Liking and identifying emotionally expressive music: age and gender differences

Adults and children 5, 8, and 11 years of age listened to short excerpts of unfamiliar music that sounded happy, scary, peaceful, or sad. Listeners initially rated how much they liked each excerpt. They subsequently made a forced-choice judgment about the emotion that each excerpt conveyed. Identification accuracy was higher for young girls than for young boys, but both genders reached adult-like levels by age 11. High-arousal emotions (happiness and fear) were better identified than low-arousal emotions (peacefulness and sadness), and this advantage was exaggerated among younger children. Whereas children of all ages preferred excerpts depicting high-arousal emotions, adults favored excerpts depicting positive emotions (happiness and peacefulness). A preference for positive emotions over negative emotions was also evident among females of all ages. As identification accuracy improved, liking for positively valenced music increased among 5- and 8-year-olds but decreased among 11-year-olds.     

Liking and memory for musical stimuli as a function of exposure

Three experiments examined changes in liking and memory for music as a function of number of previous exposures, the ecological validity of the music, and whether the exposure phase required focused or incidental listening. After incidental listening, liking ratings were higher for music heard more often in the exposure phase and this association was stronger as ecological validity increased. After focused listening, liking ratings followed an inverted U-shaped function of exposure for the most ecologically valid stimuli (initial increases followed by decreases), but this curvilinear function was attenuated or nonexistent for less valid stimuli. In general, recognition improved as a function of previous exposure for focused listeners, but the effect was attenuated or absent for incidental listeners.     

Liking for evaluators: Consistency and self-esteem theories

Consistency and self-esteem theories make contrasting predictions about the relationship between a person's self-evaluation and his liking for an evaluator. When approval is given for a trait different from one on which the target has a clear self-evaluation, consistency theory does not logically apply, and self-esteem effects are predicted. When approval is given for a trait on which self-evaluation is clear, consistency needs are expected to influence the target's response. A laboratory experiment confirmed these predictions, and it was argued that reconciliation of the two theories is possible by careful articulation of the situations to which each applies.     

Effects of music on memory for text

Previous research has suggested that the use of song can facilitate recall of text. This study examined the effect of repetition of a melody across verses, familiarity with the melody, rhythm, and other structural processing hypotheses to explain this phenomenon. Two experiments were conducted, each with 100 participants recruited from undergraduate Psychology programs (44 men, 156 women, M age = 28.5 yr., SD = 9.4). In Exp. 1, participants learned a four-verse ballad in one of five encoding conditions (familiar melody, unfamiliar melody, unknown rhythm, known rhythm, and spoken). Exp. 2 assessed the effect of familiarity in rhythm-only conditions and of pre-exposure with a previously unfamiliar melody. Measures taken were number of verbatim words recalled and number of lines produced with correct syllabic structure. Analysis indicated that rhythm, with or without musical accompaniment, can facilitate recall of text, suggesting that rhythm may provide a schematic frame to which text can be attached. Similarly, familiarity with the rhythm or melody facilitated recall. Findings are discussed in terms of integration and dual-processing theories.     

Equity and Self-Interest: Effects on Perceptions of Intent,Liking, and Desire to Reciprocate

In two experiments subjects were given information about how one person in a dyadic interaction had allocated outcomes to self and the other participant. The interaction was depicted as competitive in Experiment 1 and noncompetitive in Experiment 2. Subjects made judgments about the allocator's intentions and the recipient's liking for the allocator and desire to reciprocate outcome distribution. Subjects were instructed to respond toward the recipient in either an objective or empathic manner. Subjects logically utilized disparity in outcome distribution in determining the allocator's intent to benefit him/herself. Overall, equitable distributions led to the highest judgments of recipient liking; as inequity increased, ratings about liking decreased. However, empathic subjects in Experiment 2 showed different patterns of rated recipient liking as a function of the direction of the inequity. Judgments about intent to reciprocate were also affected by the orientation of the observer. The results were discussed with particular reference to differential thresholds for advantageous versus disadvantageous inequity. In addition, mathematical models describing the dependent measures were derived and validated, providing results consistent with past research utilizing ratio models of judgment within the context of equity theory.     

Action Perception and Outcome Valence: Effects on Children's Inferences of Intentionality and Moral and Liking Judgments

The influences of different action-outcome scenarios on children's evaluative judgments and inferences of outcome intentionality were assessed. One hundred forty-five kindergartners, 2nd graders, and 4th graders heard 4 stories about child actors who engaged in 1 action or 3 equifinal actions and caused a positive or negative outcome. The stories made no mention of the actors' anticipated outcome so that we could assess the children's inferences of whether the actors wanted and had tried to cause the outcome. Children also rated their liking for the actors and the actors' morality. Children's moral and liking judgments were not significantly differentiated by action condition. However, actors who caused positive outcomes received favorable liking and moral judgments, and actors who caused negative outcomes received neutral liking and moral judgments. Children's intentionality inferences varied by the actors' actions and were moderated by outcome valence. The authors discuss children's apparent use of the valence rule when inferring intentionality and their reluctance to judge harshly actors who cause negative outcomes when not privy to the actors' intentions.     

