Abstract
Music is appreciated for emotional reasons across cultures, but knowledge on the cross-cultural similarities and differences of music-evoked emotions is still sparse. The current study compared music-evoked emotions in Finland and in India, contextualizing them within the perceived psychological functionality of music in an individualistic versus collectivistic culture. Participants ( N = 230) answered an online survey on music-evoked emotions and related personal meanings. A mixed-method approach using factor analysis and qualitative content analysis was used to identify the concepts for cross-cultural comparison. Results show that both cultures value music for positive emotional experiences, but the prevalence of more detailed emotional nuances and underlying meanings is distinctively different. The highest-scoring emotion factor for Finns was Power-Empowerment while for Indians it was Peaceful-Transcendence. For Finns, the personal relevance of music was distinctively related to self-enhancement, self-reflective insights, and self-expression, while for Indians the relevance was particularly related to using music as a mood management tool for reaching positive, relaxed, and motivated affective states. Both cultures found music important for experiencing social connection. The results partly reflect the individualistic-collectivistic dimensionality of cultures and emphasize the relevance of contextualizing music psychological knowledge of music-evoked emotions in individuals’ culturally bound meaning-making processes.
Highlights
Background and aimEveryday music listening is colored by emotions that vary in their shades from peacefulness to awe, excitement, and vigor (Juslin & Laukka, 2004; Zentner, Grandjean, & Scherer, 2008).Psychology of Music 00(0)Listeners do perceive these emotions in music and genuinely experience them (Lundqvist, Carlsson, Hilmersson, & Juslin, 2009; Schubert, 2013)
Pleasure, Comfort, Joy, Peacefulness, and Relaxation. Emotions prevalent for both included Happy, Joy, Enjoyment, and Pleasure, while differences were observed in Freedom, Empowerment, Moved, and Nostalgia being prevalent for Finns and Fondness, Comfort, Peacefulness and Relaxation being prevalent for Indians
The current study addressed the cross-cultural similarities and differences of music listening experiences from the perspective of music-evoked emotions and the related personal meanings and functions
Summary
Everyday music listening is colored by emotions that vary in their shades from peacefulness to awe, excitement, and vigor (Juslin & Laukka, 2004; Zentner, Grandjean, & Scherer, 2008). Listeners do perceive these emotions in music and genuinely experience them (Lundqvist, Carlsson, Hilmersson, & Juslin, 2009; Schubert, 2013). Emotional experiences to music are rooted in the evolutionary and embodied meanings of sounds and vocalizations (Reybrouck & Eerola, 2017). They contain both aesthetic and utilitarian emotions, produced by a variety of production rules that range from embodied synchronization to cognitive appraisals (Scherer, 2004). Research is only beginning to explore the interrelations of the complex set of different factors influencing musical emotions (Eerola & Vuoskoski, 2013)
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