Transcultural nature of music
MUSIC is often claimed to be a universal language, but does it really affect people in the same way whether they’re French, Korean or Greek? Researchers based in Finland and China looked into this question, and found that the emotions we feel when listening to music transcend geographical and cultural boundaries.
The researchers came to this conclusion after conducting two experiments with around 2,000 people from China, Europe and North America. In the first experiment, they had to classify 72 songs into six categories (happy, sad, tender, scary, aggressive, danceable). Some volunteers were then asked to listen to these songs and tell the scientists which areas of their body they felt would react to the music they heard. For example, they were asked to tell them whether what they were hearing made them want to nod along or tap their feet.
This experimental protocol enabled the scientists to create a map of the body regions affected by different types of music. They found that “tender and sad songs were felt primarily in the chest area and head, whereas scary songs also induced sensations in the gut area, particularly in the Western participants. Happy and danceable songs led to widespread sensations throughout the body, particularly in the limbs.
Aggressive music was also experienced saliently across the body and particularly in the head,” the scientists write in their paper, published in the journal, PNAS.
Interestingly, the participants in the study did not necessarily react in the same way to the songs they were listening to. Individuals from East Asia mainly moved their arms, legs and head, while Europeans had more contrasting bodily reactions depending on the type of music. For example, “scary” melodies mainly affected the abdomen, while “tender” and “sad” melodies had a greater impact on the chest. Nevertheless, the researchers conclude that their “results demonstrate similar embodiment of music-induced emotions in geographically distant cultures,” suggesting that music-induced bodily sensations may have “a biological component”.
Of course, these conclusions must be qualified by the fact that the study only involved Western and Asian participants, which is not sufficient to account for the diversity of humanity as a whole. But this study opens up new perspectives on the transcultural nature of music.