong experiences with music.” As concomitant physiological responses of such experiences his respondents frequently reported tears, shivers/chills, gooseflesh, feeling warm/cold, muscular relaxation/tension, changed breathing, and racing heart. Further studies supported the relation between subjective chill experiences and physiological arousal, measured as increases in skin conductance level (Craig, 2005; Grewe, 2005; Grewe, Nagel, Kopiez, & Altenmüller, 2007a, 2007b; Rickard, 2004). Objective Physiological Responses to Music Existing studies on the measurable physiological effects of music rarely dealt with everyday experiences with music. Rather, the focus was on issues such as (1) musicology, to explore the characteristics of musical expertise or the effect of specific elements of musical structure on the listener, (2) music therapy, to identify musical features or content that can help people manage their arousal or affect their imagery, and (3) the psychology of emotion, to investigate specific physiological patterns underlying different emotions. Nevertheless, many of these studies revealed that listening to music affects a variety of objectively measurable physiological parameters, such as heart rate, skin conductance level, respiration, blood pressure, and cerebral blood flow (Bernardi et al., 2006; Blood & Zatorre, 2001; Craig, 2005; de Jong, van Mourik, & Schellekens, 1973; Etzel, Johnson, Dickerson, Tranel, & Adolphs (2006), Gomez & Danuser, 2004; Grewe et al., 2007a, 2007b; Hyde, 1924; Iwanaga & Moroki, 1999; Krumhansl, 1997; Peretti, 1975; Rickard, 2004; Ries, 1969 Standley, 1991; Vander Ark & Ely, 1993). Bartlett (1996) gives a detailed review of studies on physiological responses to music up to 1994. In particular, a great deal of research to date has demonstrated that music can induce various emotions and thus has studied empirically what most people feel when listening to music 22 (Gomez & Danuser, 2004, 2007; Juslin & Laukka, 2004; Juslin & Sloboda, 2001; Krumhansl, 1997; Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007; Sloboda, 1991; Vieillard et al., 2008; Zentner, Grandjean & Scherer, 2008). Since it is also assumed that arousal is a necessary component of emotions and that specific emotions are a results of a specific interplay of arousal and valence (Kreutz et al., 2008; North & Hargreaves, 1997; Scherer & Zentner, 2001; Schubert, 2004), this line of research has revealed great evidence for the link between music listening and arousal. The Relationship Between Music Preference and Arousal There is strong evidence that the various physiological responses to music mentioned above go along with a special liking for the music. When investigating subjective experiences, Panksepp (1995, Study 2) found the correlation between the number of chills experienced and the liking for pieces of music to be about r = .50. By measuring physiological arousal, Rickard (2004) found that “emotionally powerful music” increases skin conductance and number of chills. In an earlier study by de Jong and colleagues (1973), heart rate, breathing rate, and skin conductance correlated slightly positively with liking for the music. In the study of Witvliet and Vrana (2007), participants gave higher liking ratings for highly arousing than for slightly arousing music. And Hirokawa (2004, p. 107) found that “subject‐preferred music has potentials to increase older adults’ energetic arousal”; whereas Iwanaga and Moroki (1999) found no relation between preference and physiological arousal. In addition, most people prefer happy‐sounding over sad‐sounding music (e.g., Dalla Bella, Peretz, Rousseau, & Gosselin, 2001; Schellenberg, Peretz, & Vieillard, 2008) and happy‐sounding music usually has a faster tempo which is in turn associated with increased arousal (Gomez & Danuser, 2007; Holbrook & Anand, 1990). However, in the majority of the studies on physiological responses to music the liking for the music was neglected. Moreover, these studies usually used musical pieces that were selected by the researcher, and in most cases this was classical music. Yet in the majority of the studies, the participants were students, and their favorite music typically is not classical music (e.g., North & Hargreaves, 2007; Schäfer & Sedlmeier, in press).This is unfortunate because when people can listen to music they know and love, the occurrence of strong emotional reactions is much more likely (Panksepp, 1995; Thaut & Davis, 1993). To confront people with the music that they listen to every day is a much more appropriate approach to the actual and individual use of music in people’s life (Gabrielsson, 2001; Grewe et al., 2007a, 2007b; Juslin & Laukka, 2004; Sloboda, 1991). 23 There have been only a few studies in which the respondents could listen to their self‐selected music. One was Panksepp’s (1995) exploration of chills mentioned above. Panksepp asked participants to report the occurrence of chills but did not take physiological measures. Blood and Zatorre (2001, p. 11820) provided good evidence that “pleasantness and emotional intensity” of the music are prerequisites for the occurrence of chills and for increases in heart rate, muscular tension, and respiration depth. However, these authors did not report concrete correlations between physiological measures and music preference. Rickard (2004) showed that participants’ skin conductance level, a good indicator of physiological arousal, increased when students listened to “emotionally powerful music.” But he, too, did not analyze the correlation between this measure and the strength of music preference. Taken together, previous research indicates that listening to music goes along with a variety of felt or measurable physiological responses and that such responses most likely occur when the music is especially liked by the listener. Yet to date, not much is known about the strength of the relationship between subjective arousal, objective arousal, and music preferences. Do measures of subjective and objective arousal correlate substantially? Which of these two kinds of measures is more strongly connected to music preference? Finally, research has not yet addressed the question of causal effects between arousal and preference. In most of the studies discussed above this question remained open or it was suggested that liking of a piece of music is a cause or prerequisite for strong arousal. Although this assumption seems quite plausible, the reverse possibility should not be abandoned prematurely: The liking of a piece of music could be an effect of arousal. Such arousal can arise from two possible sources. First, there could be special musical features that elicit arousal in the listener. The arousal, in turn, could determine music preference. In search of such arousal‐inducing features, researchers have identified musical elements such as the onset of a voice, crescendos, or the beginning of a new part, but the evocation of arousal due to these elements is not consistent over different individuals (Grewe et al., 2007a, 2007b; Sloboda, 1991; Waterman, 1996; see also Gomez & Danuser, 2007, and Schubert, 2004, for the relationship between musical structure and arousal). Music can elicit different arousal levels depending on its complexity—
and, in general, optimal levels of arousal lead to positive judgments (e.g., Berlyne, 1974; Holbrook & Anand, 1990; see also North & Hargreaves, 2000; Yamamoto, Shinobu, & Shimizu, 2007). McNamara and Ballard (1999) found that people with low resting arousal and high sensation‐seeking behavior preferred arousing (loud and fast) music. 24 A second source of arousal can stem from circumstances ancillary to the music. Dancing, rocking to the music, or meeting new people in a discotheque are examples of activities that can elicit arousal that may—when present concurrently with the music—be attributed to the music. In the language of the cognitive labeling approach (Schachter, 1964; Schachter & Singer, 1962), people can interpret (induced) arousal as a positive or negative reaction to stimuli. In a classic experiment, Dutton and Aron (1974) induced high arousal in male participants by having them walk across a suspension bridge where they were questioned by a female interviewer. These participants significantly more often got in touch with the woman after the study than men who had passed over a solid bridge before being similarly interviewed: Apparently higher arousal led to higher attractiveness ratings. This second alternative—that music appreciation may depend on arousal sources other than the music—has not yet been investigated in empirical studies, although the link between music listening and simultaneous bodily activities is evident and the perception of music as a “sensory perception cannot be separated from the multisensory experience of our bodies” (Phillips‐Silver & Trainor, 2007, p. 543). We suggest that there should be a substantial influence of arousal due to extramusical sources on the evaluation of the music. Why should one expect arousal also to be a cause rather than only an effect of music appreciation? One commonly held assumption is that we appreciate music because music or musical sounds are thought to have fulfilled the evolutionarily important function of transmitting emotions, to convey essential information faster and more easily than would be possible by means of speech (see Panksepp & Bernatzky, 2002). Thus, since it is known that altered arousal is a necessary component of emotions, Panksepp and Bernatzky (p. 142) concluded that “the fact that music would have fairly robust effects on various body parameters is to be expected simply from the fact that music arouses emotions, and emotions are characterized by many autonomic changes.” With this in mind, one could expect that altered arousal—regardless of whether induced by musical or extra‐musical features—stirs the brain systems that are involved in the processing of the emotional message of music (Blood & Zatorre, 2001) and thus may affect our appreciation of music. To sum up, in the present studies, we were interested in (1) how physiological changes while listening to music are correlated with the strength of music preference, (2) the systematic relation between subjective reports and objective measures of physiological responses to 25 music, and (3) whether physiological arousal can be a cause of the special liking for a given piece of music. 26 Study 1 – Changes in arousal when listening to favorite music To date, only a few studies have investigated both people’s subjectively experienced and objectively measured physiological responses simultaneously when listening to music (e.g., Grewe et al., 2007a, 2007b; Krumhansl, 1997; Rickard, 2004). To the best of our knowledge none of these studies examined the precise relationship between the two kinds of measures quantitatively, that is, how strongly they correlate over different pieces of music. To find out more about this relationship, we looked at the difference in responses to people’s favorite music in contrast to unknown (neutral) music. Because previous studies have shown subjective as well as objective changes in arousal, we hypothesized that the two measures should correlate with each other. Moreover, since people experience strong emotional responses to the music they love and these responses go along with increased physiological arousal, we expected to find a positive correlation between arousal and music preference. Method Participants were to listen to unknown neutral music as well as to their favorite music, and we measured their physiological responses and asked for their subjective experiences. They had to bring along their favorite music, that is, music with which they had experienced strong emotional responses in the past. We refrained from using preselected music (such as the often‐used classical music) because music preference is a highly individual phenomenon and the occurrence of strong responses is much more likely with familiar and/or preferred music. As objective physiological measures we took heart rate (HR), standard deviation of the heart rate (HRSD), skin conductance level (SC), standard deviation of the skin conductance level (SCSD), and breathing rate (BR). These measures have consistently shown a good sensitivity for changes in arousal in studies about music and arousal (e.g., Bernardi et al., 2006; Craig, 2005; de Jong et al., 1973; Krumhansl, 1997; Rickard, 2004). The standard deviations indicate the variabilities of heart rate and skin conductance as these measures change according to the time course of the emotional dynamic during a familiar piece of music. As subjective measures for arousal we asked our participants how intensely they had experienced shivers down the spine/goose bumps, a feeling of warmth, a feeling of coldness, bodily tension, or emotional tension and how intense these experiences had been. These were experiences that people 27 have often reported as expressions of strong emotional responses while listening to music (e.g., Gabrielsson, 2001; Goldstein, 1980; Panksepp, 1995; Sloboda, 1991). Participants. Forty‐one students (32 females, 9 males) from Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany, participated in the study and received either course credit or a payment of 3 euros. Their mean age was 24 years (SD = 4.4). Twenty‐six of them had learned to play an instrument and 19 had sung in a choir at some time. Only participants who had a favorite music and reported having had experiences such as shivers down the spine when listening to it in the past were included in the study. Their favorite music showed a wide range of styles/genres; most frequently it was pop (45%), rock (24%), and sometimes also classical music (19%). Materials and procedure. One piece of participants’ favorite music (in audio compact disc or mp3 format) was copied to the experimenter’s computer before starting a session. The objective physiological measures were obtained via a NeXus‐16®/BioTrace+® system (Mind Media B.V., Netherlands). HR was calculated from the blood volume pulse signal measured by an electrode at the ring finger of the nondominant hand (the left hand for all participants). SC electrodes were attached at the middle finger and the index finger of the same hand. BR was calculated from the respiration depth signal measured with an elastic chest belt with tension electrodes. To obtain subjective measures, for each piece of music, participants were asked to indicate how intensely they had experienced shivers down the spine/goose bumps, a feeling of warmth, a feeling of coldness, bodily tension, and emotional tension on 10‐point Likert scales (0 not at all intense, 9 extremely intense). One sheet of the questionnaire was given to the participants after each piece of music they listened to. They also had to indicate whether the piece was known to them (not for the favorite music piece) and rate how much they liked the piece (1 not at all, 10 extremely). A demographic questionnaire was given to the participants at the end of the session. As neutral baseline music we used two pieces of the ambient/lounge genre, which is calm music with a gentle and slow beat and no or little singing. The pieces were “Rio Nights” by Shakatak (Polydor Ltd., UK, 1982, length: 4:02) and “Creeper Lane” by Trio Elétrico (Stereo Deluxe Records, 2004, length: 5:05). No participant had ever heard either of these pieces 28 before. The music was played via Sennheiser HL 270 stereo headphones and the participants could adjust the volume to their preferred level of loudness. One participant at a time was seated in a comfortable chair in a laboratory room with dimmed lights and separated from the experimenter by a wooden screen. The procedure was explained and the electrodes of the NeXus‐16 system were connected. Then participants put on the headphones and were instructed to sit quietly, relax, close their eyes if desired, and listen to the music as they would do at home or in a familiar situation. Three pieces were played: a baseline piece, the favorite piece of the participant, and a baseline piece again. We used this second baseline piece to check for possible order effects. The two baseline pieces (Shakatak and Trio Elétrico) were assigned randomly to the first and the third position; the favorite piece was always in the second position. The pieces were played in their entirety to provide an authentic listening situation (see Rickard, 2004). The whole procedure lasted about 25 min. Results Favorite music versus baseline music. For data analysis the middle 3 min of each piece were used to calculate the scores of the physiological measures with the BioTrace+ software. The scores for the neutral baseline music (pieces 1 and 3) were averaged because they did not differ systematically. Table 1 shows the differences in physiological measures and subjective experiences between baseline and favorite music as well as Hedge’s g effect sizes and t statistics. Because the physiological measures depend on idiosyncratic levels, we also calculated the relative changes (as percentage) for all measures compared to the baseline piece. As expected, respondents gave higher preference scores for their favorite music, and they preferred it much more than the baseline music, which was evaluated as neutral, as expected. All objective physiological measures increased when participants listened to their favorite music. The most significant changes between baseline music and favorite music were obtained for heart rate, skin conductance, and the variability of skin conductance. Heart rate variability and breathing rate increased only slightly. Even higher increases were found for the intensity of the subjective experiences. When participants listened to the baseline music they reported almost no special sensations or feelings. When they listened to their favorite music they frequently experienced shivers down the spine, feelings of warmth or coldness, or bodily or emotional tension. 