Music’s impact on the visual perception of emotional dyadic interactions

Abstract

Research showing that emotions can be recognized in point-light displays of human dyadic interactions was extended in the current study by investigating the impact of music on the perception of normal and exaggerated expressions of happiness, contentedness, sadness and anger in such visual stimuli. Sixteen musically untrained participants viewed short video clips of these emotion portrayals, each presented with emotionally compatible (e.g., happy music accompanies a happy interaction) and emotionally incompatible piano music (e.g., sad music accompanies a happy interaction). It was hypothesized that music will increase the accuracy of emotion judgements in displays where auditory and visual information is compatible relative to displays with incompatible audio-visual information. A two-dimensional emotion space was used to record participants’ judgements of emotion in only the visual stimuli. Results indicated that music affected the accuracy of emotion judgements. Happiness and sadness were perceived more accurately in compatible than in incompatible conditions, while the opposite was the case for contentedness. Anger was perceived accurately in all conditions. Exaggerated expressions of sadness, which were evaluated more accurately than normal expressions of sadness, were also found to be resistant to the music. These findings can be interpreted in the light of previous research demonstrating that music’s cross-modal impact depends on the degree of emotional ambiguity in the visual display. More generally, the results demonstrate that the perception of emotions in biological motion can be affected by music.