Emotional Responses to Music: Implicit and Explicit Effects in Listeners and Performers

Abstract

Three experiments that focus on explicit and implicit response effects when listening to or performing music are reported. Experiment 1 involved musically trained and untrained subjects listening to 5 musical extracts. Quantitative and qualitative measures were adopted in the form of a number of emotional responses per bar, and interview data focusing upon how subjects felt during each extract. Experiment 2 involved 8 of the 30 subjects from experiment 1 listening to two of the same five extracts, approximately one year after the earlier study. Similar measures were recorded. Experiment 3 involved four trained performers, paired as two duets. The same quantitative and qualitative measures were recorded from their performances of two duet pieces. Data from all three experiments indicated few systematic patterns. Trained and untrained listeners differed in their qualitative responses, but not quantitatively in their emotional responses. Both explicit and implicit effects were evident in the qualitative data, with variation in both being greatest amongst untrained listeners. Performers exhibited both explicit and implicit effects. Explicit effects were more evident when referring to their own performance, and implicit effects were more evident in responses to the performance of the other instrumentalist. The qualitative data are discussed with reference to contemporary cognitive theories of emotion, context and congruency effects in memory, and traditional views of the emotional response to music.