29 Table 1 Mean Scores (and SDs), t Statistics, Hedge’s g Statistics, and Percent Difference of Objective Physiological Measures and Subjective Experiences for Baseline Music and Favorite Music. N = Preferencea g Baseline Favorite music music 6.01 (1.71) 9.71 (.68) t p Percent difference 1.99 12.72 .000 61.6 Objective measures HR (bpm) 78.23 (12.42) 81.42 (14.43) 0.42 2.68 .01 4.1 HRSD 6.67 (3.03) 7.07 (3.02) 0.15 0.93 .36 6.0 SC (µmho) 3.72 (2.10) 4.56 (2.49) 1.07 6.86 .000 22.6 SCSD 0.28 (0.17) 0.35 (0.22) 0.50 3.20 .003 25.0 BR (brpm) 16.89 (3.82) 17.21 (4.68) 0.10 0.66 .52 1.9 Intensity of subjective experiences (Scale 0–9) Shivers 0.43 (1.17) 3.98 (3.42) 1.10 7.04 .000 825.6 Warmth 1.98 (1.93) 4.10 (3.13) 0.68 4.36 .000 107.1 Coldness 0.38 (0.86) 1.34 (2.35) 0.41 2.61 .013 252.6 Bodily tension 0.82 (1.26) 2.12 (2.93) 0.41 2.62 .012 158.5 Emotional tension 1.02 (1.48) 3.22 (3.37) 0.63 4.06 .000 215.7 41 a Scale ranged from 1 (not at all) to 10 (extremely). Note. bpm: beats per minute; brpm: breaths per minute; BR: breathing rate; HR: heart rate; HRSD: standard deviation of the heart rate; SC: skin conductance level; SCSD: standard deviation of the skin conductance level 30 Intercorrelations of subjective and objective measures. To look at the general relationship between subjective and objective measures, we averaged the difference scores of all objective measures and of all subjective ratings per participant and correlated them over participants. This correlation was r = .39 (p = .01), which shows a clear connection between the objective measurement and the subjective experience of physiological changes while listening to either neutral or favorite music. When analyzing the single correlations between differences in physiological measures and subjective experiences, we found high correlations between heart rate and subjective experiences: shivers (r = .36; p = .022), warmth (r = .57; p = .000), bodily tension (r = .54; p = .000), and emotional tension (r = .53; p = .000). These correlations support the notion that heart rate is the physiological measure that is connected to nearly all indicators of subjective experiences. Skin conductance and its variability—despite being the measures that changed most—were not substantially related to the indicators of subjective experiences. Relationship between arousal and preference. How are these increases in arousal connected to the increase in preference for favorite music versus baseline music? To answer this question we correlated the increases of all scores of physiological measures and subjective experiences (expressed as percent differences from baseline music to favorite music; see the rightmost column in Table 1) with the increase of preference. We used the percent differences rather than the raw differences because the levels of measures such as heart rate and skin conductance vary considerably among people and we were interested in the relative change of these measures. The correlations are shown in Figure 1. Skin conductance and its variability are most closely connected with preference, followed by heart rate and its variability. However, the effect sizes are rather small and breathing rate is not connected with preference at all. Ratings of the intensity of subjective experiences are more strongly connected to preference, at least the sensation of bodily and emotional tension. These two correlations are of medium effect size. Shivers down the spine/goose bumps and a feeling of warmth are only slightly correlated with preference, and a feeling of coldness was not related to preference at all. 31 Figure 1. Correlations (r) between score differences (baseline pieces vs. favorite piece) of physiological measures/subjective experiences and differences in preference ratings in Study 1. SC: skin conductance level; SCSD: standard deviation of the skin conductance level; HR: heart rate; HRSD: standard deviation of the heart rate; BR: breathing rate; T: tension. Discussion We showed that people are more aroused when they listen to their favorite music than they are when they listen to unknown (neutral) music. This is true for subjective experiences of bodily reactions as well as for objective physiological measures. Compared to neutral music, preferred music led to more intense experiences such as shivers down the spine/goose bumps, feelings of warmth or coldness, and bodily or emotional tension as well as to significant increases in heart rate, skin conductance, and variability of skin conductance. Subjective experiences and physiological measures were correlated (overall, r = .39). Heart rate was highly correlated with nearly all subjective experiences. On the other hand, skin conductance and its variability were not correlated with subjective experiences. This is in contrast to past findings (e.g., Craig, 2005; Rickard, 2004). Possibly this result is due to the fact that participants can perceive changes in heart rate more easily than changes in skin conductance. The perception of a faster heart rate might enhance or trigger feelings of warmth and bodily or emotional tension. 32 Both the subjective experiences and the physiological measures are correlated with the strength of music preference. Increases in the preference for favorite music—compared to neutral music—correlate significantly with increases in bodily and emotional tension and slightly with increases in shivers down the spine/goose bumps, the feeling of warmth, and with all physiological measures except breathing rate. The strong correlations of preference with feelings of bodily and emotional tension might be interpreted as expectancy effects: When people listen to their favorite music they know the course of the piece very well so that they anticipate special events (e.g., onset of a voice or a new part); the release of such tension is very pleasing and could thus explain the preference for favorite music (Grewe, 2005; Sloboda, 1991). The fact that shivers/goose bumps are only slightly correlated with preference is especially interesting because shivers/goose bumps are the main characteristic of chills (respectively, thrills or peaks). This indicates that chills—despite being a common phenomenon, especially when people listen to their favorite music—do not correlate systematically with the degree of preference for favorite music as compared to neutral music. In other words, the experience of chills does not seem to be appropriate as a main candidate for explaining differences in the degree of preference for people’s favorite music. Taken together, there seems to be an appreciable connection between the increase of arousal and the increase of preference when people listen to neutral as compared to favorite music. This is evidence for the notion that music we love changes our arousal—an effect that might be due to expectancies that elicit bodily or emotional tension, or to certain memories that are connected with the music and refer to emotionally powerful experiences. But could this link between music preference and arousal also mean that arousal can be a cause for preference? In Study 2 we aimed to answer this question by pairing music listening with induced arousal and measuring the enjoyment of the music; that is, while music preference was the independent variable and arousal was the dependent variable in Study 1, we reversed this design in Study 2. 33 Study 2 – The influence of induced arousal on music preference Based on previous research (e.g., Berlyne, 1974; Dutton & Aron, 1974) that has shown that altered arousal can influence preference for different stimuli (such as visual patterns, other persons), we hypothesized that preference for musical pieces should be enhanced by induced arousal in a similar way. To the best of our knowledge, this hypothesis has not been examined before. Method Participants. Thirty‐six students (30 females, 6 males) from Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany, participated in the study. Their mean age was 23 years (SD = 4.7). Twenty‐four of them had learned to play an instrument and 21 had sung in a choir at some time. For participation, they received course credit or payment of 3 euros. Their favorite music showed the same variety of styles/genres as in Study 1, most frequently being rock, pop, or classical music. Materials and procedure. To examine the effectiveness of the arousal induction we obtained the same physiological measurements as in Study 1. As unknown neutral music we used three pieces of the ambient/lounge genre in the lounge condition (“Kleine Träumerei” by Moca, Blue Flame Records, 2005, length: 3:16; “On the beach” by Rivera Rotation, Lounge Records, 2004, length: 3:18; “Dream” by Wei‐Chi, Compost Records, 2004, length: 3:11). To increase the generalizability of our results, we also used three piano pieces from Frederic Chopin in a “classical condition” (“Nocturnes Op. 15 No. 2 Fis‐Dur,” length: 4:01; “Impromptus No. 2 Op. 36 Fis‐Dur,” length: 5:54; “Valses No. 13 Op. 70/3 Des‐Dur,” length: 2:56; all recorded by Peter Schmalfuss; Point Classics, England, 1997). In each condition the three pieces were assigned randomly to the first, second, or third position, over the participants. No participant had ever heard any of the pieces before. In the lounge condition as well as in the classical condition, participants listened to the three respective musical pieces. The arousal induction was carried out during either the second or the third piece to avoid order effects due to certain characteristics of the musical pieces. There are several ways to induce arousal (see Boski, 1985): false feedback, bodily activity, or self‐
focused attention. Because false feedback would have had an undesirable effect on our 34 arousal measures and bodily activity would be too obvious a method for inducing arousal to the participants, we decided to use self‐focused attention: When listening to the second or third piece of music, respectively, the participants sat in front of a mirror (30×40 cm, about 1 m in front of the face) and were told to observe and write down their facial expression and how it changed while listening to the music (arousal condition). This was done under the guise of investigating changes in facial expression due to music. The whole procedure lasted about 25 min. After the session, participants were fully informed about the procedure. We especially expected heart rate, skin conductance, and breathing rate to increase when arousal was induced. The variability measures should not increase because the arousal induction persists during the whole piece, which should lead to a consistently higher level of the arousal measures but not to changes in these measures (since such changes within a piece of music usually occur only due to expectancy effects with music one already knows). Results Arousal induction. Was the induction of arousal by means of the mirror successful? We carried out the arousal induction during either the second or the third piece. To analyze whether it was successful during the respective pieces we calculated contrast analyses. There were two conditions: For one half of the participants the arousal induction occurred during the second piece. Hence, the arousal should be high during the second piece and lower during the first and third piece. Accordingly, we assigned the contrast weights (lambdas) ‐1, 2, and ‐1 to the three pieces. For the other half of the participants, the arousal induction occurred during the third piece, thus we assigned the contrast weights ‐1, ‐1, and 2 to the three pieces. To analyze how the time course of arousal corresponded with our expectations (as expressed by the contrast weights) we ran a contrast analysis for repeated measures (see Rosenthal, Rosnow, & Rubin, 2000; Sedlmeier & Renkewitz, 2007). Table 2 shows the mean scores of the physiological measures and the statistics for the contrast analysis. As can be seen, in both conditions (mirror during second and during third piece) the time course of arousal corresponded well to our hypotheses, at least for heart rate, skin conductance, and breathing rate; the variabilities of heart rate and skin conductance remained unaffected by the arousal induction. These results indicate that the arousal induction was successful. 35 Table 2 Mean Scores (and SD) of Objective Physiological Measures; t Statistics, and Hedge’s g Statistics for the Contrasts of the Time Course of Measures. N = 40 Contrast Piece 1 Piece 2 Contrast weights Piece 3 g t p Mirror position: Piece 2 ‐1 2 ‐1 90.35 (15.29) 97.20 (19.04) 91.19 (15.30) 0.71 3.02 .008 HRSD 7.71 (2.88) 7.51 (3.18) 8.48 (5.26) ‐0.16 ‐0.67 .51 SC (µmho) 2.39 (1.31) 3.39 (1.46) 3.46 (1.48) 1.56 6.61 .001 SCSD 0.12 (0.08) 0.13 (0.08) 0.13 (0.11) 0.07 0.28 .88 BR (brpm) 16.65 (3.05) 19.82 (2.85) 18.45 (4.04) 0.73 3.11 .006 HR (bpm) Contrast weights Mirror position: Piece 3 ‐1 ‐1 2 86.36 (18.52) 85.62 (17.71) 91.76 (16.25) 0.78 3.30 .004 HRSD 7.18 (2.22) 6.63 (2.44) 7.73 (5.14) 0.20 0.86 .40 SC (µmho) 2.86 (1.15) 3.35 (1.71) 4.22 (1.85) 1.72 7.28 .001 SCSD 0.15 (0.12) 0.25 (0.18) 0.16 (0.09) ‐0.36 ‐1.51 .15 BR (bpm) 17.41 (3.69) 17.33 (3.49) 20.53 (2.83) 1.03 4.35 .001 HR (bpm) 36 Arousal and preference. How did the different arousal levels affect the preference for the musical pieces? The results are shown in Figure 2, separately for the lounge condition and the classical condition. The lines represent the conditions with the arousal induction during Piece 2 and Piece 3, respectively. Let us first have a look at the lounge condition. The participants who experienced the arousal induction during the second piece rated their preference for the second piece as highest and the preference for the first and third pieces as lower. This was congruent with our hypothesis. Participants who experienced the arousal induction during the third piece showed a decrease in their preference ratings from the first to the second piece. This decrease might be due to a general relaxation during the course of the study: Participants became accustomed to the experimental situation and their arousal decreased over time. For the third piece, when the arousal induction was carried out the preference increased as expected, although not reaching the level of preference for Piece 1. We calculated interactions between the time course of induced arousal and the preference ratings. For the first interaction, we compared the preference ratings of Piece 1 and Piece 2 against the arousal condition (mirror during Piece 2 vs. Piece 3), yielding a substantial effect of d = .99, F(1,16) = 3.89, p = .066. For the second interaction, we compared the preference ratings of Piece 2 and Piece 3 against the arousal condition, yielding a substantial effect of d = .81, F(1,16) = 2.59, p = .127. The interactions—although not significant, but with large effect sizes—indicate that the preference ratings change according to the altered arousal levels. Figure 2. Preference ratings for Piece 1, Piece 2, and Piece 3, compared for different arousal conditions (arousal induction during Piece 2 vs. Piece 3) in Study 2. Participants in the classical condition did not show any variation in their preference ratings for the three pieces in either arousal condition. Thus, although the induction of arousal was successful, it did not influence the preference for the musical pieces. 37 Discussion We obtained a slight increase in participants’ preference ratings according to the induced arousal, at least for the lounge music, which is consistent with our expectations: Induced arousal led to an increase in the preference for a neutral piece of music. Participants might have perceived their physiological arousal and interpreted it as a positive emotional response to the music. However, in the Chopin group the induced arousal had no effect. One possible explanation is that participants interpreted their arousal as a rather negative response to the music. This interpretation would be consistent with the cognitive labeling approach (Schachter, 1964; Schachter & Singer, 1962): If participants had an ambiguous relationship to the Chopin music they might have attributed the induced arousal to a feeling of dislike, which led to a negative evaluation of the piece. Another explanation can be seen in the music itself: Compared to lounge music, classical music might be perceived as much more complex and containing more information. This greater complexity might have taken up the whole attention of the participants so that they had insufficient resources to pay attention to their arousal (see Arkes & Rettig, 1986; Stevens & Latimer, 1991). However, both explanations are very speculative and call for further evidence. 38 General Discussion Previous research has accumulated much evidence that music can induce a variety of emotions (e.g., Juslin & Sloboda, 2001; Zentner, Grandjean & Scherer, 2008) and that strong or special emotional experiences with music are a very common phenomenon (Gabrielsson, 2001; Konečni, Wanic & Brown, 2007; Lowis, 1998; Panksepp, 1995). Such emotions and special experiences while listening to music are regarded as one of the main reasons why we listen to music at all (Juslin & Laukka, 2003, 2004; North & Hargreaves, 1997; Schubert, 2007; Sloboda, O'Neill, & Ivaldi, 2001). The core of such experiences—usually called chills, thrills, peaks, strong emotions, or emotionally powerful experiences—seems to be a strong emotional reaction to music that goes along with altered physiological arousal. In the present studies, we aimed to investigate the systematic relation between arousal and the kind of music people are listening to (favorite music vs. unknown neutral music), the relation between objective physiological measures and subjective experiences of such arousal, and the causal relation between arousal and preference. The results of Study 1 indicate that listening to one’s favorite music—compared to neutral music—goes along with increased physiological arousal. However, the objective physiological (difference) measures correlate only moderately with the increase in preference from neutral to favorite music. Differences in subjective indicators of arousal, especially feelings of bodily or emotional tension, correlate substantially with the increase in preference, but the correlations with feelings of warmth or shivers down the spine/goose bumps are only weak. Physiological measures and subjective experiences correlate substantially, and heart rate is the physiological measure that highly correlates with the subjective experiences whereas skin conductance does not. Although previous studies revealed that subjective experiences (chills) correlate with physiological changes during single pieces of music (Grewe et al., 2007a, 2007b), that emotionally powerful musical pieces elicit higher objective arousal (Rickard, 2004), or that there is no correlation between emotional self‐report judgments and physiological measures over different pieces (Krumhansl, 1997), it was not clear to date if and how strongly subjective and objective measures of arousal correlate with respect to favorite music listening. Our results show that they do so substantially. In fact, the finding that subjective and objective measures vary in tandem provides some information about the validity of subjective measures: They may be a better predictor of music appreciation than the objective measures since they are more highly correlated with music preference. 