(This article is drawn from the book Davidson, J. W., & Garrido, S. (2013). My Life As A Playlist. Perth: University of Western Australia Press.

Most people have experienced being deeply moved by a piece of music. However, a small minority of people experience unusually strong physical responses to certain pieces of music as well. They might get chills down the spine, goose bumps, or their hair standing on end while listening to music. This is often described as frisson, a pleasant tingling feeling associated with the flexing of hair follicles, resulting in gooseflesh (known as ‘piloerection’), accompanied by a cold sensation and sometimes, a shiver [1]. People often describe a kind of intensified perception or even out of body and trance-like experiences.

Sad music is twice as likely to produce these chills than happy music, especially in women, and it may be brought on by particular features of the music such as sudden changes in harmony or other unexpected events in the music [2]. Researchers have found that the chills tend to peak at intense and dramatic crescendos (increases in loudness) in the music [3]. Some of the particular pieces of music that have been reported to evoke chills include Pink Floyd’s ‘The Final Cut’ and Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht.

Research indicates that people with certain personality traits are most likely to have these experiences when listening to music. For example, people who are creative, imaginative and have a strong curiosity about the world seem to experience these strong physical reactions more than others [4]. They may also tend to be less adventurous or thrill seeking, have a strong musical interest, particularly in classical music, and are more likely to concentrate on the music rather than just having it in the background [5].

1. Juslin, P.N. and J.A. Sloboda, eds. Handbook of Music and Emotion: Theory, Research and Appplications. 2010, Oxford University Press.
2. Sloboda, J., Music structure and emotional response: Some empirical findings. Psychology of Music, 1991. 19: p. 110-120.
3. Panksepp, J., The emotional sources of "chills" induced by music. Music Perception, 1995. 13(2): p. 171-201.
4. Gabrielsson, A., Emotions in strong experiences with music, in Music and emotion: Theory and research., P.N. Juslin and J.A. Sloboda, Editors. 2001, Oxford University Press: Oxford. p. 431-449.
5. Grewe, O., et al., Listening to music as a re-creative process: Physiological, psychological, and psychoacoustical correlates of chills and strong emotions. Music Perception, 2007. 24: p. 297-314.

This article is drawn from the book Davidson, J. W., & Garrido, S. (2013). My Life As A Playlist. Perth: University of Western Australia Press.

The ‘Mozart Effect’ is a concept that became popular amongst parents due to a great deal of media attention in the 1990s. Unfortunately, the great majority of people have misunderstood the concept and come to believe that merely listening to Mozart is enough to produce genius in their children. This led various U.S. politicians to even use the promise of free Mozart CDs to newborn babies in their election campaigns [14]. The misconception came from a study conducted in 1993 which found that listening to a specific composition of Mozart enhanced the spatial test performance of college students for up to about fifteen minutes [15]. (Spatial-temporal reasoning if the ability to visualize spatial patterns ad mentally manipulate them. It is a useful skill for architects and engineers, and is crucial to chess playing, doing mathematics and computer operation).This received widespread attention from the popular media who first coined the term the ‘Mozart effect’. However, there was no evidence in the original study that the effect was in any way specific to Mozart, or that it can affect the long-term intelligence of children.

Subsequent studies have demonstrated a similarly improved spatial ability after listening to Philip Glass [16] or even popular music [17]. In fact, the effect doesn’t even seem limited to music [18]. It seems to be caused by increased arousal due to listening to music rather than the particular music itself [19]. There is no proof of any long-term intelligence gains involved in merely listening to music, and certainly no proof that it affects brain development in infants.

However, an important distinction must be made between research on music listening and research on the more cognitively complex process of learning to play an instrument. Studies examining the effect of music instruction have profound implications for educational practice. Researchers have found that children may score higher on spatial-temporal tasks, and hand-eye coordination tasks after instrumental instruction. Early musical training may also strengthen cognitive processes used in other areas of learning such as literacy or mathematics [14].

