Sex and emotional responses to classical music.

Abstract

Musical selections have been found to evoke definite types of emotional and mood change reactions from listeners (Hevner, 1934; Capurso, 1948; Shatin, 1970). Comparisons of the responses of men and women to music, however, seem very limited. Breger ( 1970) compared the affective responses of men and women to music and other complex sounds and found that men and women rated sounds similarly in pleasantness. Since men typically score lower on musical aptitude tests and generally show less interest in and esthetic appreciation for music (Anastasi, 1958) than women it seems likely that these differences might lead to a sex difference in emotional responsiveness to music. The influence of sex differences and familiarity with music on positive vs negative emotional responses to selections of classical music was examined. Thirty men and 30 women who were not music majors but were enrolled in a music literature course served as Ss. Each was asked to indicate how familiar they were with classical music and to indicate whether each of four recorded musical selections played for them was srimulating, triumphant, and or nor (from Capurso, 1948). Ss marked their responses during a 2-min. waiting period between the playing of each of the selections. The numbers of reports of stimulating, triumphant, and joyous were tabulated, as was the distribution of self-reported familiarity with classical music. Chi square analysis of the distribution of positive responses ro the music as a function of sex and familiarity indicated reliable difference~ from a chance distribution of positive responses (X2 = 14.37, df = 2, p < .Dl). Men reported less familiarity with classical music than did women, and women reported more positive responses to music than did men. However, men with low familiarity with music reported more positive responses than men with high familiarity with music while women with low familiarity with music reported fewer positive responses than women with high familiarity with music. The data suggest that, while sex and familiarity seem to affect positive responses to music, there may also be an interaction between sex and familiarity.