39 In Study 2, we addressed the interactive relation between physiological arousal and music preference and aimed to answer the question whether arousal can also be a cause of the enjoyment of music rather than only its effect in every case. Research in music psychology has identified a list of aspects that are essential for the development of music preference: personality (Rentfrow & Gosling, 2006), social factors (Farnsworth, 1967; Hargreaves & North, 1997; Salganik, Dodds, & Watts, 2006), educational factors (see Finnäs, 1989), culture and evolution (McDermott & Hauser, 2005; Trehub, Schellenberg, & Hill, 1997; Umemoto, 1997), and the individual benefit of listening to music (Arnett, 1995; Larson, 1995; North & Hargreaves, 1999; Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003; Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007; Schäfer & Sedlmeier, in press; Schwarz & Fouts, 2003; Tekman & Hortacsu, 2002). We considered physiological arousal as an additional candidate for this list of components of the development of music preference because previous research has shown that aesthetic judgments of stimuli depend on the arousal that accompanies these stimuli (e.g., Berlyne, 1974; Dutton & Aron, 1974). We induced arousal in our participants while they listened to music, which led to a greater preference for a neutral piece of music, but only when this was music of the ambient/lounge genre. People’s preference for pieces of classical music remained unaffected by their arousal level. As a potential explanation for these discrepant results, we suggest that, at least for the majority of our participants, classical music might be perceived as much more complex than ambient/lounge music and that this complexity might have demanded too much of participants’ attentional resources, leaving them unable to pay attention to their arousal (see Arkes & Rettig, 1986; Stevens & Latimer, 1991). Regarding models of the development of music preferences (e.g., Hargreaves, Miell, & MacDonald, 2005) we would suggest that increased arousal as an effect of the appreciation of one’s favorite music is not a one‐way process. Rather there seems to be an interaction of arousal and preference and thus arousal may also be considered as one of the factors that determine music preference. An arousal‐induced shift in preference for music may help to explain people’s close relationship with music they hear when they are dancing or when they meet others in places where music is played (see Schäfer & Sedlmeier, in press): Dancing or meeting new people can elicit arousal that might be attributed to the music being played. In addition, our results may provide new evidence for the role of emotions in music appreciation: There is strong evidence that emotional messages conveyed through music are one of the main reasons why humans 40 appreciate music at all and that one of the necessary prerequisites of emotions is altered arousal (Panksepp & Bernatzky, 2002). We were able to show that changes in music preference not only go along with changes in arousal but that changes in arousal when listening to music can change the preference for this music. It would be interesting then to know whether the induced arousal can also lead to a more intensive experience of emotions expressed through the music. We would expect that to be the case, because the causal mechanism from increased arousal to increased appreciation is thought to work via more intense emotions (Juslin & Laukka, 2004; Krumhansl, 2002). Future research also has to investigate the shift in preference we found here with still other musical selections of different genres, possibly ordered along a dimension of complexity, to show whether music other than lounge music can be influenced as well, and how stable the effect of increased preference is over time. In addition, it has to be clarified whether there are mediating factors between arousal and preference. Such factors could influence how a musical selection can interact with altered arousal in a person (e.g., personality factors; see McNamara & Ballard, 1999; situational factors; see Holbrook & Anand, 1990; North & Hargreaves, 1996) and how “embodied” experiences with music can guide the perception of this music (Phillips‐
Silver & Trainor, 2007). Moreover, it would be interesting to learn more about the influence of musical characteristics such as complexity, mode, or tempo (Gomez & Danuser, 2007) on the relation between arousal and preference. Our results indicate that better knowledge of the role of arousal might be essential for developing a comprehensive theory of music preference. 41 3 Paper 2: From the Functions of Music to Music Preference The following paper was written together with Peter Sedlmeier (Chemnitz University of Technology, Department of Psychology). It has already been accepted for publication in the peer reviewed journal Psychology of Music (Sage Publications). The paper is presented here in its original wording (and in British spelling) as it will appear in the journal. 42 From the Functions of Music to Music Preference Knowing more about music preference is essential ‘for the music culture, for the society, [and] for the personal development of the individual’ (Finnäs, 1989: p. 43). The investigation of music preference consists of two central questions: First, why does one person like a particular type of music (e.g., classical music) while another prefers a totally different type of music? And second, why do people differ in their degree or strength of music preference, which can vary considerably? Good answers to both questions are necessary for building a sound theoretical model of the origin and development of music preferences. However, to date, the second question has received only little attention. Let us first look at how preferences for a given type of music can be shaped. In his review of the literature on the topic, Finnäs (1989) concluded that there are several causal factors that can have an impact on music preference: specific characteristics of the music (such as tempo, rhythm, pitch, etc.), familiarity and repeated listening, the listener’s affective experiences while listening to music, and social influences. Other researchers have provided further evidence for the impact of social influences (Adler, 1985; Salganik, Dodds & Watts, 2006) and affective experiences (e.g., Blood & Zatorre, 2001; Gabrielsson, 2001; Juslin & Laukka, 2004; Juslin & Sloboda, 2001) on music preference. And still others have found additional factors that can influence music preference: the personality of the listener (Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003, 2006), the listener’s physiology (McNamara & Ballard, 1999), and innate aural preferences (McDermott & Hauser, 2005; Trehub, Schellenberg & Hill, 1997; Umemoto, 1997). And not least, the age of a listener seems to have a strong impact on music preference (Holbrook & Schindler, 1989; Mende, 1991). This list of factors gives an idea how music preferences can be influenced but the question remains why people actually listen to music and why they develop a special musical taste. If one looks at the research that has addressed the latter question, the most general answers refer to the functions of music, which means that people use music to reach certain goals and serve their needs (e.g., Arnett, 1995; Baacke, 1993; Hakanen, 1995; Larson, 1995; North & Hargreaves, 1999; Sloboda, O'Neill & Ivaldi, 2001; von Georgi, Grant, von Georgi & Gebhardt, 2006). We will first discuss these research findings on the functions of music and then argue that the relationship between the functions of music and music preference, especially the degree of 43 preference, still needs further investigation. Then we present the results of two studies. The first serves as a pilot study that provides the means to examine the relationship between functions of music and the strength of preference for different kinds of music in the second study. Finally, we discuss how the results obtained in the present studies might help to build a theoretical framework on the relationship of musical functions and music preference. Functions and benefits of music There is much evidence that the reasons why we prefer one type of music over another, or even like music at all, can be ascribed to the functions of music (Arnett, 1995; Behne, 1986, 1997; Juslin & Laukka, 2004; Larson, 1995; Lewis, 1992; Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007; Schwarz & Fouts, 2003; Sloboda et al., 2001). Our daily lives are thought to be driven by certain needs that lead us to a state of subjective well‐being or hedonism (see, e.g., Reiss, 2004), and music is just one thing that brings us a bit closer to this end every day. We use music to serve several functions that are important to us. Most of the functions are related to developmental issues, especially for adolescents. Young people use music to explore, express, and tighten their identities (Arnett, 1995; Larson, 1995; North & Hargreaves, 1999) and to communicate their personal values, ambitions, beliefs, and perceptions of the world and themselves (North & Hargreaves, 1999; Steele & Brown, 1995; White, 1985). Through music people can ‘try on’ different personalities or identities, including desirable as well as feared ones (Larson, 1995; Markus & Nurius, 1986). In this context, music is also used to establish a symbolic border against other groups (or against parents in early adolescence) to define a (youth) culture of its own (Baacke, 1993; Rill, 2006). Music can enhance interactions with peers or with a partner, by providing either a medium for communication and common activities (e.g., Denski, 1992; Lull, 1992) or information about the other through his or her favourite music (Rentfrow & Gosling, 2006). Rentfrow and Gosling (2003, 2006) found that listening to music is the top leisure‐time activity for most people and they suggested that music is highly diagnostic for exploring the personality of others. Further, music is used to tune out and to cope with daily hassles and problems (Arnett, 1995; Larson, 1995; Schwarz & Fouts, 2003; Tekman & Hortacsu, 2002). In a broader sense, we use music to manage and regulate our moods and emotions, to ‘chill’ and relax, and to reminisce (Juslin & Laukka, 2001; Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007; Schramm & Wirth, 2006; von Georgi et al., 2006; Waterman, 1996; Zillmann, 1988). People also use music 44 to manage their arousal level or to satisfy their sensation seeking (Arnett, 1992; Iwanaga & Moroki, 1999; McNamara & Ballard, 1999), and music leads to physical activity through dancing. Functions of music and music preference Most of the studies that have investigated functions of music used preferred or favourite music rather than neutral or disliked music. However, this procedure makes it difficult to study the impact of functions of music on the degree of preference: Why there is a continuum between just liking music and adoring music and whether and how this degree of preference is related to the functions of music has, to the best of our knowledge, not yet been addressed. In most of the research reported above the assumption was made that the functions of music are directly related to preference, meaning that the more intensely music can be used to serve certain functions, the more intense the preference. However, this is not compelling, because music can be used in several ways, but not all of them appropriate for every listener. That is, someone might be aware of various functions his favourite music can serve, but this need not be the main reason for liking this music best. Thus, we have to look for the missing link between the functions of music and the degree of music preference. A theoretical basis for investigating this relationship is provided by Behne (1997, p. 149), who suggested that this relationship is linear ‐ that ‘the intensity of music preferences seems to be a mirror of the intensity of Musikerleben,’ defined as ‘the sum of psychic processes which accompany the experience of music in situations when music is in the focus of interest’ (Behne, 1997, p. 143). Following Behne (1997), we hypothesized that the strength of music preference should covary with the intensity of music use: The better the needs of a listener are served by a given music, the higher the degree of preference for that music should be. Rationale of present studies Our first step was to search for commonly known musical styles. Respondents should list all musical styles known to them. This was done to obtain an overview of known styles, to use instead of a ready‐made list of styles collected by experts or a researcher, as has often been done. The best‐known styles were then identified (Study 1). The next step was to determine if these styles could be grouped into a few dimensions of music preference to possibly confirm the results of previous research and to have a starting 45 point for investigating the functions of music. Dimensions (factors) of musical styles (e.g., rock, pop, rap, electro) refer to specific styles of music that are similarly rated or liked (e.g., Bogt, Raaijmaker, Vollebergh, Wel, & Sikkema, 2003; Burge, Goldblat, & Lester, 2002; Christenson & Peterson, 1988; Tekman & Hortacsu, 2002). In research they are primarily used to reduce the number of different styles, especially to learn something about the perception of music and its impact on human behaviour, emotion, and cognition. For example, the genre rap might contain musical styles such as Hip Hop, black music, R’n’B, and rap. In a series of excellent studies, Rentfrow and Gosling (2003) showed that preferences can be grouped into only four dimensions that reflect the central characteristics of the music described: (1) reflective and complex (e.g., classical); (2) intense and rebellious (e.g., rock); (3) upbeat and conventional (e.g., pop); and (4) energetic and rhythmic (e.g., rap). Then we searched for the functions people ascribe to their favourite music and the relationship between these functions and their degree of preference, to learn something about what it is that makes them passionate listeners (Study 2). The functions with the greatest influence on preference were identified via stepwise regression analysis. The functions used in Study 2 were derived from previous research on functions of music and were intended to cover all categories of functions music can have (except therapeutic). Preference for favourite music was investigated using questions concerning judgment as well as behavioural dimensions of preference, in order to observe it in a more valid way, rather than a scale of liking from ‘not at all’ to ‘very much.’ 46 Study 1 – How well known are different musical styles? Study 1 was conducted as a pilot study that investigated how well known different musical styles are, to provide the musical styles to be used in Study 2. Method In a questionnaire survey, 170 participants (100 female, 70 male) were asked to list, on paper, all the musical styles they knew. Participants were 15 to 78 years old (M = 26.4; SD = 12.2). Most (67.1%) were students at Chemnitz University of Technology (mainly in the social sciences, i.e., psychology, sociology, pedagogy); 24.7% were employed in various professions, and 8.2% were self‐employed or unemployed. Although we intended to have a balanced ratio of males and females we received more answers from females, which is probably because social science students in Germany are predominantly female. Participants received no compensation for their participation. In addition to listing the musical styles they knew, participants estimated the mean time they spent listening to music every day and rated their musicality (scale from 1, very unmusical, to 10, very musical) as well as the importance of music in their life (scale from 1, not at all important, to 10, very important). Results and discussion There were 74 different musical styles, each known to at least one participant. To narrow the field for further investigation, styles were selected that were known by at least 10% of all respondents, which resulted in 25 styles (see Table 1). Respondents’ mean rating for self‐estimated musicality was 6.1 (SD = 2.4), and the mean rating for importance of music in their life was 8.2 (SD = 1.8). Thus, participants rated their own musicality as moderate, yet music seems to play a very important role in their life. This is emphasized by the reported time they spent listening to music per day, which was about 3 hours (M = 2.9; SD = 1.7). The duration of music listening was slightly negatively correlated with age (r = ‐.15; with a sample size of n = 170, and a one‐tailed α of 5%, correlations are significant if r ≥ .13) but more—and positively—with musicality (r = .24) and importance of music (r = .29). As suggested by previous findings (Mende, 1991), importance of music decreased with age (r = ‐.24). This is further supported by a negative correlation between age and the number of styles mentioned (r = ‐.30). Musicality was moderately correlated with importance of music (r = .39). To reveal possible effects of gender, we used t‐tests to compare 47 the mean values for musicality, importance of music, and amount of time of music listening per day of males and females. Despite the relatively high power due to the large samples, none of the tests were significant. The same holds for comparisons of the Fisher z‐transformed correlations (e.g., Rosenthal & Rosnow, 1991: p. 495) calculated separately for males and females. Thus, gender effects were negligible in our study. The list of best‐known musical styles was used as a starting point for Study 2. It provides a valid representation of styles familiar to the respondents. In Study 2 a larger sample was investigated; this is why Study 1 covered no further questions. 48 Table 1 How well known are different musical styles? Musical style Frequency of Percent of mention participants Pop 134 78.8 Classical 128 75.3 Rock 125 73.5 Jazz 114 67.1 Folk 102 60.0 Hip hop 100 58.8 Techno 100 58.8 Metal 74 43.5 Blues 67 39.4 Punk 67 39.4 Beat‐music 64 37.6 Reggae 58 34.1 R ’n’ B 56 32.9 Soul 54 31.8 House 46 27.1 Rock ’n’ roll 40 23.5 Country 39 22.9 Rap 38 22.4 Swing 30 17.6 Gospel 29 17.1 Ska 29 17.1 Alternative 24 14.1 Dance 24 14.1 Gothic 22 12.9 Trance 19 11.2 Note. N = 170. 49 Study 2 – The functions of music and music preference The purposes of Study 2 were to investigate (1) the distribution of preference for the musical styles from Study 1 to analyze the specific degree to which people like their favourite music; (2) the structure of these preferences, to find main dimensions by factor analysis, first to check whether dimensions (factors) from recent research can be confirmed, and second to use these dimensions as musical genres to analyze further results in detail for each genre; (3) which functions people’s favourite music can have; and (4) how these functions are related to the specific degree of people’s music preferences. Method Participants. In this study 507 participants from several German cities responded to an online survey via the Internet. They were 11 to 50 years old (M = 24.8; SD = 5.1); 71% were female, 29% male. Most (79.5%) were students of various disciplines (mainly in the social sciences, i.e., psychology, sociology, pedagogy), 15.6% were employed in various professions, and 4.9% were self‐employed or unemployed. Thus, the respondents in this sample were somewhat younger than those in Study 1 and there were more students. Again, participants received no compensation for taking part in the study. As in Study 1, respondents had to provide information about their musicality and the importance of music. The results were consistent with Study 1 for self‐estimated musicality (M = 5.7; SD = 2.4), the importance of music in their life (M = 7.7; SD = 1.5), and the mean duration of listening to music per day (M = 3.1 hours; SD = 2.5). Again, the duration of music listening was slightly negatively correlated with age (r = ‐.14) but more—and positively—with the importance of music (r = .33). However, it was not correlated with musicality (r = .07). Importance of music did not decrease with age (r =.08), which is a clear difference from Study 1 and probably due to the younger sample in Study 2. Musicality was moderately correlated with importance of music (r = .41). As in Study 1—to reveal possible gender effects—we ran t‐
