Emotions evoked by the sound of music: characterization, classification, and measurement

One reason for the universal appeal of music lies in the emotional rewards that music offers to its listeners. But what makes these rewards so special? The authors addressed this question by progressively characterizing music-induced emotions in 4 interrelated studies. Studies 1 and 2 (n=354) were conducted to compile a list of music-relevant emotion terms and to study the frequency of both felt and perceived emotions across 5 groups of listeners with distinct music preferences. Emotional responses varied greatly according to musical genre and type of response (felt vs. perceived). Study 3 (n=801)--a field study carried out during a music festival--examined the structure of music-induced emotions via confirmatory factor analysis of emotion ratings, resulting in a 9-factorial model of music-induced emotions. Study 4 (n=238) replicated this model and found that it accounted for music-elicited emotions better than the basic emotion and dimensional emotion models. A domain-specific device to measure musically induced emotions is introduced--the Geneva Emotional Music Scale.     

Features and feedback: enhancing metamnemonic knowledge at retrieval reduces source-monitoring errors

Three experiments explored the issue of whether enhanced metamnemonic knowledge at retrieval can improve participants' ability to make difficult source discriminations in the context of the eyewitness suggestibility paradigm. The 1st experiment documented differences in phenomenal experience between veridical and false memories. Experiment 2 revealed that drawing participants' attention to these differences by pairing the ratings of the features with instructions about their utility was successful in reducing source misattributions of suggested items to the event. The results of Experiment 3 showed that participants can make online adjustments in the types of evidence used to make source judgments, as participants who received correct feedback during the training portion of the test reduced misattribution errors on the remainder of the test where feedback was not provided. Altogether, these studies suggest that people can discover and benefit from updated knowledge of the types of memorial evidence that discriminate between sources of information in memory.     

Evidence for an explanation advantage in naïve biological reasoning

The present studies compare young children's explanations and predictions for the biological phenomenon of contamination. In Study 1, 36 preschoolers and 24 adults heard vignettes concerning contamination, and were asked either to make a prediction or to provide an explanation. Even 3-year-olds readily supplied contamination-based explanations, and most children mentioned an unseen mechanism (germs, contact through bodily fluids). Moreover, unlike adults who performed at ceiling across both explanation and prediction tasks, children were significantly more accurate with their explanations than their predictions. In Study 2, we varied the strength of cues regarding the desirability of the contaminated substance (N=24 preschoolers). Although desirability affected responses, for both levels of desirability participants were significantly more accurate on explanation than prediction questions. Altogether, these studies demonstrate a significant "explanation advantage" for children's reasoning in the domain of everyday biology.     

That baby caught my eye... attention capture by infant faces

An alternative to the view that during evolution the human brain became specialized to preferentially attend to threat-related stimuli is to assume that all classes of stimuli that have high biological significance are prioritized by the attention system. Newborns are highly biologically relevant stimuli for members of a species, as their survival is important for reproductive success. The authors examined whether the Kindchenschema (baby schema) as described by Lorenz (1943) captures attention in the dot probe task. The results confirm attentional capture by photos of human infants presented to the left visual field, suggesting right hemisphere advantage. The magnitude of the attentional modulation was highly correlated with subjective arousal ratings of the photos. The findings show that biologically significant positive stimuli are prioritized by the attention system.     

Multimodal expression of emotion: affect programs or componential appraisal patterns?

In earlier work, the authors analyzed emotion portrayals by professional actors separately for facial expression, vocal expression, gestures, and body movements. In a secondary analysis of the combined data set for all these modalities, the authors now examine to what extent actors use prototypical multimodal configurations of expressive actions to portray different emotions, as predicted by basic emotion theories claiming that expressions are produced by fixed neuromotor affect programs. Although several coherent unimodal clusters are identified, the results show only 3 multimodal clusters: agitation, resignation, and joyful surprise, with only the latter being specific to a particular emotion. Finding variable expressions rather than prototypical patterns seems consistent with the notion that emotional expression is differentially driven by the results of sequential appraisal checks, as postulated by componential appraisal theories.     