Effects of timbre and tempo change on memory for music

We investigated the effects of different encoding tasks and of manipulations of two supposedly surface parameters of music on implicit and explicit memory for tunes. In two experiments, participants were first asked to either categorize instrument or judge familiarity of 40 unfamiliar short tunes. Subsequently, participants were asked to give explicit and implicit memory ratings for a list of 80 tunes, which included 40 previously heard. Half of the 40 previously heard tunes differed in timbre (Experiment 1) or tempo (Experiment 2) in comparison with the first exposure. A third experiment compared similarity ratings of the tunes that varied in timbre or tempo. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) results suggest first that the encoding task made no difference for either memory mode. Secondly, timbre and tempo change both impaired explicit memory, whereas tempo change additionally made implicit tune recognition worse. Results are discussed in the context of implicit memory for nonsemantic materials and the possible differences in timbre and tempo in musical representations.     

Liking for name predicts happiness: A behavioral genetic analysis

Research has established that humans tend to view their names in a positive light and liking for one’s name is positively associated with subjective well-being. In this study, the genetic basis of individual difference in liking for one’s name was examined in a survey of 304 pairs of twins from Beijing, China. Results showed that (1) liking for name was heritable (47%), while unique environment also played a role (53%); (2) the positive association between name-liking and subjective well-being is driven by common genetic (r_g: .21–.41) and non-shared environmental (r_e: .14–.22) influences. These findings have provided novel evidence that liking for one’s name is a fundamentally important trait and further shed light on the understanding of implicit self-esteem.     

Predicting Accuracy and Liking Ratings for Bogus and Real Personality Feedback

After taking the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16 PF), 119 students subsequently received computer-generated traditional bogus (Barnum) and real (16 PF) interpretations. Each subject rated both interpretations for accuracy and likability on a 13-point scale and then chose (forced choice) which interpretation was the more accurate and which one they liked better. Barnum feedback was judged significantly more accurate than real feedback, but not better liked. Stepwise multiple-regression analyses of all dependent measures indicated that 16 PF sten scores accounted for significant amounts of variance in 16 PF Accuracy and Liking scores and in the various preference measures.     

Liking is for doing: the effects of goal pursuit on automatic evaluation

Findings from 3 experiments suggest that participants who were actively engaged in goal pursuit, compared with those who were not pursuing the goal, automatically evaluated goal-relevant objects as relatively more positive than goal-irrelevant objects. In Experiment 3, participants' automatic evaluations also predicted their behavioral intentions toward goal-relevant objects. These results suggest the functional nature of automatic evaluation and are in harmony with the classic conceptualization of thinking and feeling as being in the service of "doing" (e.g., S. T. Fiske, 1992; W. James, 1890; K. Lewin, 1926) as well as with more recent work on the cognitive mechanics of goal pursuit (e.g., G. B. Moskowitz, 2002; J. Y. Shah & A.W. Kruglanski, 2002).     

Art and life: Models for understanding music

Book Information Science, Truth, and Democracy. By Philip Kitcher. Oxford. New York. 2001. Pp. xiii + 219. US$27.50.     

Play it again,Sam: On Liking Music

Abstract

Emotional responses to music are discussed in the context of a constructivist theory of emotion, which postulates evaluative cognitions that generate the quality of the experience, and autonomic (sympathetic) arousal that influences its intensity. Arousal is frequently generated by cognitive, pcrceptual, and behavioural discrepancies. Schema theory is used to describe the listener's knowledge of the complex structure of music. Schemas serve to interpret music as well as to produce expectations about its likely form and progression. When music is discrepant from the listener's expectations (as it often is), the concatenation of arousal and evaluation produces emotional experiences. This theoretical framework guides an interpretation of emotional responses to familiar and (physically) complex music, and suggests ways of understanding structural evaluations as well as effects of music that have their source outside of musical structure.     

The Effects of Self-Esteem,Task Label,and Performance Feedback on Task Liking and Intrinsic Motivation

Abstract

American undergraduate students' task liking and intrinsic motivation were examined using 2 × 2 × 2 (Self-Esteem × Task Label × Feedback) analyses of variance. Identical tasks were labeled as either difficult or easy, and bogus performance feedback was given randomly to each subject. For subjects with high self-esteem, feedback had strong impact on their liking of a difficult task, whereas for those with low self-esteem, feedback had strong impact on liking of an easy task. After positive feedback for performing a difficult task, subjects with high self-esteem increased task liking, whereas those with low self-esteem decreased task liking. Subjects also showed higher intrinsic motivation after positive feedback than after negative feedback.     

Attentional blink for acronyms: Effects of familiarity and pre‐exposure

Seventy‐two university students participated in one of two experiments in the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task. Distractors were four‐letter non‐words, the first target (T1) was a four‐letter word, and the second target (T2) was a two‐four‐letter acronym that followed T1 at lags of 2, 3 and 5 items (Experiment 1) or lags of 3 and 5 items (Experiment 2). Familiar acronyms were identified better than unfamiliar acronyms. One pre‐exposure of acronyms in a rating task improved RSVP accuracy for familiar acronyms only (Experiments 1 and 2), whereas three pre‐exposures produced a benefit for unfamiliar acronyms and no significant additional benefit for familiar acronyms (Experiment 2). Thus a pre‐existing unitised memory representation, and a relatively recent access of this representation, enhanced target identification. The effects of pre‐exposure were more consistent with resource depletion than attentional filtering accounts of the attentional blink.