Effects of Music on Physiological Arousal : Explorations into Tempo and Genre

Two experiments explore the validity of conceptualizing musical beats as auditory structural features and the potential for increases in tempo to lead to greater sympathetic arousal, measured using skin conductance. In the first experiment, fastand slow-paced rock and classical music excerpts were compared to silence. As expected, skin conductance response (SCR) frequency was greater during music processing than during silence. Skin conductance level (SCL) data showed that fast-paced music elicits greater activation than slow-paced music. Genre significantly interacted with tempo in SCR frequency, with faster tempo increasing activation for classical music while decreasing it for rock music. A second experiment was conducted to explore the possibility that the presumed familiarity of the genre led to this interaction. Although further evidence was found for conceptualizing musical beat onsets as auditory structure, the familiarity explanation was not supported. Music Effects on Arousal 2 Effects of Music Genre and Tempo on Physiological Arousal Music communicates many different types of messages through the combination of sound and lyric (Sellnow & Sellnow, 2001). For example, music can be used to exchange political information (e.g., Frith, 1981; Stewart, Smith, & Denton, 1989). Music can also establish and portray a selfor group-image (Arnett, 1991, 1992; Dehyle, 1998; Kendall & Carterette, 1990; Dillman Carpentier, Knobloch & Zillmann, 2003; Manuel, 1991; McLeod, 1999; see also Hansen & Hansen, 2000). Pertinent to this investigation, music can communicate emotional information (e.g., Juslin & Sloboda, 2001). In short, music is a form of “interhuman communication in which humanly organized, non-verbal sound is perceived as vehiculating primarily affective (emotional) and/or gestural (corporeal) patterns of cognition” (Tagg, 2002, p. 5). This idea of music as communication reaches the likes of audio production students, who are taught the concept of musical underscoring, or adding music to “enhance information or emotional content” in a wide variety of ways from establishing a specific locale to intensifying action (Alten, 2005, p. 360). In this realm, music becomes a key instrument in augmenting or punctuating a given message. Given the importance of arousal and/or activation in most theories of persuasion and information processing, an understanding of how music can be harnessed to instill arousal is arguably of benefit to media producers looking to utilize every possible tool when creating messages, whether the messages are commercial appeals, promotional announcements or disease-prevention messages. It is with the motivation of harnessing the psychological response to music for practical application that two experiments were conducted to test whether message creators can rely on musical tempo as a way to increase sympathetic nervous system Music Effects on Arousal 3 activation in a manner similar to other structural features of media (i.e., cuts, edits, sound effects, voice changes). Before explaining the original work, a brief description of the current state of the literature on music and emotion is offered. Different Approaches in Music Psychology Although there is little doubt that music ‘vehiculates’ emotion, several debates exist within the music psychology literature about exactly how that process is best conceptualized and empirically approached (e.g., Bever, 1988; Gaver & Mandler, 1987; Juslin & Sloboda, 2001; Lundin, 1985; Sloboda, 1991). The primary conceptual issue revolves around two different schools of thought (Scherer & Zentner, 2001). The first, the cognitivist approach, describes emotional response to music as resulting from the listener’s cognitive recognition of cues within the composition itself. Emotivists, on the other hand, eliminate the cognitive calculus required by cue recognition in the score, instead describing emotional response to music as a feeling of emotion. Although both approaches acknowledge a cultural or social influence in how the music is interpreted (e.g., Krumhansl, 1997; Peretz, 2001), the conceptual chasm between emotion as being either expressed or elicited by a piece of music is wide indeed. A second issue in the area of music psychology concerns a difference in the empirical approach present among emotion scholars writ large. Some focus their explorations on specific, discrete affective states (i.e., joy, fear, disgust, etc.), often labeled as the experience of basic emotions (Ortony et al., 1988; Thayer, 1989; Zajonc, 1980). Communication scholars such as Nabi (1999, 2003) and Newhagen (1998) have also found it fruitful to explore unique affective states resulting from mediated messages, driven by the understanding that “each emotion expresses a different relational meaning Music Effects on Arousal 4 that motivates the use of mental and/or physical resources in ways consistent with the emotion’s action tendency” (Nabi, 