tests for musicality, importance of music, and amount of time of music listening per day, and we compared all correlation coefficients between males and females. None of these differences were significant. Thus, again, gender effects were negligible. Material. The questionnaire was provided via the Internet and completed online. All materials were originally in German. The link to the website was distributed via e‐mail to mailing lists of 50 German universities, and all respondents were encouraged to forward this link to their friends and relatives. First, participants were asked to give preference ratings for each of the 25 musical styles from Study 1. This was done on 10‐point Likert scales with the poles labeled ‘I don’t like it at all’ and ‘I like it very much.’ Then the respondents were asked to name their favourite music (not restricted to the 25 given styles). To provide information about music preference, including attitudes as well as behavioural dimensions, they were to rate how much they agreed with the following statements: (1) ‘I like this music,’ (2) ‘I couldn’t live without this music,’ (3) ‘I regularly visit clubs or concerts to listen to this music,’ (4) ‘I just need this music,’ (5) ‘I’m a passionate listener of this music,’ (6) ‘I usually spend a lot of money to purchase this music.’ This was done on 10‐point Likert scales with the poles labeled ‘not agree at all’ and ‘completely agree.’ Following this, respondents were asked to think of their favourite music and rate how much they agreed with several statements about it (the functions of music, see Table 2). Again, 10‐point Likert scales were used with the poles labeled ‘not agree at all’ and ‘completely agree.’ Participants then had the opportunity to name additional functions of their favourite music that were not on the list. 51 Table 2 Statements about music rated by participants My favourite music... Is what I like to listen to when I’m dancing Expresses my values Supplies me with important or interesting information Enables me to better understand my thoughts and feelings Helps me feel close to others Helps me express my identity Is able to put me in a good mood Can make me feel ecstatic Can help me meet people Can help me chill and tune out Enables me to identify with the artists Is what I like to listen to as background music Helps me forget my problems and worries Energizes me Enables me to reminisce Is music I can appreciate as art Enables me to experiment with different sides of my personality Note. ‘Put me in a good mood’ and ‘make me feel ecstatic’ refer to the same functional category. Nevertheless we decided to separate them because we considered ecstasy to have its own functional quality (altered emotions and behaviour, see Baldemair, 2003). 52 Results and discussion The structure of music preferences. The 25 best‐known musical styles were rated for preference. Despite the limitations (the somewhat younger sample and the missing correlation between the importance of music and age in Study 2), the overall correspondence between the two samples seemed to be high enough to use the 25 best‐known musical styles from Study 1 in Study 2. Figure 1 shows the rank‐ordered mean preference ratings: The most favoured styles were rock and alternative, followed by classical, pop, rock’n’roll, jazz, punk, reggae, blues, and ska. Styles that were judged rather negatively were beat music, folk, and the various kinds of electronic music. This reflects and extends previous findings about the popularity of musical styles, namely, that rock, classical, and pop music are very popular styles (e.g., Behne, 1986; Mende, 1991) but that folk music does not play an important role for Germans as it does, for example, for Turkish people (Tekman & Hortacsu, 2002). Figure 1. Mean preferences for the 25 best‐known musical styles. The vertical line represents the scale mean. (N = 507). 53 Previous research has repeatedly revealed a structure of music preferences, meaning that certain musical styles are perceived or rated similarly. When investigating the functions of music and music preferences it is very useful to have such dimensions (genres), because it would be inappropriate to make assertions about music as a whole. Music of different dimensions could be experienced or used very differently. Probably the most popular model came from Rentfrow and Gosling (2003) who found four main dimensions (discussed above). However, among several studies (e.g., Behne, 1986; Bogt et al., 2003; Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003; Tekman & Hortacsu, 2002) there is no consistency regarding the number of dimensions or the appearance of single musical styles in these dimensions. Hence, there was a need to identify the preference structure for the present study, so a factor analysis was run. Applying the Kaiser criterion (eigenvalue larger than 1) as well as the scree test (see Cattell, 1966), the analysis yielded six dimensions, accounting for 64% of the variance (see Table 3). We interpreted the dimensions as reflecting formal characteristics of the music rather than attributes such as historical relatedness, age, or political orientation of the musical styles. Styles in one dimension are related with each other by specific musical characteristics. The last four dimensions we labeled using the most representative style(s) from the dimensions. This made sense because these four labels usually represent both a single style and a whole genre (e.g., rap music). The six dimensions. Sophisticated music encompasses, besides classical, styles that are commonly perceived as superior or ambitious. Electronic music contains music that is produced with computers or sound machines and is led by clear and dominant drums. Rock music includes loud, fast, and unconventional variations of rock that play with a great variety of instruments and sounds, as well as more genuine styles of rock. Music with rap embraces all styles with offbeat rhythms and a dominant voice of an MC (master of ceremony). Styles of pop music have smooth rhythms and sentimental vocals. Beat, folk, and country music styles are traditional and often have a simple structure. However, it is unclear why rock’n’roll appears in this dimension, albeit without a large factor loading. 54 Table 3 Factor loadings of the 25 musical styles on the six dimensions of music preference (genres) Style Preference dimensions (genres)
Sophisticate
Electronic Rock
Rap
Pop d Beat, folk, & country Jazz .81 Blues .77 Swing .70 Classical .69 Techno .88 Trance .87 House .77 Dance .71 Punk .77
Metal .70
Rock .67
Alternative .66
Gothic .56
Ska .54
Hip hop .73
Rap .71
Reggae .66
Pop .82 Soul .64 R ’n’ B .63 Gospel .55 Beat music .69
Folk .67
Country .67
Rock’n’roll (.46)
Note. Presented are factor loadings of .50 or larger (principal component analysis with varimax rotation). The factor loading of Rock’n’roll is in brackets because it is just .46; nevertheless it is presented to show that Rock’n’roll would belong to the last factor. N = 507. Degree of music preference. A persistent shortcoming of previous research on the functions and effects of music has been the exclusive use of ‘liked’ music, with little attention paid to the specific degree of preference. The investigation of the functions of music in people’s lives could be much more sensitive and fruitful by incorporating the magnitude of devotion to their favourite music (Behne, 1997). In the present study participants’ music preferences were rated by means of six statements. Respondents indicated how much they agreed with these statement on 10‐point Likert scales. The distribution of the means of these ratings over all respondents is shown in Figure 2. The figure presents the mean preference for each of the 507 respondents in the form of a stem‐and‐leaf plot. If, for instance, the mean preference of a respondent was 8.5, the ‘8’ would be represented in the ‘stem’ (the leftmost column of numbers) and the ‘5’ as one of the ‘leaves’ to the right of the stem. For example, Figure 2 shows that three respondents had mean preference ratings between 2.0 (two of them) and 2.3 (third row from bottom). 9 * 0000000 8 ° 555555555555666666666688888 8 * 000000000000000111111113333333333 7 ° 5555555555555555555556666666668888888888888888 7 * 000000000000000000011111111111111113333333333333333 6 ° 55555555555555566666666666666666666888888888888888888 6 * 0000000000000011111111111111111111133333333333333333333 5 ° 5555555555555666666666668888888888 5 * 00000000000000000011111111111111133333333333333333 4 ° 5555555555|66666666666688888888888888888 4 * 0000000000011111111333333333 3 ° 555556666666666668888888888888 3 * 0000000011111123333 2 ° 55555666666688888 2 * 003 1 ° 55668888 1 * 133 Figure 2. Stem and leaf plot for the distribution of respondents’ mean preference ratings. The vertical line behind 4.5 indicates the scale mean. (N = 507). As can be seen, the majority of the ratings lie above the scale mean of 4.5: Participants’ mean rating was 5.9 (SD = 1.8). However, it is remarkable that ratings vary widely, for one respondent even down to 1.1, though the ratings were of participants’ favourite music! How can this be? Obviously there are great differences in what ‘favourite music’ meant to different participants: For one person, music might be an essential and beloved part of life, whereas 55 somebody else might well get by without music at all (yet still have a favourite style). Below we will identify the functions of music as the primary candidates for explaining this high variance. The six statements used to examine musical preference can be divided into those that refer to evaluative dimensions of music preference (‘I like this music’; ‘I couldn’t live without this music’; ‘I just need this music’; ‘I’m a passionate listener of this music’) and those that have to do with behavioural dimensions (‘I regularly visit clubs or concerts to listen to this music’; ‘I usually spend a lot of money to purchase this music’). Participants agreed more with the evaluative statements than with the behavioural statements, t(502) = 31.3; p < .001; g = 1.29. (However, all statements refer to the same construct, yielding one single factor in a principal component analysis, accounting for 54% of the variance.) The functions of music. In the present study, we tried to capture all the psychological aspects of the benefit of music reported in the literature, resulting in the statements about people’s favourite music listed in Table 2. The responses to these statements (mean ratings across all respondents) are shown in Figure 3 (see the grey bars). Remarkably, nearly all statements received large values, indicating that participants could see numerous functions for their favourite music. The function most participants ascribed to their music was its capability to put them in a good mood, followed by the possibility to chill and tune out, get energized, reminisce, and perceive one’s thoughts and feelings more sensitively. Thus, the most common benefits of favourite music had to do with mood, arousal, and emotion. Appreciating music as art, which falls in the category of intellectual stimulation, also seems to be an important benefit. Functions participants rarely ascribed to their music were to provide them with important or interesting information and to allow the identification with the artists. 56 57 Mean Ratings for Functions of People´s
favourite Music
0
2
4
8
6
Is able to put me in a good mood
Can help me chill and tune out
Energizes me
Is music I can appreciate as art
Enables me to reminisce
Enables me to better understand my thoughts and feelings
Is what I like to listen to as background music
Is what I like to listen to when I’m dancing
Helps me express my identity
Expresses my values
Helps me forget my problems and worries
Helps me feel close to others
Can make me feel ecstatic
Enables me to experiment with different sides of my personality
Can help me meet people
Enables me to identify with the artists
Supplies me with important or interesting information
.00
.10
.20
.30
.40
.50
.60
Correlation (r) between Functions and Preference
Figure 3. Respondents’ ratings for the possible functions of their favourite music (grey bars) and correlations between each function and the degree of music preference (black bars). Each correlation, except for background music, is significant with p < .01. (N = 503). Because different musical styles (or genres) are used differently by their listeners (e.g., Arnett, 1991, 1992; Hakanen, 1995 Schwarz & Fouts, 2003; Thompson & Larson, 1995), they should be analyzed separately. Therefore, we assigned the respondents to the six dimensions of musical styles (see Table 3) according to the music they had named as favourite on the questionnaire. In this way, 38 participants were assigned to sophisticated music, 30 to electronic music, 218 to rock music, 37 to music with rap, 88 to pop music, and 10 to beat, folk, and country music (not all of the respondents could be assigned, due to missing data). Respondents’ mean ratings for the functions of music within the six dimensions of musical styles are shown in Table 4. Overall, the picture of the results for all styles together is well mirrored in each single genre. Mood, arousal, and emotional benefits (especially the first three statements in Table 4) are the frontrunners all around. However, there are considerable exceptions for single functions in some genres. As can be expected, listeners of sophisticated music thought it could be appreciated as art to a great degree, while it is less suitable for dancing. Listeners of electronic music viewed it as capable of being used for dancing and getting energized or into an ecstatic mood, as can be easily understood, since this music is rhythmic, loud, and invites to dance (Baldemair, 2003; Rill, 2006). Nevertheless, electronic music can be used to chill and to reminisce as can other musical styles, indicating that people deal manifoldly with their favourite music, and that it might be misleading to evaluate musical styles just by the qualitative description of their factors (e.g., electronic music belongs to the energetic and rhythmic dimension in the study of Rentfrow and Gosling [2003], which suggests that it is indeed just energetic and rhythmic and, thus, seemingly unlikely to be used to chill and reminisce). Rock music listeners saw a potential in their music to express personal values or identity. Listeners of music with rap saw a clear association of their music with dancing and movement. Listeners of beat, folk, and country music in general gave very high ratings. In particular, they thought their music could be energizing, could express their values and identity, could put them in an ecstatic mood, and let them reminisce and forget their problems. 58 59 Table 4 Mean ratings (and SD) for the functions of music within the six dimensions of musical styles Statement
Puts me in a good mood Helps me chill and tune out Energizes me
Lets me appreciate as art Enables me to reminisce Enables me to better understand my thoughts and feelings Is what I listen to as background music Is what I like to dance to Expresses my identity Expresses my values Lets me forget my problems Helps me feel close to others Makes me feel ecstatic Lets me experiment with different sides of my personality Helps me meet people Makes me identify with the artists Gives me information Preference dimensions (genres)
Electronic Rock (n = 30) (n = 218) All styles
(N = 503) Sophisticated (n = 38) Rap
(n = 37) Pop (n = 88) 8.3 (1.2)
6.8 (2.4)
6.8 (1.9)
6.7 (2.5)
6.8 (2.2)
8.0 (1.9)
6.4 (2.9)
7.2 (2.0)
5.7 (3.1)
6.0 (2.3)
7.8 (1.4)
7.2 (1.7)
6.4 (2.1)
5.7 (2.9)
6.6 (2.4)
Beat, folk, & country music (n = 10) 8.7 (0.5) 7.3 (2.2) 7.6 (1.8) 6.3 (2.9) 7.8 (1.1) 8.2 (1.3)
6.9 (2.3)
6.8 (2.0)
6.5 (2.6)
6.4 (2.5)
8.3 (1.6)
7.6 (2.1)
6.2 (2.3)
8.1 (1.5)
5.2 (2.9)
8.4 (1.0) 6.9 (2.6) 7.3 (1.8) 6.4 (2.6) 6.1 (2.7) 6.0 (2.5) 5.8 (3.0) 5.5 (2.8) 6.2 (2.4) 5.0 (3.1) 5.9 (2.3) 6.5 (2.0) 5.7 (2.8) 5.4 (2.8) 6.2 (2.3) 5.5 (2.8) 5.5 (2.9) 6.2 (2.7) 5.0 (3.1) 5.6 (3.2)
5.5 (2.7)
5.5 (2.6)
5.5 (2.6)
5.4 (2.7)
4.9 (3.2)
2.8 (2.9)
5.5 (2.3)
5.7 (2.6)
5.8 (2.3)
5.0 (3.1)
3.8 (3.1)
7.5 (2.8) 5.2 (2.4) 4.1 (2.9) 6.0 (2.4) 5.2 (2.8) 6.5 (3.1) 5.7 (3.0)
6.0 (2.6)
6.0 (2.5)
5.3 (2.7)
5.6 (2.6)
5.3 (3.0)
7.4 (2.3)
4.7 (2.9)
5.2 (2.4)
4.5 (2.9)
5.1 (2.9)
4.3 (3.2)
5.4 (3.0)
4.9 (2.7)
5.1 (2.5)
5.1 (2.4)
5.3 (2.5)
3.6 (3.0)
5.5 (3.2) 6.3 (2.8) 6.3 (2.5) 6.6 (1.8) 5.3 (2.8) 6.8 (1.8) 4.8 (3.0) 3.6 (2.8) 4.7 (3.4) 5.1 (2.9) 4.8 (3.1) 4.4 (2.9) 4.6 (3.7) 4.4 (2.8)
3.6 (3.0)
5.1 (3.0) 4.7 (2.8)
4.3 (2.8)
3.8 (2.8)
4.0 (2.7) 3.4 (2.9) 3.5 (3.3) 3.3 (3.2) 3.6 (2.8) 3.2 (2.9) 2.7 (2.5) 4.3 (3.4) 3.3 (2.8)
3.5 (3.1)
1.9 (2.3) 3.6 (2.7)
2.8 (2.8)
2.8 (2.4)
4.1 (3.0) Note. Ratings could range from 0 to 9.
