Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience
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Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci · Sep 2013
Probabilistic models of expectation violation predict psychophysiological emotional responses to live concert music.
We present the results of a study testing the often-theorized role of musical expectations in inducing listeners' emotions in a live flute concert experiment with 50 participants. Using an audience response system developed for this purpose, we measured subjective experience and peripheral psychophysiological changes continuously. ⋯ Musical structures leading to expectation reactions were manifested in emotional reactions at different emotion component levels (increases in subjective arousal and autonomic nervous system activations). These results emphasize the role of musical structure in emotion induction, leading to a further understanding of the frequently experienced emotional effects of music.