The interaction of exaggerated and blunted reactivity with music on responses to unpleasant pictures.

Although personality can guide music listening habits (Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003), individuals use music for a multitude of purposes, many stemming from an aspect of emotion regulation in order to express or modify the experience of emotion (Juslin & Laukka, 2004). Both auditory and visual stimuli provide contextual cues that could be associated with emotions. The emotions evoked by the stimuli could in turn influence physiological reactions to stressful events (Lovallo, 2005b). Research has suggested the maladaptiveness of excessively strong or excessively muted physiological responses to stressful stimuli in the environment (Lovallo, 2011). Music provides a useful context under which to examine reactivity to stress, given that it has effects on the brain that lead to effects on peripheral functioning (Koelsch et al., 2007; Panksepp & Bernatzky, 2002). The current research aim was to explore individual differences in the strength of physiological and emotional reactivity in response to a stressor, namely unpleasant images, and whether the auditory soundscape could influence the level of reactivity.Models of emotion have been used to examine the relationship between music, emotion, and cardiovascular activity. The circumplex model, expounded by Russell (1980), denotes two aspects of emotion that are characterized as pleasantness and arousal. These two independent elements are postulated to intersect to form a circular emotion space comprised of four quadrants that contain differing types of emotions based on the interactions of arousal and pleasantness. Along the pleasantness dimension, individuals may experience varying levels of pleasantness or unpleasantness; along the arousal dimension individuals may experience varying levels of arousal. The intersection between arousal and pleasantness is thought to be derived from neurological activity that forms a prototypical core affect that persons can then use to infer their own emotional states, based on the surrounding social environment (Oatley & Johnson-Laird, 2014; Russell, 2003). Bradley, Greenwald, Petry, and Lang (1992) reported that memory of images one year after study was better if images were highly arousing thereby demonstrating that arousal is the more influential dimension of the two. Pleasantness can be related to motivational direction, such as approach or aversion, and arousal can be related to intensity or activation in the body. Another widely used approach to examining music and emotion has been the discrete model wherein emotions are discrete categories, such as happiness, anger, or sadness (Ekman, 1992). Here, emotions are universal, short lasting occurrences that have coherence between expression and autonomic output. We used the circumplex model in the current study on the basis of Eerola and Vuoskoski's (2011) contention that the dimensional nature of the model may provide advantages for consistency in emotion ratings compared with the discrete model.Research has investigated the effects of music elements on physiological and emotional responses. Tempo and mode, or the key of a music piece, are two widely studied elements. Research has found that faster tempo and the major mode are related to higher levels of physiological arousal, as assessed through cardiovascular measures such as heart rate and heart rate variability (Gomez & Danuser, 2007), although the relationship between mode and physiological responding is less corroborated (van der Zwaag, Westerink, & van den Broek, 2011). Mode, rhythmic articulation, and harmonic complexity contribute the most in distinguishing music as positively or negatively valenced (i.e., pleasant or unpleasant, respectively), whereas tempo, rhythmic articulation, and accentuation contribute in distinguishing music as high or low arousal (Gomez & Danuser, 2007) when applying twodimensional models. Unpleasant music is often written in the minor mode in contrast to the major mode (more often consonant) often heard in pleasant music (e. …