Aesthetic Judgment

Appropriately, earlier work attempted to pin down this expectancy process during music listening, with success across a variety of approaches. Bharucha and Stoeckig (1986) reported faster reaction times in response to target chords harmonically related to prime chords, as opposed unrelated chord pairs; in neurophysiological work, the perceptual processing of musical expectations has been evidenced (Besson & Faïta, 1995), with consistent results found for certain event-related potentials such as the early right anterior negativity (Carrión & Bly, 2008; Koelsch & Friederici, 2003;

Koelsch, Kilches, Steinbeis & Schelinski, 2008), and the N5 (Poulin-Charronnat, Bigand & Koelsch, 2006); these rapid processes reflect musical syntax processing and harmonic integration respectively. With regards to emotion and affective experiences, Bigand, Parncutt and Lerdahl (1996) linked musical expectancy to perceived tension in music, which Krumhansl (1997) additionally linked to perceived emotional moods in music; Steinbeis, Koelsch and Sloboda (2006) found evidence for heightened skin conductance responses to harmonic violations, alongside ratings of emotional impact and intensity. More recently, Egermann, Pearce, Wiggins and McAdams (2013) found that a probabilistic model of musical expectancy predicted emotional responses to music in live concert settings. Crucially for the subsequent literature review on musical chills, musical expectancy may be a significant mechanism across musical chills experiences, and is implicated in existing correlational research on the phenomenon.

2.1.8 Aesthetic Judgment

The final, most recent mechanism proposed for emotions induced by music is that of aesthetic judgment (Juslin, 2013). This is a complex, perhaps vague, collection of processes that interact with all other proposed mechanisms in the framework. The

topic of aesthetic judgment and appraisal reflects more conscious, socio-culturally grounded decision-making processes, which whilst essential for understanding any affective engagement with music, is beyond the scope of the current research project and its focus on theoretical propositions for musical chills; for this reason, aesthetic judgments will be summarised briefly, whilst acknowledging the breadth and extent of aesthetic psychology work in which these proposed processes have their roots.

In including aesthetic judgment as a final mechanism of musical emotions, Juslin (2013) denotes a simplified description of the judgment process: Firstly, the object of an experience is understood or pre-classified by an observer as ‘art’ through processing of perceptual, cognitive and emotional inputs, the latter derived from the other emotion mechanisms discussed; secondly, a set of aesthetic criteria are utilised by the observer, ranging from assessments of beauty, skill, novelty, style, message and expression; finally, an aesthetic judgment is produced which, depending on the level of positivity or negativity of the outcome, may result in liking or disliking a piece of art, or in more intense circumstances result in emotional responses. This description is derived from a tradition of modelling aesthetic judgments and emotion, such as an earlier attempt from Leder, Belke, Oeberst and Augustin (2004); in this approach, low-level and high-level processes interact with the pre-classification of an object as ‘art’, previous experiences, current context of engagement, and the prevailing affective state that feeds into all steps of the model. More recently, a similar tradition of model development was reported in relation to enjoying visual art (Pelowski, Markey, Forster, Gerger & Leder, 2017). These results represent a complex set of processes, explicit and implicit, that are difficult to empirically test.

However, for present purposes, aesthetic judgments mainly describe a variety of subjective criteria imposed upon an art object by individuals, and can vary from

assessments of beauty, how and what art expresses, originality, skill and virtuosity, and an underlying artistic message (Juslin, 2013). Furthermore, these criteria are likely to be hierarchically arranged in terms of their importance, and that this organisation will differ from person to person (Juslin & Isaksson, 2014; Juslin, Sakka, Barradas & Liljeström, 2016). This process of subjective judgment is crucial to keep in mind when considering the induction of musical emotions, and research is yet to fully integrate theories of induction processes not specific to music, and the subjective judgments that are framed differently depending on the aesthetic engagement taking place.

2.2 Limitations

Whilst the psychological mechanisms of music and emotion comprising the BRECVEMA framework have provided numerous routes for further investigation, there are existing limitations to consider. For instance, there is little understanding as to how these mechanisms may interact with each other to produce predictable emotional responses. Additionally, it is unclear how various causal mechanisms of music and emotion interact with broader musical engagement contexts, and the characteristics of the individual (North & Hargreaves, 2008). Finally, whilst the newly added aesthetic judgment mechanism attempts to accommodate other routes to emotional experience with music, the mechanism is vague, not a distinct psychological process like other mechanisms, and currently inadequate in its exploratory power. This limitation is most clear when considering another psychological concept increasingly linked to musical engagements, and one that is pertinent to the coming discussion and assessment on musical chills, namely empathy.

