PLoS ONE: The Rewarding Aspects of Music Listening Are Related to Degree of Emotional Arousal

Description

The results of this experiment provide clear evidence for a direct link between emotions and the rewarding aspects of music listening by demonstrating a robust dynamic relationship between increases in emotional arousal and reported increases in pleasure. These findings are also novel insofar as they demonstrate dissociation between physiological responses of individuals who find a given piece of music pleasurable from those who do not, solidifying the predicted connection between emotional arousal and pleasure. Participants who did not report pleasurable states in response to a particular excerpt did not show any significant changes in psychophysiological arousal, whereas others who found those same excerpts pleasurable showed a distinct profile of increasing sympathetic nervous system activity as pleasure increased. These findings provide strong support for the theory that musical emotions underlie the pleasurable aspects of music listening.

Original URL

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0007487#

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0007487#