Music Evokes Emotion and Influences How We Perceive the World

Music has an undeniable power to evoke emotion. Music is present at every important social gathering - weddings, funerals, birthdays, inaugurations and more. Every 'normal' human being responds to music's mysterious ability to tap into the boundless ocean that is human emotion. Music even calls into question the long-standing notion that there is one objective reality which can be accurately perceived. Music brings up fundamental questions such as...

Why does music evoke emotion?

How does music affect emotion?

Is music a basic human need like shelter, food and meaningful work?

Such questions cut to the very core of human nature. Answers to these questions would help to clarify the unique role of music in our lives.

Music Impacts Our Emotions

It has been shown in research that different types of music evoke different emotional reactions (in most people). For example, Lewis, Dember, Schefft and Radenhausen determined the effects of music versus videos on several assessments of mood - the Optimism/Pessimism Questionnaire, the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List, and the Wessman-Ricks Elation and Depression Scale (1). Experts rated a number of songs and videos as either positive or negative. The study found that songs had a major impact on the emotional state of the listener, yet the videos did not. Not surprisingly, music that was rated positively increased participants' positive moods. It was exactly the opposite for negative (i.e., sad) music. As you may have guessed, the mood of a piece of music tends to induce similar emotions in the listener.

Chastain, Seibert, and Ferraro (2) backed up these findings and found that certain music narrowed participants' attention. It was found that participants attended to and recalled words that matched the mood of the music. In and of itself, this is not surprising.

Music Influences How We See Inanimate Objects

More surprising are the results reported by Stratton and Zalanowski (3) where the mood of the music influenced how participants perceived paintings. The music influenced participant emotion and emotion influenced perception. In the study, paintings were paired together with music. Each piece of music was either depressing or positive in the emotion it evoked per the experts. Participants rated the emotions evoked by the paintings as well as the songs. Participants categorized the paintings by the type of music to which the listened, but not vice versa. In other words, paintings rated as sad by experts were perceived as sad by participants when paired with sad music. Yet those same paintings were perceived as positive when paired with happy music; the same findings were reported when positive paintings were paired with happy or sad music, respectively.

Amazingly, the way in which we perceive a seemingly static object is not as clear-cut as first thought. The emotions invoked by music influence not only our ears, but our eyes as well. Emotions most likely influence every one of our senses (i.e., smell, touch, taste, and mind).

Music Affects How We Perceive Others

If emotions and music can influence our senses and how we perceive objects around us, do they also influence how we view other people? They do. Music seems to prime our minds to perceive people in a similar emotional light.

In a fascinating study, Bouhuys, Bloem and Groothuis looked at the extent to which music influences how participants read the facial expression of emotions of others (4). Studies have demonstrated that normal people are quite good at correctly identifying the emotion on a person's face (without music). Yet listening to music can lead one to believe that an individual's face looks more happy or sad than it really is. For instance, a slow tempo, melancholy song can influence participants to believe that a person looks sad even when they are expressing no emotion at all. On the other hand, when participants listen to faster tempo, upbeat, elevating music, they believe a neutral face is more or less happy. Music has a significant effect on how we perceive the world.

Although it is not clear why music has such an influence on our emotions, mood and behaviors, it seems clear that music does alter how we perceive the world around us.

Temporary emotions caused by music change what we pay attention to, what we perceive, and how we interact with others. It brings into question the notion that there is one objective reality that can ultimately be accurately perceived.