At this point we could stop and claim that the largest benefits of people’s favourite music, that is, the functions with the highest ratings, must be the primary reasons for their preference. Particularly, we could suggest that people prefer a particular kind of music because it is able to put them in a good mood, calm them down, or energize them. However, this interpretation is not supported by the data, because even if people think their favourite music has several benefits, it does not mean they think it is important to make use of all of them. Thus, it is essential to analyze the detailed correlations between the functions of music and the degree of preference. The connection between the functions of music and music preference. To answer the question of why people like certain musical pieces or styles more than others, the single functions of music have to be related to the degree of preference. The real use or benefit of music is likely to be hidden behind this correlation. Respondents’ preference ratings (the mean of the six ratings for music preference for each respondent) were correlated with their ratings for each function of music. The results are shown in Figure 3 (see the black bars). As can be seen, these correlations offer a very different pattern compared to the ratings for the functions of music alone (the grey bars in Figure 3). The expression of personal identity and values is now the function most closely correlated to music preference. This is congruent with findings concerning the great importance of music in developmental issues of adolescents (e.g., Arnett, 1995; Larson, 1995; North & Hargreaves, 1999). Meeting others through music also seems to be a crucial factor for preference, thus showing that music preference is also a social phenomenon. Further, participants liked their music because it provides them with important information and allows them to identify with artists and music makers. This is surprising, given that these were functions that had been rated as being barely satisfied by the preferred music. Particularly, this shows that participants liked their music because they can get information conveyed by the music, its makers and artists, and the whole community of fans and peers around it. Thus, music is confirmed to be an important means of communication (Denski, 1992; Lull, 1992). Finally, participants liked their music because it can make them feel ecstatic, which may be related to the process of addiction and transcendent feelings; however, so far, this connection has only been analyzed for electronic music (Baldemair, 2003). Surprisingly, mood, arousal, and emotional benefits (especially the first three functions in Figure 3), which participants had rated to be satisfied very highly by their preferred music, are minimally correlated with music preference. Also surprisingly, music that is enjoyed as 60 background music was not related with preference at all. This could challenge the evidence on the interrelation of familiarity and the liking for music, as well as the relevance of the mere exposure effect for music preference (North & Hargreaves, 1997; Peretz, Gaudreau, & Bonnel, 1998). Altogether, the results, nevertheless, show that music preference is closely related to the functions it is able to serve. Now we can also answer the question of why participants’ mean preference ratings for their favourite music varied so much (Figure 2). If we take the mean of the ratings for the 17 functions of music for each respondent and correlate it with the mean of the preference ratings for each respondent we obtain r = .65 over all respondents, which indicates that the greater the overall benefit of music, the greater the degree to which it was liked. Hence, the extent to which participants devote themselves to their music or adore it seems to be a function of their personal involvement in experiences that were highly filled with or accompanied by music. This is emphasized by the high correlations between music preference and identity issues and the expression of personal values, as well as the potential of music venues to provide a place where people can meet. One could assume that when only a few such experiences exist, people’s preference for their favourite music will not be as strong. The more people make use of their music, the more they will love it. This is supported by the correlation between the mean ratings for all 17 musical functions and the ratings for the importance of music in the participants’ lives, yielding r = .41 over all respondents. Looking at the single musical genres, there are some peculiarities for certain functions. Table 5 shows the correlations between the functions of music and the degree of preference within the six dimensions of musical styles. Fans of sophisticated music liked it for its artistic (intellectual) stimulation. Further, they cherished it because they could identify with the artists who compose or perform the music. Compared to the other styles, sophisticated music was the genre for which music preference was most closely related to the possibility to get information and to experiment with different sides of one’s personality. Finally, arousal and emotional effects seemed to be rather unimportant to listeners of this genre. Participants who listened to electronic music liked it because it could energize them and put them in a good or even ecstatic mood, which is intrinsically connected with the feeling of closeness to others through long or excessive nights of dancing (Rill, 2006). Understanding one’s thoughts and feelings also has a great importance for the preference. And not least, 61 these listeners were adherents of their music because they could appreciate it as artistic expression. Listeners of rock music liked it especially because it expresses their identity and their values (see also Arnett, 1991), and they also appreciated it as artistic expression. Being energized by their music was rated highly by listeners of music with rap. Rock and rap music’s crucial capability of putting its fans in a good or ecstatic mood are consistent with other findings about the music’s mood‐enhancing and arousal‐stimulating properties and its important potential to express its listeners’ identities (e.g., Hakanen, 1995). Furthermore, just like the listeners of electronic music, participants who listened to rap liked their music because it improves their understanding of their own thoughts and feelings. For pop music listeners, their preferences were most closely related to the music’s capability to express their values and to the fact that they could identify with artists and meet other people. Remarkably, mood, arousal, and emotional functions had no important effect on the preference for pop music. For participants who listened to beat, folk, and country music, it was most important that the music could put them in a good mood and improve their understanding of their own thoughts and feelings. This is probably related to the importance of dancing, especially as a means to meet other people and to reach emotional balance. Note, however, that there were only 10 participants who preferred this genre. 62 63 Table 5 Correlations between the functions of music and the degree of preference within the six dimensions of musical styles Function of music
Puts me in a good mood Helps me chill and tune out Energizes me
Lets me appreciate as art Enables me to reminisce Enables me to better understand my thoughts and feelings Is what I listen to as background music Is what I like to dance to Expresses my identity Expresses my values Lets me forget my problems Helps me feel close to others Makes me feel ecstatic Lets me experiment with different sides of my personality Helps me meet people Makes me identify with the artists Gives me information Preference dimensions (genres)
Electronic Rock Rap
(n = 30) (n = 218) (n = 36) All styles
(N = 503) Sophisticated
(n = 38) Pop (n = 89) .32
.20
.23
.44
.28
.39
.42
.18
.08
.48
.22
.30
.49
.15
.48
.60
.42
.60
.27
.27
.19
.53
.32
.38
.50
.39
.66
.47
.41
.59
.16
.06
‐.06
.45
.22
.33
Beat, folk, & country (n = 10) .72 .45 .30 .19 .45 .58 .01
‐.13
.25
‐.04
.32
‐.04
.28 .14
.51
.46
.33
.40
.14
.34
.34
.26
.47
.40
.40
.40
.44
.55
.09
.59
.47
.34
.40
.10
.70
.48
.51
.49
.20
.38
.53
.23
.37
.39 .64 .23 .23 .05 .47
.39
.47
.55
.65
.41
.44
.37
.61
.41
.35
.40
.35 .29 .50
.44
.54
.59
.64
.38
.49
.42
.50
.50
.42
.45
.53 .38 .42
.57
.45
.44
.48
.39
‐.04 We assumed that the functions of music are causal for the degree of music preference. Thus, as a last step in the analysis, we should be interested in the functions that especially account for the variance of music preference. For this purpose, we ran a stepwise regression analysis with the mean preference ratings as the criterion and the 17 functions as predictors. (For this we used the default mode in SPSS that orders predictors by the amount of variance explained. The selection process terminates if the inclusion of a further regression coefficient fails to reach a significant increment in the F value at an α = .05.) The analysis yielded a model with seven functions that together account for 47% of the variance of music preference (see Table 6). Here again, it can be seen that the most important functions deal with the expression of identity and values as well as with the opportunity to meet other people through music ‐ functions that can be seen as related to idiosyncratic experiences with music. In addition, participants seemed to have loved their music because it could put them in a good or even ecstatic mood. And not least, they seemed to have loved it because they appreciated it as artistic expression and as a means of obtaining information. Still, a substantial amount of variance is unaccounted for in this model. There must be other, possibly idiosyncratic, factors that have an influence on music preference. One might especially think here of factors that modify music preference in an ‘external’ way: music that is familiar because one’s parents listened to it or because one has learned to play an instrument with this music; music that was listened to by some friends or was heard in music education, and so on. These are factors that are important for the development of music preference but do not serve a specific important function. In addition, music preference also depends on situational factors that might influence the importance of specific functions of music (e.g., North & Hargreaves, 1996). And not least, there may be influences on music preference of which people are not explicitly aware. 64 Table 6 The seven most important functions of music as a result of a stepwise regression analysis with music preference as dependent variable (p < .05 for all regression coefficients). Function of music β t Expresses my identity .17 4.01 Helps me meet people .19 4.65 Makes me feel ecstatic .20 4.89 Expresses my values .13 2.75 Lets me appreciate as art .13 3.31 Puts me in a good mood .14 3.78 Gives me information .10 2.27 Note. The model accounts for 47% of the variance of music preference. Further functions of music. Respondents had the opportunity to list additional functions they thought their favourite music might have. Remarkably, 363 participants gave an answer, although nearly all of these answers could be subsumed under the 17 functions from Table 2. However, the detailed and individual answers show the importance of music for the respondents, and some of the functions mentioned might be worthy of investigation in future research: Some respondents thought their music led to creativity, inspiration, and alternative thinking, or allowed them to create imaginary worlds. Others could see the expression of freedom through music. A frequent motif was the quest for authenticity when enjoying music. A few respondents emphasized religious issues and glorification. And some viewed their music to be useful for aggression management. Very frequently participants stated that their favourite music was simply the one they grew up with, and they saw it as a companion. Although this is a clear and comprehensible reason for music preference, it had not been added to the questionnaire because it is not a musical function in itself. The mere presence of certain music in a person’s development does not necessarily explain why it is liked (although effects related to mere exposure might play some role). Rather, this effect might be due to functions that are closely related to certain experiences in development that were formative for music preference (e.g., coping with problems, meeting others, identifying with artists; see Larson, 1995; Schwarz & Fouts, 2003; 65 and also Holbrook & Schindler, 1989). However, further research is needed to investigate such external reasons (e.g., growing up with music, performing music, affiliation to groups that are related with certain music) for music preference. Probably the external reasons mainly define the kind of music we like (e.g., rock or jazz), while the internal reasons, that is, the functions of music, mainly define the degree to which we prefer it. 66 General Discussion The main purpose of this paper was to shed light on the reasons leading to weaker or stronger preferences for certain kinds of music. The first important result is that the functions of participants’ favourite music, overall, were highly related to the degree to which they preferred it. The functions participants rated highly as attributable to their favourite music were the capability to influence or regulate mood and arousal as well as intellectual stimulation or artistic expression. However, the second important result shows that these functions might not be a reliable or sufficient basis for the specific degree of music preference; that is, functions that are perceived to be served best through people’s favourite music need not be those with the greatest influence on the specific degree of preference. The results show that music preferences do not just mirror the respective functions. They suggest that the most important reasons why people like their music (obtained by means of the correlation between single functions and the degree of preference, over all respondents) are its capability to express their identity and their values and its ability to bring people together. Surprisingly, further important reasons for preference seem to be the identification with artists and the information received through music, although these are functions participants mentioned rather infrequently. On the other side, the highly rated mood and arousal functions were not as important for preference as one would expect. Moreover, music that is often listened to as background music could be thought to affect preference through a mere exposure effect, yet such an effect was not observed in the present study. Although the functions of music overall seem to play an important role in the development of music preference, these results indicate a considerable difference between the functions people attribute to their favourite music and the functions that seem to have an impact on music preference. There are many functions people attribute to their favourite music, but this does not mean that these are the reasons why they like it. For instance, the great importance of functions that are clearly related to idiosyncratic issues such as the expression of identity and values, the experimentation with alternative sides of one’s personality, and the understanding of thoughts and feelings suggests a very individual music use. Such private uses have already been shown to be important for developmental issues and certain experiences of adolescents (e.g., Arnett, 1995; Larson, 1995). Behne (1997, p. 154) concluded ‘that individual characteristics of music appreciation must be interpreted in the context of individual history as 67 individual ways of coping with life.’ The specific way in which the degree of music preference is related to the number or intensity of individual experiences could be an interesting issue for further research (see also the results regarding music involvement; Gabrielsson, 1991, 2001; Kleinen, 1994). An important aspect of the relationship between functions and music preference might also be hidden behind the different patterns of function–preference relations among the genres, indicating that people who love different musical styles or genres have different reasons for their feelings. For example, fans of electronic music benefit more than others from the fact that they can dance to their music and get into an ecstatic state. In contrast, listeners of sophisticated music benefit most from the identification with the artists who compose and perform this music. These findings show that it is inappropriate to treat listeners of certain musical styles in a stereotypical way. There are always numerous reasons for people’s preferences and, thus, it is difficult to talk about the typical heavy metal listener or the typical rap listener. Similarly, the individual ways people use their music seem to be numerous and complex. Hence, a list of functions of music that have to be rated, as was used here, may be of limited expressiveness. This is also suggested by the multitude of respondents’ answers to the open question for further functions of their music. Qualitative methods may be appropriate to go into detail here in the future. A further limitation of the present studies might be that functions and preference could be confounded when people think of short‐term functions of music—for example, getting in a good mood when listening to music might be hard to distinguish from the preference for that music in a specific situation. To investigate short‐term and long‐term functions of music and how they are related to preference in detail is also an interesting task for future research. The present results suggest that a theoretical framework for music preference should deal with the two questions we started from, referring to the type and the degree of music preference. As discussed at the beginning of this article, the type of preference is commonly explained by characteristics of the music, familiarity and repeated listening, personality, and innate aural preferences. This seems to be the basis for understanding why different people like different musical styles. Now we are also able to add some potential factors that possibly make these preferences increase (or decrease)—the functions of music, especially functions that deal with private or idiosyncratic experiences. In addition, a theoretical framework should 68 also include social and cultural influences on the relationship between functions and preference (see, e.g., Hargreaves & North, 1997). If we understand how individual experiences with music can serve different important functions and lead to strong music preference it should be possible to specifically use these effects in education and music therapy. It seems that people can learn or improve the effective use of music, and it seems promising to provide the benefits of music to as many people as possible. 69 4 Paper 3: What makes us like Music? The following paper was written together with Peter Sedlmeier (Chemnitz University of Technology, Department of Psychology). It will be submitted for publication to a peer‐