2003, p. 226; also see Wirth & Schramm, 2005 for review). This approach is also well represented by studies exploring human reactions to music (see Juslin & Laukka, 2003 for review). Other emotion scholars design studies where the focus is placed not on the discrete identifier assigned to a certain feeling-state by a listener, but rather the extent to which different feeling-states share common factors or dimensions. The two most commonly studied dimensions are valence—a term given to the relative positive/negative hedonic value, and arousal—the intensity or level to which that hedonic value is experienced. The centrality of these two dimensions in the published literature is due to the consistency with which they account for the largest amount of predictive variance across a wide variety of dependent variables (Osgood, Suci & Tannenbuam, 1957; Bradley, 1994; Reisenzein, 1994). This dimensional approach to emotional experience is well-represented by articles in the communication literature exploring the combined impact of valence and arousal on memory (Lang, Bolls, Potter & Kawahara, 1999; Sundar & Kalyanaraman, 2004), liking (Yoon, Bolls, & Lang, 1998), and persuasive appeal (Yoon et al., 1998; Potter, LaTour, Braun-LaTour & Reichert, 2006). When surveying the music psychology literature for studies utilizing the dimensional emotions approach, however, results show that the impact of music on hedonic valence are difficult to consistently predict—arguably due to contextual, experiential or mood-state influences of the listener combined with interpretational differences of the song composers and performers (Bigand, Filipic, & Lalitte, 2005; Cantor & Zillmann, 1973; Gabrielsson & Lindström, 2001; Kendall & Carterette, 1990; Leman, 2003; Lundin, 1985). Music Effects on Arousal 5 On the other hand, the measured effects of music on the arousal dimension, while not uniform, are more consistent across studies (see Scherer & Zentner, 2001). For example, numerous experiments have noted the relaxation potential of music—either using compositions pre-tested as relaxing or self-identified by research participants as such. In Bartlett’s (1996) review of music studies using physiological measures, a majority of studies measuring muscle tension found relaxing music to reduce it. Interestingly, slightly more than half of the studies that measured skin temperature found relaxing music to increase it. Pelletier (2004) went beyond reviewing studies individually, conducting a statistical meta-analysis of 22 experiments. Conclusions showed that music alone, as well as used in tandem with relaxation techniques, significantly decreased perceived arousal and physiological activation. However, the amount of decrease significantly varied by age, stressor, musical preference, and previous music experience of the participant. These caveats provide possible explanations for the few inconsistent findings across individual studies that show either little or no effects of relaxing music (e.g., Davis-Rollans & Cunningham, 1987; Robb, Nichols, Rutan, & Bishop, et al., 1995; Strauser, 1997; see Standley, 1991 for review) or that show listening to relaxing music yields higher perceived arousal compared to the absence of music (Davis & Thaut, 1989). Burns, Labbé, Williams, and McCall (1999) relied on both self-report and physiological responses to the musical selections to explore music’s ability to generate states of relaxation. The researchers used a predetermined classical excerpt, a predetermined rock excerpt, an excerpt from a “relaxing” selection chosen by each participant, and a condition of sitting in silence. Burns et al. (1999) found that, within Music Effects on Arousal 6 groups, both finger temperature and skin conductance decreased over time. Across emotional conditions, self-reported relaxation was lowest for rock listeners and highest for participants in the self-selection and silence conditions. However, no significant between-group physiological differences were found. Rickard (2004) also combined self-reports of emotional impact, enjoyment, and familiarity with psychophysiological measures in evaluating arousal effects of music. Psychophysiological measures included skin conductance responses, chills, skin temperature, and muscle tension. Stimuli included relaxing music, music predetermined to be arousing but not emotionally powerful, self-selected emotionally-powerful music, and an emotionally-powerful film scene. Rickard found that music participants had selfidentified as emotionally powerful led to the greatest increases in skin conductance and chills, in addition to higher ratings on the self-reported measures. No correlation was found between these effects and participant gender or musical training. Krumhansl (1997) explored how music affects the peripheral nervous system in eliciting emotions in college-aged music students. Classical music selections approximately 180-seconds long were chosen which expressed sadness, happiness or fear. While listening, ha