14. Rauscher, F.H. and S.C. Hinton, The Mozart effect: Music listening is not music instruction. Educational Psychologist, 2006. 41: p. 233-238.
15. Rauscher, F.H., G.L. Shaw, and K.N. Ky, Music and spatial task performance. Nature, 1993. 365: p. 611.
16. Jackson, C.D. and M. Tlauka, Route-learning and the Mozart effect. Psychology of Music, 2004. 32: p. 213-20.
17. Schellenberg, E.G. and S. Hallam, Music listening and cognitive abilities in 10- and 11- years olds: The Blur effect. Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 2005. 1060: p. 202-209.
18. Nantais, K.M. and E.G. Schellenberg, The Mozart effect: An artifact of preference. Psychological Science, 1999. 10: p. 370-37.
19. Jones, M.H., S.D. West, and D.B. Estell, The Mozart effect: Arousal, preference, and spatial performance. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, 2006. S: p. 26-32.

Imagine listening to a newscaster sing a song about the grisly details of the public execution of a murderer. It seems improbable, but until recently that's exactly how European news media worked. From the birth of the printing press, information about noteworthy events was printed on cheap pamphlets which usually contained an image, a prose account of the event and a ballad version as well. Crimes and executions were among the most popular themes for the ballads, which were often written in the first person and purported to be the last words, confession or ‘dying speech’ of the condemned. The ballads were usually set to the tune of other familiar songs, so there was no need for musical notation. The idea was that the public could sing along to toe-tapping popular dance tunes. In one early 19th century case, the account of a beheading was set to a can-can melody!

This is the subject of research by Una McIlvenna's research from the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions. Her work looks at execution ballads and the use of song to broadcast information about public executions in the early modern period. She is particularly interested in how this stylised representation of crime and punishment could manufacture or manipulate emotions in its audience. How does framing the account of an execution in verse and singing it affect the reception of its message? And what are the consequences for that message of the multiple reperformances and repeated dissemination of the ballad? In particular, she focuses on balladry's re-use of familiar tunes, exploring the effects that this tradition has on how the message within the ballad is framed and mediated. Although execution ballads were largely formulaic in their moral stance, language and structure, she argues that familar songs carried with them emotional associations that fed into the new version. Ballad-writers exploited the listeners' auditory response to the original tune in order to increase the ballads' emotional impact, creating a genre that continued to be popular long after execution has ceased to be a public spectacle.

(This article is drawn from the book Davidson, J. W., & Garrido, S. (2013). My Life As A Playlist. Perth: University of Western Australia Press.)

It is well established that music and song lyrics have the ability to influence behaviour. Violent song lyrics for example, can increase feelings of aggressiveness [31]. Similarly, one experiment found that male customers spent more money in a flower shop when romantic music was being played [32].

An experimental study published in 2009 demonstrated that women who were exposed to music containing romantic lyrics were more likely to respond favourably to a request for their phone number than the control group [33]. The experiment was conducted on 183 females aged 18-20 years, who were exposed to romantic lyrics or neutral ones. Five minutes later, the participant was approached by a young male with a marketing survey who asked for her phone number. It was found that the women who had previously been exposed to the romantic lyrics complied with the request more readily than women exposed to neutral ones. These results are similar to the findings in another study which demonstrated that men who were asked to recall a romantic episode in their lives, interacted more favourably with a female some seconds later [34]. The results confirm that media has the potential to influence a high spectrum of behaviour.

31. Anderson, C.A., N.L. Carnagey, and J. Eubanks, Exposure to violent media: The effects of songs with violent lyrics on aggressive thoughts and feelings. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2003. 84(5): p. 960-971.
32. Jacob, C., et al., 'Love is in the air': Congruency between background music and goods in a flower shop. International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research, 2009. 19: p. 75-59.
33. Gueguen, N., C. Jacob, and L. Lamy, 'Love is in the air': Effects of songs with romantic lyrics on compliance with a courtship request. Psychology of Music, 2009. 38: p. 303 - 307.
34. Lamy, L., J. Fischer-Lokou, and N. Gueguen, Induced reminiscence of love and chivalrous helping. Current Psychology, 2009. 28(3): p. 202-209.

