Reagowanie na muzykę : afektywne podstawy i rola kontekstu poznawczego

Abstract

The thesis deals with the subject of emotional reactions to music. The research so far has been based mainly on analyses that utilized the dimensional affective model. At the same time, an increase in the use of the musical emotions model has been observed as the most suitable for this type of reactions. The emerging inaccuracy in the definitions of emotions causes the lack of unambiguous answers about the nature of emotional reactions to music. The aim of the work was to verify the theoretical model in which the emotional reactions to music were based on affect described on two dimensions of arousal and valence. According to the model, the induction of more detailed reactions in the form of modal emotions or musical emotions is mediated by the cognitive appraisal originating from non-musical associations. Verification of the model was performed by conducting three studies that responded to research questions. In all three studies, five affectively different music pieces were used. In addition, in the first experiment affective words and in the third experiment affective images were used. In the second study and the third experiment, which were carried out both in the laboratory and online, emotional reactions to music were measured using three scales: modal emotions, musical emotions and dimensions of affect. The first experiment verified the hypotheses regarding the induction of unconscious affect congruent with the affective characterization of the stimulus. To this end, a lexical decision task was used. The second study verified whether emotional reactions to music could be reduced to a smaller number of dimensions that would correspond to existing models of affect. For this purpose, a study was conducted using three methods of measuring emotional reactions to music (modal emotions, musical emotions and dimensions of affect.) In the same study, the verified hypotheses regarded dominance of musical emotions preference in the description of subjective emotional reactions to specific music and the dependence of this preference on the type of listened music. Therefore, the respondents, after answering three types of scales of emotional reactions chose the most preferred form of responses at a given moment. The third experiment verified the hypothesis that subjectively perceived emotional reactions to music could be modified by cognitive associations. In the first experiment, the music's valence effect was partly obtained for the results from part two of the experiment, but the effect of music’s arousal did not appear in any part of the experiment. Thus, there was no positive answer to the question whether music causes changes in the affect on both its dimensions. In the second study, musical emotions were chosen more often as the preferred form of determining subjective emotional reactions to music in one of the samples. This effect was characteristic not for all types of music pieces. The choice of a particular way of describing emotional reactions depends on the type of listened music. The second study also provided preliminary confirmation of the assumption that emotional reactions to music have their base in the affect, because the conducted factor analysis and cluster analysis showed a structure similar to affective models. However, emotional reactions related to the aesthetic experience of music elude these divisions, making it difficult to reduce these reactions to existing two- or three-dimensional models of affect. In the third experiment the possibility of modifying the emotional response to music through the manipulation of cognitive associations was confirmed. However, the obtained effect was distinct, and some of the images used did not allow for effective modification of these reactions. The results, however, allow to state that the manipulation of emotions with associations is more effective by using music with rich affective characteristics, that is not explicit in emotional expression, or with a calm, relaxing affective character than by using music that have a highly unambiguous emotional character. The results of the three studies do not allow for explicit rejection or confirmation of the verified theoretical model, which prompts further its analysis using modified experimental procedures or completely new research solutions. The obtained results of the second study indicate the importance of the type of methods used by researchers to determine subjective emotional reactions to music. Regardless of their popularity in music psychology research, musical emotions are not always the most preferred method. In turn, the results of the third experiment suggest that emotional reactions to music to a limited extent, can be modified, which finds application in the area of advertising, film as well as music therapy.