Music and Emotion-Recognition: The Music Experience Factor

Abstract

Music is a powerful influencer. The ways in which people interpret music are determinative of how the music makes an individual feel and thus, how it influences them. The interpretation of emotion in music has been well-studied in musicology. This study seeks to investigate a specific under-researched factor of emotion recognition in music: the music experience of an individual. Utilizing the study design and musical clips laid out in Erola and Vuskoski, 10 clips of music were played for individuals with varying types and amounts of music experience. Participants ranked happiness, sadness, tenderness, fear, and anger, on a scale of 1-9. The data collected from the musicians' rankings in this study was compared with the nonmusicians in the Erola and Vuoskoski study. It was found that there was a statistical difference in how musicians versus nonmusicians ranked emotions in the same music clips. Further, the emotion of sadness was the most similarly ranked between the two groups. Differences between the types and amounts of music experience of participants were also analyzed but generally remained at the same degree of difference between musicians and nonmusicians.