From the time that babies begin hearing during the third trimester of pregnancy, it appears that they are quite sophisticated listeners with innate abilities to process music. Infants have a remarkable ability to discriminate pitches and rhythms. Fast music may cause their heartbeats to become accelerated while slow calm music relaxes them. And it appears that they can remember the music they have heard in the womb for up to a year after birth even if they didn’t hear it again in the interim [54]. They also demonstrate a preference for consonant intervals (harmonious notes) over dissonant intervals (clashing notes) within months of being born, suggesting that this preference is present at birth [55]. The ability to hear, process and remember musical patterns also appears to be present in the unborn foetus. This fascinating area of research can help us to understand which aspects of musical ability appear to be innate and genetic and which are environmentally influenced.

Research on music and babies also provides some interesting insight into how music effects parent-child interactions in the early years of life. Parents seem to instinctively sing to their babies using a style of singing known as IDS (infant-directed singing) an expressive style of singing which uses high pitches and a slow tempo, with mothers typically singing to their babies more than fathers. Some researchers believe that music may function as an important source of communication and bonding between parents and infants in the early years of life [56].

54. Lamont, A., Infants' preferences for familiar and unfamiliar music: A socio-cultural study, in Meeting of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition. 2001: Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
55. Zentner, M. and J. Kagan, Infants' perception of consonance and dissonance in music. Infant Behavior & Development, 1998. 21(3): p. 483-492.
56. Rock, A.M.L., L.J. Trainor, and T.L. Addison, Distinctive messages in infant-directed lullabies and play songs. Developmental Psychology, 1999. 35(2): p. 527-534.

Although our nearest biological relatives from the ape family demonstrate little aptitude for music, a diverse group of other animals such as birds, whales, seals, bats and elephants are accomplished singers. There are some similarities between human and animal music. Like human music, songs in birds and whales seem to be generated by rule-based systems for stringing notes together into melodies. Rhesus monkeys have been found to recognise tunes even when they have been transposed up or down an octave (a distance of 8 notes) [60], but only when the melodies played are based on major and minor scales. They appear unable to remember atonal melodies (melodies without a central key or tonality). Pigeons have even be successfully trained to distinguish between music by Bach and that of Stravinsky [61].

Some interesting research has also been conducted which has discovered that if music is composed to match certain features of the vocalisations of primates, it may be used to manipulate their moods. Studies have also found that dogs housed in rescue shelters appear more relaxed when played classical music than when played heavy metal music [62].

However, some researchers argue that when animal songs sound musical to our ear it is likely a coincidence, since they function only as communication signals to the animals that produce them and do not seem to be sung for the purpose of enjoyment [63]. And unlike humans, it is generally only the males of the species that sing.

60. Wright, A.A., et al., Music perception and octave generaliation in rhesus monkeys. Journal of Experimental Psychology General, 2000. 129: p. 291-307.
61. Porter, D. and A. Neuringer, Music discriminations by pigeons. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 1984. 10: p. 138-148.
62. Wells, D.L., L. Graham, and P.G. Hepper, The influence of auditory stimulation on the behaviour of dogs housed in a rescue shelter. Animal Welfare, 2002. 11: p. 385-393.
63. McDermott, J. and M. Hauser, The origins of music: Innateness, uniqueness and evolution. Music Perception, 2006. 23(1): p. 29-59.

Most people have had the mildly irritating experience of getting a song stuck in their head that they hear over and over again and can’t seem to switch off. This is known as an ‘earworm’ and although people have varying susceptibilities to earworms, they are experienced by around 98% of the population. It often seems to be a song that we don’t even like and apparently tends to last longer in women. People with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are also more likely to suffer from earworms [50].

Researchers have found that earworms typically have an upbeat melody and repetitive lyrics that can be catchy at first but can quickly become annoying. It may be the repetitive, cyclical nature of these songs that makes them get stuck in our heads. Often just hearing one word of some well-known lyrics is enough to get the tune going repeatedly in our minds. It is reported that Mozart’s children used to use this phenomenon to tease him by playing incomplete tunes on the piano making him rush down to complete them because he couldn’t stand having the song unfinished in his head.

50. Beaman, C.P. and T.I. Williams, Earworms (stuck song syndrome): Towards a natural history of intrusive thoughts. British Journal of Psychology, 2010. 101(4): p. 637-653.

