09
Jan
2020
Music Evokes Universal Emotions
Music Evokes Universal Emotions across different cultures, according to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.
In a newly published study, participants in the U.S. and China listened to more than 2,000 music samples and reported what emotion the music evoked, from annoyance to joy to scariness.
“Our results provide answers to long-standing questions about the nature of the subjective experiences associated with music,” researchers reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers also created an interactive map showing which music samples correlated with which emotions. The map plays a sample of music as the cursor moves over it and shows what emotions study participants associated with that piece of…
Let’s take a look at a snippet of the article presented by Stages Music Arts.
Of course, songs under the “sadness” and “anxiety” category were included on my playlist; the two “sad songs” never fail to make my eyes well up with tears. Also, I’m still trying to figure out why I despise the tonality and genre of sounds in some of my self-selected tracks in the “annoyance” and “scariness’ category so much.
Here are 26 songs I included on my “13 Key Emotions” playlist:
When you go through the list of 13 key emotions evoked by music, can you think of two songs from each category you’d add to a personalized playlist?
I’d highly recommend compiling your own eclectic playlist based on Cowen’s map. Based on my anecdotal experience, I can vouch for the therapeutic value of listening to music that evokes the wide-range of emotions associated with subjective experiences identified in this study.