reviewed psychological journal. The paper is presented here in its original form ready for submission, so that some repetitions of the introduction above in the paper were inevitable. 70 What makes us like Music? Music has been accompanying us for at least 35000 years (Kraft, 2007), but we still are far from having total insight into the mechanisms which make us like music. However, during the past decades research in musicology, psychology, and the neurosciences has revealed many insights about the factors that may be involved in the development of music preference. The aim of the present paper is to consider all these factors together and investigate their relative contribution to the development of music preference. Our research is related to the fundamental question why we listen to music at all; and we believe that any theory of music preference should take this question into account. Music plays an important role in most people’s life, in their private and social activities; and so we agree with Rentfrow and Gosling (2003, p. 1236) “that an activity that consumes so much time and resources and that is a key component of so many social situations warrants the attention of mainstream social and personality psychologists.” The question why different people like different music and to a different extent has received much attention from research especially in the last two decades, which has revealed several factors that play a role in the development of music preference and will be discussed in the course of this paper. However, to date there is still a lack of sound and empirically tested models concerning the relative importance of these single factors and their structural relations. To our knowledge, there is only one model that directly focuses on the question of whether one likes or dislikes a given piece of music. This model was developed by LeBlanc (1982) more than 25 years ago. LeBlanc assumed that the decision to accept or reject a piece of music is “based upon the interaction of input information and the characteristics of the listener” (p. 29). The input information he divides into variables of the musical environment (such as complexity, referential meaning, performance quality) and variables of the cultural environment (such as peers, family, educators, incidental conditioning). The listener is characterized by variables such as musical ability, personality, sex, ethnic group, or maturation. All input variables are thought to interact with each other and can change over time. How they contribute to the preference decision depends on the characteristics of the listener and―in addition―on repeated listening of the musical stimulus. LeBlanc’s model was a fruitful attempt to collect the great variety of variables that are involved in the preference decision and to assemble them in a hierarchical system (the input 71 information must reach a certain level to gain the listener’s attention, they are then filtered by the listener’s characteristics who finally takes a decision). Therefore the model is a reasonable basis for research on music preference. However, it does not attempt to describe the development of music preference, rather it “symbolizes a decision‐making process at one point in time” (p. 40). Thus, it does not explain why one listens to music and why one selects a certain piece of music or a musical style or genre, it merely explains the mechanism why a given piece or style is liked or not. Hence, the whole model does hardly refer to the question why we listen to music at all. This is especially evident in the fact that it nearly ignores the functions that music can have for the listener (such as mood management or self‐socialization, which we will refer to later). A more recent approach is the reciprocal response model by Hargreaves, Miell, and McDonald (2005; see also North & Hargreaves, 2008). This model does not focus on music preference, but the liking for a piece of music or a musical style is just one part of the affective responses to music—besides cognitive and physiological responses—and does also appear as an immediate (short‐term) or a medium (long‐term) preference pattern of the listener. These responses are thought to depend on musical characteristics, the listening situation or context, and the listener―as was the case for the music preference decision in LeBlanc’s (1982) model. The reciprocal response model does hardly deal with the functions of music listening either and thus is “certainly limited in focusing on only ‘like‐dislike’ reactions to music […] and (probably) only immediate responses to music rather than longer‐term aspects of musical taste” (North & Hargreaves, 2008, p. 125). Both models discussed can be used as a good starting point, but a conclusive theory of music preference should go beyond these models―which rather refer to a short‐term decision process―and provide an additional module that refers to the foundation of music listening by giving an explanation of why people actually listen to music at all, and why they prefer a specific musical piece or style. One reason why there is not yet a conclusive theory of music preference may be the fact that there is still no general agreement about how to define the character of music preference in general. One possibility is to consider preference as a single aesthetic reaction to music, i.e., preference is the final phenomenon that has to be explained by a list of determining factors. For example, Konečni’s (1979) cognitive emotional model for the effects of exposure to aesthetic stimuli puts the preference for a stimulus at the end of a judgment process which is 72 influenced by attentional, cognitive, and affective processes. With respect to music, the hierarchical model of LeBlanc (1982) puts the preference at the end of a decision making process as well. On the other hand, music preference can be seen as a part of reactions to music which in turn can further determine other aspects of music listening (e.g., someone who likes a piece of music will be more aroused by it than someone who dislikes it). The reciprocal response model (Hargreaves et al., 2005) is built on this assumption on an interaction of music preference and other aspects such as cognitive, emotional, or physiological responses. In addition, the models discussed describe the relationships between input variables or aspects of responses to music as interactive, and this makes it hard for researchers to examine such complex structures. Accordingly, one has to agree with Finnäs (1989a, p. 44) that “the nature of musical preference and its conceptual and empirical relationship to other types of reactions to music, i.e., interest, mood responses and intrapersonal reactions, quality judgments, aesthetic experiences, etc., should be further analyzed.” In this paper, we would like to argue that for a preparation of a conclusive theory of music preference it is necessary to know the relative importance of the factors that refer to the question why we actually listen to music and why we like a certain piece or style. We will now discuss findings on those factors that have been shown to play a role in the development of music preference, have a look at theories about the foundation of music listening that may help to understand the impact of these factors, and finally present our own results from two empirical studies. What factors can influence music preference? Research in the psychology of music as well as in nearly all other disciplines of psychology―especially personality, developmental, and social psychology―has incorporated music for several concerns and thereby produced many findings about factors that have an influence on the development of music preference. Cognitive factors: communication and self‐reflection. In general, cognitive factors refer to an instrumental use of music. We know that music is able to serve several functions and we also know how to use music in certain situations for certain purposes. According to the uses‐and‐
gratifications approach (e.g., Arnett, 1995; Larson, 1995) we use music which is associated with our personality, problems, needs, and beliefs. Many studies identified a list of cognitive functions of music listening that can be categorized as either referring to 73 communication―such as the expression of personal values or a person’s identity, to get important information, or to get in contact with others―or referring to self‐reflection―such as the possibility to reminisce or to appreciate the music as art (Arnett, 1995; Behne, 1997; Finnäs, 1989b; Larson, 1995; Schäfer & Sedlmeier, in press; Schwartz & Fouts, 2003; von Georgi, Grant, von Georgi & Gebhardt, 2006). Especially adolescents use music for self‐
socialization, i.e., they see their problems or important issues of their life (such as rejected love) mirrored and possibly solved in music (Schwartz & Fouts, 2003) or they may try on alternative sides of their personality by means of different music (Markus & Nurius, 1986). Emotional factors. Many music psychologists would agree that eliciting emotions is the most important reason of why we listen to music at all. It can express, induce, change, strengthen, or mitigate emotions, and this regulatory function of music also refers to an instrumental use. Accordingly, lots of studies provided strong evidence that people use music to get in a good mood, to express their emotions, to relax, or to induce and manage emotions (Hakanen, 1995; Juslin & Laukka, 2004; Larson, 1995; Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007; von Georgi et al., 2006; Waterman, 1996; Zillmann, 1988). Physiological arousal. Strong bodily experiences while listening to music have received very much attention from music psychology research, especially in the last two decades. The core of such “chills” (Panksepp, 1995), “thrills” (Goldstein, 1980), “peak emotional experiences” (Sloboda, 1991), or “strong experiences with music” (Gabrielsson, 2001) is a special physiological arousal, which is perceived as pleasant in most cases. These experiences can be perceived as a shudder, tingling, or tickling, a feeling of hair standing on end, goose bumps, sudden changes in mood or emotion, sighing, palpitation, tension of the jaw and facial muscles, a feeling of lump in the throat, or incipient weeping (Goldstein, 1980), or as feelings of warmth/coldness, muscular relaxation/tension, changed breathing and heat race (Gabrielsson, 2001). Besides such subjective experiences, numerous studies revealed changes in measurable variables such as heart rate, skin conductance level, respiration, blood pressure, and cerebral blood flow when people listen to pleasant music (Bernardi, Porta & Sleight, 2006; Blood & Zatorre, 2001; Craig, 2005; Gomez & Danuser, 2007; Grewe, Nagel, Kopiez & Altenmüller, 2007a, 2007b; Krumhansl, 1997; Peretti, 1975; Rickard, 2004; Standley, 1991; Vanderark & Ely, 1993). Not least, music is obviously closely tied to arousal while dancing. Again, the pleasantness of music‐induced chills and increased levels of arousal may be deliberately used by the listener. 74 Cultural and social factors. Similar to the expression of a person’s individual identity, music may also be used to express the identity and the personality of other persons (Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003, 2006) as well as to express the identity and the values of a culture or country, respectively (Christenson & Roberts, 1998; Frith, 1996; Merriam, 1964). Accordingly, especially adolescents use music to define their own (sub)culture (Lull, 1992; Rill, 2006). Repetition and familiarity. Although the effect of repeated listening and familiarity on music preference and the underlying mechanisms are not yet clear and call for further research, the majority of the studies conducted on this issue points at a positive linear relationship between frequency of listening and liking (see Finnäs, 1989a; North & Hargreaves, 2008; Witvliet & Vrana, 2007). Hence, when people often listen to music as background music, recognize the music their parents or friends listen to, or perform music on their own in a certain musical style, they may be expected to like that music more (e.g., Peretz, Gaudreau, & Bonnel, 1998). Characteristics of the music. Obviously, features of music such as tempo, rhythm, pitch, harmony, and loudness are crucial for the perception and the appreciation of musical selections (for an overview, see Finnäs, 1989a; North & Hargreaves, 2008). These features have received much attention and they are already incorporated in the models of LeBlanc (1982) and Hargreaves at al. (2005) discussed above. In the present paper we refrained from taking musical characteristics into account again for two reasons. First, they are inherent in the music: they just describe the structure and appearance of the music itself, which means that they are inappropriate to contribute to an answer to the question why we listen to music at all. And second, our focus in the present paper is on the level of musical genres, but the musical characteristics are hard to compare across different genres, rather they vary within genres, subgenres, or even single pieces. The listener. Not least, the listener himself is characterized by variables that can have an influence on his or her music preference, such as age, gender, music experience, and personality. Past research revealed that the importance of music decreases over the life span (Holbrook & Schindler, 1989; Mende, 1991) whereas preference for more complex music such as classical music appears to increase with age (Hargreaves & Castell, 1987). Studies on the influence of gender on music preference revealed that males tend to prefer louder music than females (Staum & Brotons, 2000), males prefer music with an exaggerated bass more than females (McCrown, Keiser, Mulhearn & Williamson, 1997), females prefer softer, more romantic and dance‐oriented types of music such as pop or rhythm and blues (Christenson & 75 Peterson, 1988; see also Maidlow & Bruce, 1999) and they are more sensitive to musical tempo than males (Webster & Weir, 2005). Some personality characteristics such as sensation seeking (e.g., Arnett, 1991; McNamara & Ballard, 1999), conservatism (Lynxwiler & Gay, 2000), extraversion (Delsing, Bogt, Engels & Meeus, 2008; Rawlings & Ciancarelli, 1997), or openness to experiences (Delsing et al., 2008; Dollinger, 1993; Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003) were found to be correlated with music preferences, indicating that certain types of music may reflect their listener’s personality (see Schwarz & Fouts, 2003). However, these individual and personality characteristics are also not capable to explain why we listen to music and why we like one piece more than another―because they do not vary across different musical pieces or genres. How can the factors influencing music preference be explained? Since we claimed that a model of music preference should be based on considerations about why we listen to music at all, this calls for a look at theoretical assumptions and hypotheses that may help to explain why the above mentioned factors have an influence on music preference. Evolutionary assumptions about the foundation of music listening. As we have seen, the majority of the factors influencing music preference―cognitive, emotional, physiological, and cultural factors―can be referred to as functions of music. Thus, it is not amazing that there exist hypotheses which attempt to explain how such benefit of music listening may have evolved in human evolution. One function of music may have been to display biological fitness (Miller, 2000). Someone who could afford the luxury to make music had to be healthy and successful. Hence, in the process of sexual selection, music was also selected and became more and more sophisticated. Another common hypothesis is that music is a kind of social cement (Dunbar, 1998). It has been—and is still—a useful instrument for the social bonding of families, larger groups, or even whole nations in the shape of lullabies, work and war songs, and national anthems. Music may have been helpful in synchronizing common activities, transporting information, and strengthening social relations. Thus, together with dance, music may “serve as the ‘biotechnology’ of group formation” (Bicknell, 2007, p. 17), highly similar to the function of speech. Especially in the relationship between mothers and infants, musical sound (such as lullabies or motherese) is thought to be crucial for the bonding and to soothe babies, in that the singing of the mother can regulate the infant’s arousal level (Falk, 2004; Shenfield, Trehub & Nakata, 2003; Trehub, 2003). A similar hypothesis states that the core function of music or musical sounds was to induce emotions which in turn could convey 76 important information and ignite certain activities that were crucial for surviving (Panksepp & Bernatzky, 2002). These authors (p. 139) suggest that in social creatures like ourselves, whose ancestors lived in arboreal environments where sound was one of the most effective ways to coordinate cohesive group activities, reinforce social bonds, resolve animosities, and to establish stable hierarchies of submission and dominance, there could have been a premium on being able to communicate shades of emotional meaning by the melodic character (prosody) of emitted sounds. For example, the separation call (a sound produced by a dam if it gets separated from its cub) may be an emotional musical sound that is thought to induce chills, which in turn guides reunion behavior (Panksepp, 1995; Panksepp & Bernatzky, 2002). From these evolutionary points of view, there are many factors that can be considered to play a role in the development of music preference. First of all, communicative aspects should be important, such as the possibility to get in contact with others, getting information through the music, establishing a social group, or expressing one’s own beliefs or values. Second, the music should elicit socially relevant emotions, such as good or ecstatic mood (helpful in social or religious dances or rituals), or calm mood (to relieve aggression). To give rise to such emotions and to synchronize social activities or drive ritual dances, music should also elicit physiological arousal (see Kreutz, Ott, Teichmann, Osawa, & Vaitl, 2008; North & Hargreaves, 1997; Scherer & Zentner, 2001; Schubert, 2004). Especially one form of arousal, so called “chills”, are thought to be a special physiological and emotional response that was important for social bonding (Bicknell, 2007; Panksepp, 1995; Panksepp & Bernatzky, 2002). Moreover, one might speculate that the benefit of music for group cohesion can make music an important instrument to express the identity of a nation or the beliefs and values of cultures. And not least, when music is thought to serve all these functions it should be music of familiar content and structure, because individuals must learn how to use music in these respects. Hence, repetition and familiarity should be important factors as well. Additional explanations about the foundation of music listening. Besides the evolutionary explanations of music listening there are also explanations that do not refer to evolution.. Of course, all functions of music that may be rooted in an evolutionary benefit can fulfill several functions even today because people have simply learned how to use music in their life. For 77 example, the power of music to induce positive emotions may be a reason why one listens to a piece of music again and again. We already mentioned the uses‐and‐gratifications approach that describes the use of music in people’s everyday life. Accordingly, familiarity and repetition may increase the liking for a piece of music because it is the basis for learning its positive effects. In addition, the preference for musical pieces may become greater due to mere exposure effect after repeated listening (Szpunar, Schellenberg & Pliner, 2004; Thompson, Balkwill & Vernescu, 2000; Witvliet & Vrana, 2007). Especially, the link between music preference and arousal has been addressed in a psychological hypothesis (Berlyne, 1971, 1974; Konečni, 1982): music induces different levels of arousal―according to its complexity, loudness, or tempo―and people appreciate music which helps to balance their arousal at a comfortable level. Not least, another explanation why people engage in musical activities is the fact that it sweetens and structures our leisure time and thereby makes us happy and increases our well‐
being (Hills & Argyle, 1998; Pinker, 1997). According to this explanation, music emerged “by accident” without having any evolutionary benefit; and humans just learned that it can have positive effects. This assumption, however, lacks an idea about how music can lead to such positive effects. In sum, the variety of factors influencing music preference can be roughly divided into functions―referring to cognitive, emotional, and cultural factors―and additional factors that increase the impact of the functions―referring to repetition and familiarity as well as arousal and activation (whereas arousal and activation may also be appreciated as functions of music in itself, for example, in form of pleasant chill experiences). Aim of the present research Despite the considerably amount of research on the factors that influence music preference, there has not been, to the best of our knowledge, any empirical investigation on the relative importance of these factors that shed light on their relative contribution in the development of music preference. In this paper we make a first step towards such empirically derived model. We will start with the analysis of simple relations, assuming that music preference is a result of determining factors (e.g., Konečni, 1979; LeBlanc, 1982). And, to keep matters tractable, we will first investigate the unidirectional influences of these factors on music preference, without considering interaction or feedback effects from music preference towards the efficiency of 78 these factors. Thereby, we operate on the level of musical styles/genres rather than specific pieces because this strategy is best suitable for investigating how people respond to different music stimuli (see Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003). We will take into account the factors we collected above, which are thought to be different for a person when listening to musical pieces of different styles or genres: cognitive, emotional, and cultural factors, arousal and activation, repetition and familiarity (and, in addition, variables characterizing the listener). Note that we use the term music preference for both the kind (referring to the musical style or genre) and the strength of music preferences. We believe that investigating the strength of music preference is closer to the question why we listen to music at all rather than investigating just which musical genre one likes, because a very low degree of music preference may indicate low or even no involvement in music listening at all. To investigate the relation between potentially influential factors and music preference we searched for variance not only across different people but also across different musical styles for each listener. The first study we conducted under controlled conditions in the lab, the second study was conducted online with a less selective sample of participants. 79 Study 1 – A laboratory study on the factors determining music preference The aim of this study was a systematic comparison of the relative influences of different factors on music preference. In contrast to past research that looked only on isolated factors or specific selections thereof, our attempt was to bring together all relevant factors in order to improve our understanding of the formation of music preference. Method Participants. Fifty‐three students from Chemnitz University of Technology (43 females, 10 males) aged 18 to 37 (M = 22.3; SD = 3.5) took part in the study for course credit. Many of them (31) played an instrument, for an average of 4.6 years (SD = 5.1); and 24 sung in a choir. Material and procedure. The potentially influential factors on music preference and the respective questions that the respondents should respond to are shown in the left column of Table 1. The questions were derived from the aforementioned studies about music preference; and many of them stem from the Schäfer and Sedlmeier (in press) study. To ask for music preference we used six different items, also shown in Table 1. Since we are interested in the variables that covary with people’s preference for musical pieces it was necessary to provide them with different pieces which were likely to produce different preference ratings. The most appropriate way to induce such variance is to have people listen to one piece of each genre. We used the six genres reported in Schäfer and Sedlmeier (in press), which were found by factor analysis: classical, rock, pop, electro, rap, and beat. For each genre a prototypical piece was identified by means of a brief survey at German radio stations. These stations are often associated with a certain musical genre. We asked the respective DJs and they provided us with representative selections, for each genre. These six pieces were: Scherzo from Symphony No. 2, op. 36 (Ludwig van Beethoven) as classical, Love is gone (David Guetta) as electro, Dani California (Red Hot Chilli Peppers) as rock, Gold Digger (Kanye West feat. Jamie Foxx) as rap, All good Things (Nelly Furtado) as pop, and Santa Maria (Roland Kaiser) as beat. In addition, all respondents were to bring along one of their favorite pieces of music, which was also used in the study. This approach with “sounding preferences” was used to ensure that respondents were put as closely as possible into a natural listening situation. 80 81 Table 1 Items used in Studies 1 and 2 and reliabilities (Cronbach’s Alpha) of music preference and the factors influencing music preference Items Preference I like this music. I could not live without this music. I spend a lot of money to purchase this music. I am a passionate listener of this music. I often visit concerts or discos to listen to this music. I just need this music. Arousal and activation This music causes shivers down the spine/goose bumps. This music causes a feeling of warmth. This music causes a feeling of coldness. This music causes emotional tension. This music causes bodily tension. This music activates me. This music drives me to move. This music I like to listen to when I want to dance. This music puts me into a comfortable or optimal state of arousal. Communication This music can express my personal values. This music provides me with interesting or important information This music can help me feeling close to others. This music can express my identity. This music enables me to identify with its performers or artists. With this music I can express my emotions. This music helps me to get in contact with others. Self‐reflection This music helps me to perceive my thoughts and feelings more intensely. This music helps me to forget my problems and worries. This music enables me to reminisce. This music I can appreciate as art. This music helps me to try on different forms of my personality. Mood and emotion This music can put me in a good mood. This music can help me to relax and tune out. This music can put me in an ecstatic mood. This music elicits positive or comfortable emotions. With this music I can keep a certain mood. The emotions this music elicits are very specific and easy to classify. Culture This music is important for our culture. This music can express and convey our culture very well. This music can express the identity of our country. This music says something about the personality of the people who like it. Repetition This music was the one my parents used to hear. This music is the one my friends use to hear. This music I often listen to as background music. With this music I learned to play an instrument or I play in a band or in an orchestra. Reliability (Cronbach’s α) Study 1 Study 2