Given the preoccupation of the Western world with the pursuit of happiness it seems curious that some people willingly seek out things that they know will make them sad. Yet in the case of music and other art forms, they often do. Some of the most popular films are often of the ‘tear-jerker’ genre, and many of us have at times put our favourite tragic love song on the iPod and listened to it over and over again. In fact when asked to name their favourite song, about one in three people will name a sad song rather than a happy one [9]

This is a paradox which has puzzled philosophers for centuries. Aristotle called it ‘the paradox of tragedy’. He believed that the ancient dramatic tragedies allowed viewers an opportunity to purge themselves of negative emotions, known as ‘catharsis’.

Despite the fact that the issue has been hotly debated by philosophers over the centuries, there has been little systematic scientific study of it until recent years. One study has revealed that some people may have the capacity to ‘dissociate’ from the pain and displeasure that usually accompanies an experience of sadness when it occurs in a non-threatening situation such as listening to music [10]. Dissociation is a disconnection from reality that is often experienced in its extreme form by victims of trauma or abuse. However, most people experience it at non-clinical levels in the form of ‘absorption’ in everyday life. Absorption is an experience similar to daydreaming in which a person’s attention becomes so focused that they are unaware of the passage of time and the things happening around them. Evidence reveals that people with high scores in ‘absorption’ tend to demonstrate a stronger liking for sad music [10]. On the other hand, research suggests that people with mood disorders such as depression may have impaired abilities to regulate their moods and may find themselves attracted to sad music despite the fact that it only makes them feel worse [11-13].

9. Schubert, E., Locus of emotion: The effect of task order and age on emotion perceived and emotion felt in response to music. Journal of Music Therapy, 2007. 44(4): p. 344-368.
10. Garrido, S. and E. Schubert, Individual differences in the enjoyment of negative emotion in music: A literature review and experiment. Music Perception, 2011. 28(3): p. 279-295.
11. Garrido, S. and E. Schubert, Negative emotion in music: What is the attraction? A qualitative study. Empirical Musicology Review, in press.
12. Garrido, S., Rumination and sad music: A review of the literature and a future direction., in Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Music Communication Science (ICoMCS2), Catherine Stevens, et al., Editors. 2009, HCSNet, University of Western Sydney: Sydney. p. 20-23.
13. Garrido, S. and E. Schubert, Adaptive and maladaptive attraction to negative emotion in music. Musicae Scientiae, 2013. 17(2): p. 145-164.

(This article is drawn from the book Davidson, J. W., & Garrido, S. (2013). My Life As A Playlist. Perth: University of Western Australia Press.)

Researchers have still been unable to completely answer the question of just how music is able to stir our emotions so strongly. One interesting theory involves an understanding of mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are believed to be one of the mechanisms associated with empathy. Mirror neurons are neurons that are activated, not only when a person does something, but when they observe someone else doing the same thing. It is these neurons that are believed to be involved when most people instinctively mirror the facial expression of a person they are looking at. It appears that this can actually induce the corresponding emotion in the person, causing them to experience an empathetic reaction to the other person’s emotional expression [35]. As argued by David Huron [36], we seem to be evolutionarily programmed to respond to expressions of sadness, for example, with empathy, which usually involves a parallel emotional state being invoked in us. Mirror neurons are also theorised to be involved in the phenomenon of emotional contagion and also in our emotional response to music [37].

Emotional contagion is the tendency to catch the emotions of the people around us and is often most powerfully experienced in a crowd of people, such as when we are caught up in the reactions of the audience when watching a movie at the cinema. In the same way, it is argued that when we listen to music, mirror neurons may cause us to unconsciously mimic the emotions that we perceive as being expressed in the music, thus inducing those very same emotions in us [38].

35. Darwall, S., Empathy, sympathy, care. Philosophical Studies, 1997. 89: p. 261-282.
36. Huron, D., Why do listeners enjoy music that makes them weep? Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, 2008: p. 236-242.
37. Molnar-Szakacs, I. and K. Overy, Music and mirror neurons: from motion to 'e'motion. SCAN, 2006. 1: p. 235-241.
38. Juslin, P.N. and D. Vastfjall, Emotional response to music: the need to consider underlying mechanisms. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2008. 31: p. 559-621.