A support group for couples who have terminated a pregnancy after prenatal diagnosis: Recurrent themes and observations

Genetic Counselors are increasingly becoming involved in organizing and facilitating support groups for couples who have terminated a pregnancy because of an abnormal fetal diagnosis. This paper discusses recurrent themes which have emerged in the FATE (Feelings After the Termination Experience) support group which was founded in New Jersey in 1990. By becoming familiar with the issues we have observed in our support group, genetic counselors should be better able to understand and empathize with their patients who make the decision to terminate a much wanted pregnancy. They may also feel better prepared to become involved in organizing and facilitating such support groups.     

The discrepant repressor: differentiation between low anxiety, high anxiety, and repression of anxiety by autonomic-facial-verbal patterns of behavior

This study examined the notion that personality questionnaires can be used to predict different styles of coping with anxiety as expressed by individual differences in patterns of autonomic, verbal, and nonverbal reactions. In line with earlier modifications of the repression-sensitization concept, the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale (MAS) and the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (SDS) were used to select four groups of 12 subjects each from a pool of 206 male students in Germany: low-anxious subjects (low MAS, low SDS), repressors (low MAS, high SDS), high-anxious subjects (high MAS, low SDS), and defensive high-anxious subjects (high MAS, high SDS). Several measures of autonomic arousal, facial activity, and self-reported affect were obtained during a potentially anxiety-arousing free-association task and during a number of control conditions, including a funny film. Significant differences in baseline-corrected heart rate and self-reported anxiety as well as rated facial anxiety all indicated that repressors exhibited a discrepancy between low self-reported anxiety and high heart rate and facial anxiety; low-anxious subjects reported an intermediate level of anxiety, although they showed low heart rate and facial anxiety; high-anxious subjects had consistently high values on all three variables; and the defensive high-anxious group showed an intermediate level of anxious responding. These group differences were specific to the task of freely associating to phrases of mixed (sexual, aggressive, neutral) content (but not to other experimental situations) and to self-reported anxiety (but not to other self-rated emotions or task difficult), indicating that they reflect individual differences in coping with anxiety.     

Minimal cues in the vocal communication of affect: Judging emotions from content-masked speech

Vocal expressions of emotions taken from a recorded version of a play were content. masked by using electronic filtering, randomized splicing and a combination of both techniques in addition to a no-treatment condition in a 2×2 design. Untrained listener-judges rated the voice samples in the four conditions on 20 semantic differential scales. Irrespective of the severe reduction in the number and types of vocal cues in the masking conditions, the mean ratings of the judges in all four groups agreed on a level significantly beyond chance expectations on the differential position of the emotional expressions in a multidimensional space of emotional meaning. The results suggest that a minimal set of vocal cues consisting of pitch level and variation, amplitude level and variation, and rate of articulation may be sufficient to communicate the evaluation, potency, and activity dimensions of emotional meaning. Each of these dimensions may be associated with a specific pattern of vocal cues or cue combinations. No differential effects of the type of content-masking for specific emotions were found. Systematic effects of the masking techniques consisted in a lowering of the perceived activity level of the emotions in the case of electronic filtering, and more positive ratings on the evaluative dimension in the case of randomized splicing. Electronic filtering tended to decrease, randomized splicing tended to increase inter-rater reliability.This research was supported by a research grant (GS-2654) from the Division of Social Sciences of the National Science Foundation to Robert Rosenthal.     

Emotion and economic development — Data and speculations concerning the relationship between economic factors and emotional experience

While proponents of biological theories of emotion claim the existence of universal emotion and expression patterns, recent theories stress cognitive appraisal mechanisms as elicitors of emotion, thus suggesting the influence of cultural and social factors on emotional experience and emotional expression. Data from a large-scale questionnaire study with about 2400 respondents in 30 countries allowed us to test that notion in part. In this study, respondents had to describe in detail situations in which they had experienced the emotions of joy, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, shame, and guilt. The results indicate that emotional expression patterns do seem to be universal, while characteristics of the subjectively experienced emotion, in particular its duration and intensity, show a high variance across country samples. An attempt is made to link these differences to economic data for the different countries, specifically to the gross national product. The rather striking differences found between ‘rich’ and boor' countries are discussed in terms of the frequency of confrontation with emotion eliciting situations and the importance of such situations.