Does perceived exertion influence perceived affect in response to music? Investigating the "FEELA" hypothesis

The relationship between listeners' perception of affective elements in response to music and the key musical features that give rise to such perceptions has received ongoing empirical investigation in the fields of music and emotion (Juslin & Sloboda, 2010). For example, time-series modeling has shown that continuously perceived arousal (one dimension of the two-dimensional circumplex model of affect; Russell, 1980, 2003) in response to music from multiple genres can be well modeled when model predictors include cognitive factors such as listener engagement (Olsen, Dean, & Stevens, 2014), perceptual factors such as loudness (Olsen, Dean, Stevens, & Bailes, 2015; Schubert, 2004), and acoustic factors such as intensity, the primary physical counterpart to perceptual loudness (Dean & Bailes, 2010c; Dean, Bailes, & Dunsmuir, 2014a, 2014b; Dean, Bailes, & Schubert, 2011). 1 Timeseries models of the second affective dimension of valence have been less successful when these predictors are investigated, although timbral perceptions of the acoustic parameters of spectral flatness, spectral centroid, and spectral entropy make some contribution (Bailes & Dean, 2012; Schubert, 2004). To conceptualize the process between performers' real-time communication of affect from music and listeners' perception of affect in response to music, we proposed the "FEELA" hypothesis. In the context of performed instrumental music (e.g., classical and jazz genres), the FEELA hypothesis suggests a chain of contributing factors such as the Force and Effort (realized here throughout as physical exertion) required for a performer to produce a musical sound, the Energy of the resulting sound (realized as acoustic intensity), and the experience of the listener in the form of perceived Loudness and Arousal (Dean & Bailes, 2010a; Dean, Olsen, & Bailes, 2013). In addition, sound-based music such as that comprising electroacoustic genres contains recurrent patterns of acoustic intensity that directly correspond to those observed in classical and jazz genres (Dean & Bailes, 2010b). Consequently, FEELA predicts that the relationship between acoustic intensity profiles and continuously perceived loudness in electroacoustic music with varied degrees of human agency also significantly influence perceived affective expression. There is now strong evidence of the latter portions of the FEELA hypothesis across all aforementioned genres.However, the earlier portions of the FEELA process are yet to be investigated in the context of real-time perceived affect in response to music. Specifically, little is known about the possible influence of listeners' perception of physical exertion required to produce the sonic signal in instrumental and sound-based music. This question is important when one considers that instrumental music comprises obvious human agency in sound production. For example, a violin, piano, or guitar timbre is perceived and more often than not, enculturated listeners will immediately associate human agency in the form of causal relationships between physical force/effort applied to an instrument and the corresponding sound, its intensity, and loudness. Electroacoustic music, on the other hand, is often characterized by abstract sound-based stimuli with often little-to-no obvious human agency. The causal correspondence between performer action and performed sound is obscure, and this may lead to differences in the relevant processes underlying the FEELA hypothesis. Therefore, the present study investigates listener's perception of exertion required to perform music, and asks whether such perceptions have a predictive role in timeseries models of continuous affective response to pieces of music that involve varied degrees of human agency in their presentation.Perceived exertion has been investigated commonly in the context of health and exercise sciences, with a person's own subjective experience the primary focus, rather than the perception of exertion expressed by another individual (Borg & Kaijser, 2006; Borg, 1982; Haile, Gallagher, & Robertson, 2015). …