2.2.1 Empathy

Empathy is treated as a complex construct in the broader psychological literature, with numerous conceptualisations proposed (Cuff, Brown, Taylor & Howat, 2016); at a holistic level however, empathy may designate the behaviours and feelings we experience in response to another’s situation or emotional state. One consistent distinction made in discussions on empathy is that between cognitive and affective empathy. Cognitive empathy refers to understanding, simulating, and responding to another person’s emotional experiences, whereas affective empathy is often described as an emotional experience elicited by a stimulus, such as another person’s experience or state. Crucially, in the current context, empathy is distinguished from contagion processes, mainly because contagion is largely characterised by automaticity (Laurence, 2007), whereas empathy is often understood here as a more conscious process, in which we may imagine and relate to how a person is feeling (Clarke et al., 2015), and respond in culturally appropriate ways (Zickfeld, Schubert, Seibt & Fiske, 2017); however, it is important to note that emotional contagion may also be approached as a low-level variation of affective empathy.

Empathic processes have recently been implicated in numerous musical contexts, with a common focus on music making and group musical interactions.

Regarding broader social interaction and cooperation, interpersonal entrainment appears to emphasise affiliative behaviours (Hove & Risen, 2009; Launay, Dean &

Bailes, 2013). As highlighted in the rhythmic entrainment section, joint music playing and synchronising may increase prosocial behaviours (Cirelli et al., 2014; Kirschner

& Tomasello, 2009; 2010). In addition to this, Rabinowitch, Cross and Burnard (2013) suggested that carrying out regular musical group interactions across a school year

resulted in higher emotional empathy scores for the children involved, compared to a control group.

Despite this growing research, there is less work linking empathy directly to emotional responses to music, although some evidence suggests that there is a relationship. For example, Egermann and McAdams (2013) highlighted that trait empathy might mediate the relationship between perceived and felt musical emotions in listeners; trait empathy has further been linked to the enjoyment of sad music (Eerola, Vuoskoski & Kautiainen, 2016), and intense emotional experiences with music (Vuoskoski, Thompson, McIlwain & Eerola, 2012). Empathic and social processes are further highlighted in numerous accounts of strong experiences with music, describing instances of feeling understood by music, feeling one with music, and identifying one’s self and identity within a piece of music (Gabrielsson, 2011).

Recent work on pleasure and motivations for music listening also places an emphasis on feelings of kinship and social connectedness (Saarikallio et al., 2018). It seems intuitive that empathic processes may underlie many affective engagements with music, with an immediate example being the prevalence of lyrics in contemporary popular music, and their role in the overall emotional expression of the piece (Ali &

Peynircioglu, 2006; Lamont, 2011; Lippman & Greenwood, 2012). Crucially, lyrics, as a characteristic of most current music, is rarely encapsulated by proposed underlying mechanisms of musical emotions. Equally important is that, with regards to the musical chills phenomenon, there is evidence that empathy may play a prominent role in some theories of the response, to be discussed at length in Chapter 3. If the role of empathy in musical chills can be supported, this has substantial implications for existing formulations of music and emotion mechanisms, including the BRECVEMA framework.

2.3 Summary

Emotional experiences with music appear to be, like emotions more broadly, contingent on a wide variety of factors, ranging from the listening context and individual differences, to qualities and characteristics of the music. Notably, extensive research has resulted in numerous proposed mechanisms of music and emotion, often associating an emotional response to musical features. These mechanisms encapsulate processes of anticipation, expectation and surprise, entrainment of biological signals to external rhythms, imagery, and memory. Not all causal mechanisms are intertwined with musical characteristics, such as memories and conditioning effects. However, there remains a substantial limitation to understanding musical emotions, such as how the music engages with conscious aesthetic judgments that are shaped by socio-cultural contexts; additionally, the proposed mechanisms do not encapsulate important, common features of current music such as lyrics, which may be closely associated with empathic and social processes linked to emotion (Clarke et al., 2015).

The alternative multiple components processing model (Scherer & Coutinho, 2013;

Scherer & Zentner, 2001) differs slightly in the mechanisms proposed, particularly in relation to empathy, although similar broader issues persist.

The BRECVEMA framework (Juslin, 2013; Juslin & Västfjäll, 2008) offers a testable set of hypotheses, but more importantly, offers a useful, mechanistic context with which to situate theory development and empirical investigations of the musical chills phenomenon. As a result, the following review and studies presented on chills will be contextualised and framed in relation to the broader level of psychological mechanisms of music and emotion (Juslin, 2013). This explicit context not only shapes the current project, but plays a vital role in allowing investigations of musical

chills to reflexively inform both the broader emotion science literature, and music and emotion research.