Exploring emotional responses to computationally-created music.

Abstract

In two experiments, we explored whether individuals could be induced to believe that musical works written by human composers were computer-created and whether this perception would in turn influence their emotional and evaluative responses to the music. Results revealed that a clear majority of participants could be convinced that classical music selections that were actually written by expert human composers and performed by a computer were instead entirely computer-generated. Additionally, whereas there were reliable differences in participants’ affective responses to expressively happy versus sad songs, these responses were not reliably influenced by whether they believed the music selections presented had been composed and/or performed by the computer rather than by a human being. This held true even for individuals assessed as higher in music empathy as well as those with more extensive musical training. Together, the results suggest that emotional responses to music do not require, nor are they necessarily moderated in their valence or intensity by empathy with a perceived human agent.