.96 .87 .94 .91 .93 .82 .56 .94 .85 .94 .89 .93 .83 .65 Participants’ favorite piece was copied to the experimental computer before a session began. People were seated in a quiet lab room with a computer screen in front of them. They were told that they had to listen to a selection of musical pieces that are representative for different musical genres. Then they could start seven musical pieces (6 chosen by the radio station DJs and the favorite piece they brought along with them), which were played in full length via headphones at a subject‐preferred volume. The order of these pieces was randomized across participants. After listening to each piece they filled in a questionnaire where they were to respond to the assertions shown in Table 1 on ten point Likert scales (1 – I not agree at all; 10 – I totally agree). At the end of the session they filled in a demographic questionnaire with additional items concerning music experiences and habits. The procedure took about 50 minutes. Results and Discussion The respondents reported that they usually listened to music for about 3 hours a day (SD = 2.1). On ten point Likert‐type scales they rated their musicality (M = 6.8; SD = 3.0) and the importance of music in their life (M = 9.0; SD = 1.3) as high. The pieces they brought along as their favorite music were mostly rock or pop. Relative contribution of potential factors. For the following analyses the mean of the six items for music preference (see Table 1) represents the “strength of music preference” for each respondent. The rank ordered mean preferences for the six musical styles are shown in the left half of Figure 1. As one might expect, preference for the favorite music is highest; apart from that, rock and pop music are generally liked best. Since all factors consisted of several items that were pooled by face validity, reliability analyses were run; Cronbach’s alpha (α) coefficients are shown in the second column of Table 1. All factors show a reasonable reliability, with one exception: repetition and familiarity. However, all items deal with repetition and familiarity in some way and, in addition, there are only four items in this factor, so that we decided against making any changes. Note, however, that the smaller reliability may affect the accuracy of the results in the analysis for this factor. For the multiple regression analysis we did not use single items but took the factors as predictors for the strength of music preference. To obtain the relevant scores for each factor, we calculated the means of all items that defined that factor. In the analysis, each respondent appears seven times (namely for each piece) in the data set, yielding 53 x 7 = 371 data points. 82 83 This procedure seems justified if there are no level effects between participants. We controlled for this by the calculation of z‐scores for each participant’s ratings through the seven musical styles. Figure 1. Means (and standard deviations) for the strength of preference for different musical styles in Studies 1 (N = 53) and 2 (N = 210). The results of the regression analysis are shown in Table 2. The communicative functions of music appear to be the most important predictor of music preference, followed by self‐
reflection and arousal and activation. Smaller effects appear for emotion as well as for repetition and familiarity. Cultural functions have the smallest—and even negative—effect. All factors—except cultural functions—are significant predictors of music preference and the whole model accounts for a considerable amount of variance (91%). These results bare two interesting facts. First, there is not a single factor which could be considered as the main cause for music preference. Rather, all of the variables considered here—with one exception—have a substantial effect. Second, nonetheless, the overall pattern indicates that cognitive functions of music—to use music as a means for communication as well as for self‐reflection—play the most important role in the development of music preference. This supports the finding of the great number of studies showing that especially adolescents use music to this end more than any other medium of communicating and expressing themselves (e.g., Arnett, 1995; Larson, 1995; Schwartz & Fouts, 2003). That the highest effect was obtained for cognitive functions also indicates that this benefit of music may be the main reason why people get tied to “their” music. Thus, communication and self‐
reflection may be the key concepts to understand why one develops a strong preference for music that can be used in this respect. In addition, according to Panksepp and Bernatzky (2002), music may also guide and synchronize common social activities and transport information via the emotions it elicits; and this notion would be supported by the (smaller, though significant) impact of the activating and arousing function of music and the importance of mood and emotion. The relatively high importance of arousal and activation might also indicate that the modulation of arousal as well as strong experiences (such as chills) people probably had with their favorite music are essential for the development of preference (Gabrielsson, 2001; Rickard, 2004). Not least, music which is to convey information has to be known and familiar. Music’s potential to express the identity of one’s own culture or the personality of other persons does not seem to contribute to music preference, however. Hence, this factor may be excluded from the list of determining factors for music preference. Table 2 Predictors for the strength of preference for different musical pieces over all respondents in Study 1 (R² = .91) Beta p Communication .32 <.001 Self‐reflection .21 <.001 Arousal and activation .21 <.001 Mood and emotion .16 <.001 Repetition and familiarity .13 <.001 Culture ‐.04 .052 Individual data and musical habits. Since in this study, respondents could bring along their favorite music we were able to investigate which additional variables influence the strength of their preference for this music. For this analysis we only used their responses to the piece they brought along to the lab. We correlated the individual data (age and gender) and musical habits with the strength of preference for people’s favorite music (see Table 3). That the 84 85 importance of music decreases with age is a long known fact (e.g., Holbrook & Schindler, 1989; Mende, 1991) and it is supported by a large negative correlation between age and the strength of preference in our data. The strength of preference, however, is not related to gender. Among musical habits, the role music plays in people’s life is highly correlated with preference: when they rate music as important in their life and when they rate themselves as musical then they will also like their favorite music very much. This is also tied to longer music consumption per day. However, playing an instrument or singing in a choir does not increase the preference for participants’ favorite music. Table 3 Correlations between descriptive data and the strength of preference for respondents’ favorite music r p Importance of music .44 .001 Musicality .38 .006 Instrument played .01 .97 Time played .16 .26 Sung in choir ‐.06 .65 Time listening per day .30 .03 Gender ‐.06 .68 Age ‐.29 .04 Study 2 – An online survey on the factors determining music preference Study 1 revealed a pattern of the relative contribution of different factors for music preference over different musical styles. The purpose of the second study was to validate this finding outside the laboratory with a broader sample of participants who were not only psychology students. Method Participants. By means of mailing lists of German universities (e‐mail distributor systems where students of particular faculties are registered) 210 participants were recruited for taking part in the study (133 females, 77 males), 91 percent of whom were students from different universities, the others were friends and relatives of the initial respondents. Participants’ age ranged from 19 to 59 (M = 23.9, SD = 5.2), 145 of them played an instrument, for an average of 6.3 years (SD = 5.29), and 110 sung in a choir. They received no compensation for taking part; however, they could leave their e‐mail address and were informed about the results of the study after a few weeks. Material and Procedure. The same questionnaires were used as in Study 1; they were implemented in an online survey using the Lime Survey software (http://www.limesurvey.org), and the URL was distributed via the mailing lists. Participants were instructed to listen to a set of musical pieces that are representative for different musical styles/genres and to answer a questionnaire on their responses to each piece. They were provided with the musical pieces by means of flash files included in the web page, which they could play as often as wanted. While or after listening they could fill in the questionnaire for the respective piece. The next piece and the respective questionnaire were presented on the next web screen, and so on. The order in which the pieces were presented was not as easily to randomize as in the laboratory; instead there were just two orders (one reversed) which were changed after about 130 persons had responded to the survey. Respondents were to indicate whether the playback of the pieces had been successful on their computer; all responded positively to this question. The procedure was thought to take no more than 50 minutes. Because it is obviously not possible to include people’s favorite music pieces in the survey there is an important difference between Study 1 and Study 2: while respondents in the 86 former had to evaluate seven musical pieces including their favorite one, respondents in the latter just had to evaluate six pieces not including their favorite music. However, they were to indicate to which of the six musical styles their favorite music would belong. Results and Discussion In most cases, participants’ favorite music was rock (n = 107) or pop music (n = 27). They listened to music 3.8 hours a day (SD = 3.1) and rated their musicality (M = 6.5; SD = 2.3) and the importance of music in their life (M = 8.7; SD = 1.6) similar to the participants in Study 1. Relative contribution of potential factors. The distribution of music preferences across the different musical styles (see the right half of Figure 1) shows a pattern similar to that from Study 1. However, preferences over all are somewhat weaker and classical music is more liked in this sample, which is likely due to the somewhat higher mean age in this study and the greater proportion of musicians (seven percent of the respondents in this survey studied music or musicology). As can be seen in the very right column of Table 1, the factors have the same reliabilities as in Study 1, and again the reliability for the repetition and familiarity factor is quite low, so that this factor should be considered with caution. We again used the means of the six factors thought to determine the strength of preference as predictors in a multiple regression analysis, after z‐standardization of respondents’ ratings. In this analysis, too, the predictors accounted for a huge amount of the variance in music preference (88%). The results reveal a somewhat different picture than in Study 1 (compare Tables 4 and 2). Communication and self‐reflection remain important factors in determining music preference. However, the importance of arousal and activation as well as repetition and familiarity is higher than in Study 1: Participants in the current study tend to prefer music that they have listened to repeatedly and that is able to activate them. Repetition and arousal might be especially important factors for people who dance a lot or experience strong physiological reactions such as shivers down the spine or goose bumps (see also North & Hargreaves, 1996). The size of the impact of emotional functions and cultural functions is consistent with the findings in Study 1. Study 2 provides an additional piece of evidence for the assumption that cultural functions of music do not contribute to music preference. 87 88 Table 4 Predictors for the strength of preference for different musical pieces over all respondents in Study 2 (R² = .88) Beta p Communication .25 <.001 Self‐reflection .19 <.001 Arousal and activation .30 <.001 Mood and emotion .14 <.001 Repetition and familiarity .17 <.001 Culture ‐.02 .093 General Discussion Factors determining music preference. We started this paper with the suggestion that contemporary theories and models on the development of music preference should take into account two additional issues that have been widely neglected in past research. First, the strength of music preference should be considered as equally important as the type of preference (which style or genre one likes), because this strength can vary considerably and it may be a more sensitive indicator for the real bonding of listeners to “their” music. Second, models of the development of music preference (e.g., Hargreaves et al., 2005; LeBlanc, 1982) should incorporate references to the question why we listen to music at all, i.e., such models should make connections to the evolutionary foundation and use of music. Both aspects are thought to enhance a complete understanding of music preference. We have argued here that the use of music is the one entity that has an influence on music preference and is also clearly linked to the question why humans listen to music at all: one may decide to listen to a particular music because one knows about the particular functions this music can fulfill in a particular situation. We have further argued that the functions of music can vary over different musical styles, because different people simply have made different experiences with music of different styles and thus have learned to associate particular functions with particular music. In contrast to the existing models on music preference by Hargreaves et al. (2005) and LeBlanc (1982) we have suggested that such models should not only explain why one decides for or against a given piece of music, but that they should also be able to explain why one starts listening to music and why one selects a particular style to hear. The first question (why listen to music) we aimed to address by the functions of music; and the second question (the selection of musical styles) we aimed to address by investigating the factors that vary across different musical styles, namely all the functions of music and repeated listening. The purpose of the findings on both questions is to make an initial step towards an empirically derived model of the factors that determine the strength of people’s music preference (a model which, of course, has to include the existing findings on the influence of the music’s characteristics, the listener’s characteristics, and the listening context as well). Our results provide us with a clear picture of the relative importance of different factors that determine the strength of music preference. In either case, the ability of music to convey information about people’s identity—who they are, what they feel—and to enhance social bonding seems to be the central key in understanding strong preferences for musical styles. If 89 people evaluate different styles including their favorite music (Study 1) they see another crucial role of music in providing a medium for self‐reflection. These two cognitive aspects support the notion that music is actively and consciously “used” to reach certain personal aims. Arousal and activation through music is also an important determinant of preference, whereas emotional functions as well as repetition and familiarity do not have such great impact on the strength of musical preferences. But, nonetheless, repetition and familiarity may be prerequisites for the impact of the more important functions. The expression of cultural identity does not seem to contribute substantially to the development of music preference. Apart from these factors, people who like their music more are younger, consider music as more important for their life and themselves as more musical. When people’s favorite music is not incorporated in the different styles they have to evaluate (Study 2), the picture changes somewhat, in that physiological activation becomes more important. This could mean that the preference for musical styles or pieces that are not one’s favorite is much more affected by the degree of (positive) arousal music can elicit. This aspect may be important in social activities such as dancing or meeting new people in places where music is present (e.g., in discotheques). Moreover, this result may reflect the great importance of strong physiological responses to music (such as chills) for music appreciation. All other factors—communication, self‐reflection, repetition and familiarity, and emotion—reveal a similar pattern as in Study 1. In any event, the results from both studies support the hypothesis that communication is a key function in music listening and therefore might be the main reason why we listen to music at all. This finding is also grist to the mill of the theoreticians who suggest that the social‐
communicative functions of music are the most important because this was the initial benefit in the evolution of music. Particularly if we combine this hypothesis with the notion that musical sounds may have transported the socially relevant information by the emotions they elicit (Panksepp & Bernatzky, 2002), our results would support such a theoretical model at least with respect to the finding that emotional factors have also shown to be important. Accordingly, arousal and activation are necessary preconditions for the induction of emotions and for the synchronization of common activities; and music should be known (repetition and familiarity) to serve as a useful transporter of relevant information (since musical meaning is not innate). Another important factor besides communication and arousal/activation—
