1. 59
54th Annual Meeting of the Society for Psychophysiological Research, September 10-14, 2014 Atlanta, Georgia
Event-related response in skin conductance to six musical emotions – A Replication Study
Bhatt RB1, Koenig J1, Wilker FW2 Hillecke TK2, Thayer JF1,.
1Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA
2School of Therapeutic Sciences, SRH University, Heidelberg, Germany
Background: Music has the capibility to evoke and alter human emotion and mood.1 Evidence suggests that the physiological response to music relates to the emotion that is expressed in the musical piece, and that different emotions may result in different physiological reactions.2 Skin conductance (SC) is used extensively to study emotions evoked by the presentation of visual and acoustic stimuli.3 Researchers have found that event – related SC responses can be evoked and modulated by emotional arousal via music,3 but are not sensitive to emotional intelligibility. The present study aims to replicate Khalfa et al’s (2002) findings using musical pieces representing Ekman’s six basic emotions4.
Methods: Students were recruited at SRH University Heidelberg in exchange for a chance to win a reward. Participants (N = 33) were instructed to listen to eighteen previously evaluated musical segments,4 representing Ekman’s six basic emotions (happiness, anger, disgust, surprise, sadness and fear), with a duration of 3 – 5 seconds. SC response (SCR) was recorded simultaneously at 128 samples per second. Following each segment, participants had to classify the piece to one of the given emotional categories. A second experimental group (N = 47), independent of the first group, was asked to rate valance and arousal levels on each musical segment using an affect grid. The grid composed of a 10 – point scale – Arousal (1: ‘very calming’ to 10: ‘very stimulating’), Valance (1: ‘very unpleasant to 10: ‘very pleasant’).
Results (continued): Furthermore, no significant results were observed when investigating mean differences in mean amplitude of SC response (F(5) = .380, p > .05).
Figure 1 Mean SC changes between musical pieces of varying emotion
Conclusion: Differences on mean arousal and valance ratings provide evidence that several stimuli (e.g. no. 14 & 15) are not as representative of the respective emotional category as other musical pieces, especially since valance and arousal ratings for each emotion was similar (e.g. happiness and surprise). These differences might result in the evoked SCR for the emotional category. Thus, the lack of differences on SC responses between emotions with similar affect ratings is plausible. These results provide evidence that SCR can be useful when distinguishing emotional states, especially when these states differ in levels of arousal. This provides further support that the element of arousal in affect being responsible for physiological responses.
Results: The musical stimuli differed significantly in ratings of arousal (F(17,828) = , p < .001) and valance (F(17,828) = , p < .001). More specifically, a significant effect was observed between the specific emotion category and ratings of arousal (F(17, 840) = , p < .001) and valance (F(17, 840) = , p < .001). Mean SC for the total 10 second period between stimuli did not differ between emotional categories (F(5) = .010, p > .05, the 4 second pre – stimulus period (F(5) = .014, p > .05) or the 6 second stimuli period (F(5) = .013, p > .05). Time series analysis revealed significant differences on SC change within 10 seconds between the emotional categories (F(5) = 2.605, p = .023). Pairwise multiple comparisons revealed significant differences on mean SC change between disgust and anger (mean difference (MD) = .023, p = .036), disgust and sadness (MD = .034, p = .001), disgust and fear (MD = .022, p =.040) and happiness and sadness (MD = .026, p = .015).
References
[1] Koelsch, S. (2010). Towards a neural basis of music-evoked emotions. Trends in cognitive sciences, 14(3),
[2] Juslin, P. N, & Laukka, P. (2004). Expression, Perception, and Induction of Musical Emotions: A Review and a Questionnaire Study of Everyday Listening. Journal of New Music Research, 33(3),
[3] Khalfa, S., Peretz, I., Blondin, J.-P., & Manon, R. (2002). Event-related skin conductance responses to musical emotions in humans. Neuroscience Letters, 328(2),
[4] Mohn, C., Argstatter, H., & Wilker, F. W. (2011). Perception of six basic emotions in music. Psychology of Music, 39(4),
Contact
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