especially when people’s favorite music is involved in their judgment—is self‐reflection: the 90 use of music to reminisce, to be on one’s own with the music, to explore and try on alternative shades of one’s personality, or just to enjoy the sounds. Communicative and self‐reflective functions of music are obviously very self‐centered functions; they deal with people’s identity, with their values and beliefs, hopes and fears. That these issues are very important for the bonding with music is consistent with previous findings about the individual use of music (e.g., Hargreaves & North, 1999; Schwartz & Fouts, 2003) and it may be the key to understand how music preference emerges and develops over time. As Frith (1996, p. 275) puts it: We all hear the music we like as something special, as something that defies the mundane, takes us ‘out of ourselves’, puts us somewhere else. ‘Our music’ is, from this perspective, special not just with reference to other music but, more important, to the rest of life. It is this sense of specialness (the way in which music seems to make possible a new kind of self‐recognition, to free us from everyday routines, from the social expectations with which we are encumbered) that is the key to our musical value judgments. ‘Transcendence’ is as much part of the popular as of the serious music aesthetic, but in pop transcendence articulates not music’s independence of social forces but a kind of alternative experience of them. However, music does not seem to be important for conveying cultural identity; its small effect is even slightly negative, what might be due to the fact that the music which is related most with the German culture is German beat music (Volksmusik), and this is mostly not favored among adolescents. Our results provide initial empirical evidence for the relative importance of the factors determining the strength of music preferences. They suggest that there is not a single main factor which determines the strength of preference; rather there is an interplay of several aspects which all play their role in the development of music preferences. Apart from these factors—that refer to possible reasons of music listening in general—the strength of people’s preference for their favorite music is determined by their age, the importance of music in their life and their self rated musicality. Limitations and future research. The results reported here are a first step towards a comprehensive model of music preferences and call for further research in several respects. First, the results should be replicated with a broader sample of respondents of different age groups. It is probable that the importance of different aspects of music listening changes 91 across life span. Younger and older people should therefore be investigated as well. Especially older people may provide insights in how they used music in their life, since past research (Schulten, 2000) suggested that older people are able to recognize the role music played in particular stages of their life very clearly and deliberately. Second, we used the means of different items for each factor in our approach which means a clear reduction of information. Future research may concentrate on a variety of single aspects and investigate their single relationships to music preference in order to develop a more fine‐grained picture of determining factors. Such an approach should be extended and enriched by qualitative investigations which may find additional aspects that are important for music appreciation and were not included yet. Such qualitative approaches could also address another problem we face with the kind of research we used here: when people are just asked to respond to a list of items they will do this according to what comes to their mind first. However, there may be some usually unconscious and automatic processes, which people do not have conscious access to and which therefore cannot be verbalized by filling a questionnaire. Moreover, a comprehensive model of music preference has to take into account additional variables that contribute to the understanding of individual preferences (as it was initiated in the models of LeBlanc, 1982, or Hargreaves et al., 2005). And the variety of these variables has to be understood in their various interrelations as well. Our results reported here revealed that people like music if it is able to serve particular functions. For one person, different musical styles serve particular functions to a different extent—but the question remains, then, why not everyone likes the same music. There is obviously a great impact of the actual situation on which music one wants to listen to (e.g., North & Hargreaves, 1996, 2000); and of course also the actual mood or constitution of a person can change the situational preference for certain kinds of music (Vorderer & Schramm, 2004). Not least, additional characteristics of the individual, which go beyond age and gender may moderate the impact of determining factors for music preference. Finally, all these variables taken together could lead to a model of their structural relations (i.e., by means of structural equation modeling). Such model on the origin and development of music preferences may help to understand why humans listen to music for thousands of years all over the world and see it as one of the most pleasing activities in their life. 92 5 Summary and Conclusion Most people love music; and most people have a favorite musical style that they prefer over other styles. The aim of the present work was to find an answer to the question of why this is the case. Many researchers and theorists have collected empirical evidence and made theoretical considerations on how people interact with music and what the psychological mechanisms in this interaction might be. Music preference is one part of this research endeavor and it is still one of the most puzzling and least understood issues because it is linked to the question of why humans listen to music at all—a question which is hard to investigate since the origin of music is undoubtedly rooted in evolution. Nonetheless, research was successful in identifying a list of variables that influence the decision on accepting a piece of music as pleasant or rejecting it as unpleasant: characteristics of the music, characteristics of the listener, the listening situation, and the use of music. But how these variables interact and form the music preference of a person over time has been investigated very little. As already mentioned, there are only the two approaches of Hargreaves et al. (2005) and LeBlanc (1982) that integrated influential variables on a single preference decision at one point in time. But these models cannot explain why people actually decide to listen to music and why they usually decide to listen to a particular musical style. It was claimed here that a theory on the development of music preference should go beyond these existing models by integrating assumptions about the reasons for music listening. The reasons for music listening were found in the use of music—people start to listen to music because the music can fulfill certain functions for them (e.g., to get in a pleasant emotional state) and they choose music which is able to do so best. Thus, the research reported here was done to clarify the role of the functions of music for the development of music preference: What are the relevant functions of music? How are they related to music preference quantitatively? What is the relative importance of several factors—including the functions of music—in the formation of music preference? First, it was necessary to complete the list of the functions of music that can have an influence on music preference. Of most of the functions this causal influence was known: cognitive, emotional, 93 and cultural functions. However, it was not clear whether changes in physiological arousal which go along with listening to preferred music can also be a cause of the music’s pleasantness or whether altered states of arousal are only an effect of music listening in every case. Two studies were conducted to investigate the relation between physiological arousal and music preference. The first study confirmed the fact that listening to preferred music goes along with increased arousal—measured as subjective experiences (such as shivers/goose bumps) as well as measured by objective parameters (such as heart rate). Moreover, subjective and objective measures correlated substantially which means that subjective measures of physiological arousal appear to be a valid indicator of a person’s actual arousal. This systematic quantitative correlation between subjective and objective measures was shown so far for the first time. The second study investigated the causal relation between arousal and music preference. Higher levels of arousal were induced in a group of participants and led to higher preference judgments for an unknown neutral piece of music than were given by another group of participants without arousal induction. This result confirmed the hypothesis that altered arousal can have an effect on music preference. As was discussed in the first paper, such a causal effect is reasonable in light of the hypothesis that arousal due to musical sound may have been helpful in human evolution to synchronize common social activities (such as hunting) and to communicate by means of simple emotional messages transported by these sounds. On the other hand, the positive effect of arousal on preference may also be due to psychological mechanisms: pleasant experiences such as dancing and meeting other people are often associated with music, and of course, intensely pleasurable experiences like chills or strong emotions stimulate reward circuits in the human brain. The positive effect of arousal on music preference was limited to music of the lounge/ambient genre, however. It was not present for classical music. The explanation offered was the greater complexity of classical music which may undercut the effect of induced arousal because more complex music demands greater cognitive capacity. This may have consumed participants’ entire attention so that they were not able to process the altered physiological arousal. Nonetheless, arousal was shown to have the potency to increase music preference and therefore can be added to the list of influencing variables. 94 So far, it was known from past research that the variety of functions which music can have emerge in some way from listening to one’s favorite music. For instance, the use of music to express one’s identity or to regulate one’s emotions was a prominent finding in several studies. However, these studies investigated the relation between the functions of music and the liking for that music only qualitatively: they asked for the functions that are associated with music in general or with people’s favorite music. They thereby were based on the assumption that music, which fulfills particular functions for the listeners, will become their favorite music over time in some way. But this suggestion has never been subject to quantitative studies. How do the functions of music contribute to the preference for a person’s favorite music? To answer this question, two studies were conducted that correlated the degree to which particular functions are fulfilled by people’s favorite music with the strength of preference for this music. The strength of preference was thereby thought to reflect the actual involvement of an individual in music. It turned out that the functions that are served most through music are not the functions that contribute most to the strength of preference. Rather we see two different patterns. The functions that are fulfilled most by people’s favorite music are to put them in a good mood, to help them to chill and tune out, to provide them artistic stimulation, to energize them, or to enable them to reminisce. These functions mainly refer to mood and arousal management as well as to self‐reflective issues. However, functions which are most closely related to music preference are the expression of the person‘s identity and values, the possibility to get in contact with others, to identify with the artists, or to get important information. These functions refer to a principally communicative use of music. Hence, it appears that the functions that can be fulfilled well by music are not necessarily the functions that lead to a special preference for music! Rather, the benefit of music for communication seems to be the most important reason why people get attached to music. Overall, these studies revealed insights into the quantitative association between the functions of music and music preference; and they also suggest that the question for the strength of music preference is a fruitful and useful approach in the investigation of music preference in contrast to the simpler question of which musical style or genre one prefers. Since it had turned out that the functions of music can be related quantitatively to the preference of people’s favorite music and provided an interesting pattern of their importance (the studies of Paper 2) and that there is a hopefully complete list of factors which have an influence of music preference, including physiological arousal (the studies of Paper 1), it was time to ask for the relative importance of the different variables that determine the 95 preferences for musical styles in general. This question was addressed in the two studies reported in Paper 3. The main purpose of these studies was to investigate variables that change over different musical styles and that are rooted in assumptions about why we listen to music at all—in order to integrate these variables into the existing models of music preference. These variables were the functions of music, which have been neglected in the existing models to date: cognitive functions (communication and self‐reflection), emotional functions, cultural functions, and physiological functions. Repetition and familiarity was added because it was thought to enhance the impact of the functions. All these variables were investigated as determinants of music preference in a lab study and in an online survey. Both studies revealed that the cognitive functions of music may be the key in the formation of preference for different styles of music. The ability of music to be used for communication and self‐reflection seems to be the most important determinant for a strong preference. (The high importance of communication also confirms the result which was found for people’s favorite music in Paper 2.) Another very important function is arousal and activation, which may reflect the pleasantness of intense emotions and pleasurable physiological experiences while listening to music. In addition, the high importance of arousal/activation and communication together may be taken as evidence for the assumption that the foundation of music listening has to do with the ability of music or musical sounds to guide and synchronize common activities and to convey important information (maybe mediated by its emotional content) as well as to be a means for the regulation of arousal (aggression) and the bonding of group members or mother and child (e.g., separation call, motherese). Emotional functions do not seem to be as important as cognitive and physiological functions, but seem to have a significant influence on preference as well. The same is true for repetition and familiarity. The liking for music may increase due to repeated listening to a certain extent. On the other hand, repeated listening may just enhance the impact of the functions of music, because they largely have to be learned over time. The cultural functions of music appear to be unimportant for music preference and may not be incorporated in future models on the development of music preference. These results may help to better understand the foundation of music listening and provide us with an entity which is related to the question why we listen to music and why we turn to a specific musical style, namely the functions of music that should be incorporated into the existing models of music preference. If these models were enriched by the functions of music 96 97 they would explain why people decide to listen to music, why they decide to listen to a particular style in a particular situation, why they appreciate a particular piece while they listen to it, and how the preference for a single piece or a whole genre will develop over time. Such a conclusive model would be an intriguing milestone in the history of music psychology and it would help to integrate the huge amount of research findings collected over the last decades. It would as well enable educators and music therapists to better understand which variables determine the appreciation of musical stimuli and how these variables can be used to provide a benefit for the listener. The integration of all these variables will end up in a very complex structural model because the variety of relations between the influences and responses are known to be interactive and act on different levels. Large studies with a great number of participants will be needed to test such a model empirically. The studies presented here may provide an important part in solving this puzzle and may help to enable the creation of such model as a next step. However, there is still some need to support the present findings in further studies with larger samples and with participants other than mainly students in different age groups. Especially the effects found for arousal on music preference (Paper 1) should be replicated with more respondents and using more diverse musical selections from different styles. Moreover, there is a need for qualitative studies that may reveal in more detail how the variety of variables interact in the formation of music preference for single individuals and whether there are still other important variables that have been neglected so far. Because a conclusive theory of music preference should integrate experimental research and field research to reach a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon; and “it is surprizing and a real shame that there is so little research on the application of experimental aesthetics to everyday musical preference” (North & Hargreaves, 2008, p. 96). In many texts cited here, a recurring topic is that knowing more about the sense and meaning of music means knowing more about who we are—because making and listening to music is ubiquitous all around the world, for each person in each society, for thousands of years; and for most people today it is one of the most pleasing activities. The role of music in human development and maybe in the development of everyone of us seems to be enormous. In the words of Alan Merriam (1964, p. 227): “Music is clearly indispensable to the proper promulgation of the activities that constitute a society; it is a universal human behavior—
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report, autonomic, facial EMG, and startle responses across experimental contexts. Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering, 58(12‐B), 6832. Witvliet, C. V. O., & Vrana, 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 & Emotion, 21, 3‐25. Yamamoto, M., Shinobu, N., & Shimizu, J. (2007). Positive musical effects on two types of negative stressful conditions. Psychology of Music, 35, 249‐275. Yarbrough, C., Charboneau, M., & Wapnick, J. (1977). Music as reinforcement for correct math and attending in ability assigned math classes. Journal of Music Therapy, 14, 77‐88. Zentner, M., Grandjean, D., & Scherer, K. R. (2008). Emotions evoked by the sound of music: Characterization, classification, and measurement. Emotion, 8, 494‐521. Zillmann, D. (1988). Mood management: Using entertainment to full advantage. In L. Donohew, H. E. Sypher & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Communication, social cognition, and affect (pp. 147‐171). Hillsdale, England: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Zuckerman, M. (2000). Sensation seeking. In A. E. Kazdin (Ed.), Encyclopedia of psychology (Vol. 7, pp. 225‐227). New York: Oxford University Press. 117 Curriculum Vitae Dipl.‐Psych. Thomas Schäfer Adresse dienstlich: Technische Universität Chemnitz Institut für Psychologie Lehrstuhl für Forschungsmethodik und Evaluation Wilhelm‐Raabe‐Straße 43 09120 Chemnitz Telefon: 0371 – 531 35568 E‐Mail: [email protected]‐chemnitz.de Adresse privat: Agricolastraße 63, 09112 Chemnitz Geboren am: 24.12.1978 in Rochlitz Familienstand: ledig Staatsbürgerschaft: deutsch 118 Praktische Tätigkeiten •
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Seit Oktober 2005 2007 – 2008 2006 – 2007 Nov. 2004 – März 2005 Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Lehrstuhl für Forschungsmethodik und Evaluation, TU Chemnitz (Prof. Dr. Peter Sedlmeier): Lehre im Bereich Statistik und Methodenlehre, Forschung im Bereich Musikpsychologie Freie Mitarbeit im Reha‐Zentrum Zwickau: Durchführung von Kursen zu Stressmanagement und Gedächtnistraining, sowie Entspannungsverfahren (PMR) Dozent an der Anerkannten Schulgesellschaft ASG Annaberg für das Fach Psychosomatik Freie Mitarbeit am Institut für angewandte Psychologie und Sozialpädagogik (Familienforum) Neunkirchen: Förderung und Therapie bei Aufmerksamkeits‐ und Hyperaktivitätsstörungen •
2000 – 2004 Studentische Hilfskraft am Lehrstuhl für Allgemeine und Arbeitspsychologie, TU Chemnitz (Prof. Dr. Josef Krems) im Projekt „Neue Medien im Alltag“ •
2002 und 2003 Zwei Praktika am Institut für angewandte Psychologie und Sozialpädagogik (Familienforum) Neunkirchen Diplomstudium Psychologie an der Technischen Universität Chemnitz, mit dem Wahlpflichtfach Philosophie Abschluss Diplom‐Psychologe (Note 1,2) Diplomarbeit mit dem Titel „Experimentelle Untersuchung zum Effekt unterschiedlicher Vorabinformationen auf Wissenserwerb und Navigation in Hypertexten“ am Lehrstuhl für Allgemeine und Arbeitspsychologie, TU Chemnitz, Prof. Dr. Josef Krems Diplomstudium Architektur an der Hochschule für Technik, Wirtschaft und Kultur Leipzig (FH) Studium •
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1992 – 1997 Juli 1997 Besuch des Johann‐Mathesius‐Gymnasiums in Rochlitz Abschluss Abitur (Note 1,4) Publikationen Schäfer, T. & Sedlmeier, P. (in press). From the functions of music to music preference. Psychology of Music. Waniek, J. & Schäfer, T. (in press). The role of domain and system knowledge on text comprehension and information search in hypermedia. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia. Schäfer, T. & Horlitz, T. (2007). Jenseits des Dualismus. Gehirn&Geist, 12, S. 69. Schäfer, T. (2007). Die Identität der Psychologie ‐ Symbiose aus Erklären und Verstehen. e‐
journal philosophie der psychologie, 8; online verfügbar: www.jp.philo.at Tagungsbeiträge 25. Tagung der deutschen Gesellschaft für Musikpsychologie, Hannover 2008: Schäfer, T., Sedlmeier, P., & Tipandjan, A. Musikpräferenzen im Kulturvergleich – die Funktionen von Musik und ihr Beitrag zur Entwicklung von Musikpräferenz in Indien und Deutschland XXIX. International Congress of Psychology, Berlin 2008: Schäfer, T. & Sedlmeier, P. Arousal and Music Preference: Does the Body move the Soul? 49. Tagung experimentell arbeitender Psychologen, Trier 2007: Schäfer, T. & Sedlmeier, P. Die Stärke von Musikpräferenzen und ihr Ursprung in den Funktionen der Musik 45. Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychologie, Nürnberg 2006: Schäfer, T. & Sedlmeier, P. Die individuelle Nutzung von Musik 46. Tagung experimentell arbeitender Psychologen, Gießen 2004: Schäfer, T. & Waniek, J. Der Effekt unterschiedlicher Vorabinformationen auf Wissenserwerb und Navigation in Hypertexten 120 Wissenschaftliche Interessen und Schwerpunkte •
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Musikpsychologie: Musikpräferenz und Nutzen von Musik Wissenschaftstheorie und wissenschaftliche Forschungsmethoden •
Allgemeine Psychologie: Neuro‐ und Kognitionswissenschaften, Freier Wille, Körper‐
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