Psychology of Music: Emotion, Performance, and Expression

Vocabulary flashcards covering theories of emotion, melodic cues, mechanisms of musical affect, performance gesture, and social dynamics from the Psychology of Music notes.

Basic Emotions (in Music)

The primary emotional states frequently studied in music psychology, specifically identified as happiness, sadness, fear, and anger.

Lazarus's Theory of Emotion

The psychological theory proposing that cognitive appraisal comes before the experience of emotion.

Zajonc's Theory of Emotion

The psychological stance that emotion occurs prior to, or separately from, cognitive processing.

Damasio's Emotion Model

The neurobiological perspective asserting that cognition and emotion are inextricably linked rather than isolated processes.

James-Lange Theory

The theory proposing that emotions are subjective interpretations of automatic autonomic nervous system responses.

Cooke's Melodic Cues

A Western system linking specific musical intervals to distinct emotions, such as the major third ('Doe a Deer') and major sixth ('My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean').

Tritone

A musical interval characterized in Western melodic conventions as expressing disruption and hostility.

Contour (Kivy)

The view that music conveys emotion by resembling behavioral expression, such as sad music being slow because a sad person moves slowly.

Convention (Kivy)

The view that musical emotion stems from learned cultural associations and predictable stylistic rules over time.

Morphology of Feeling (Langer)

The concept that music symbolizes the dynamic temporal patterns and ups and downs of human emotional life through met and violated expectations.

Adaptive Arousal (Mandler)

The theory stating that listeners prefer music that occasionally, but not predictably, satisfies their expectations.

Multiple-Mechanism Theory

A framework describing the distinct psychological and physiological mechanisms through which musical stimuli evoke emotion.

Brain Stem Reflex

A primitive, preconscious emotional response to basic acoustic features like sudden loud sounds or rapid tempo changes, observable even in fetuses in the womb.

Rhythmic Entrainment

The process by which an individual's internal physiological or motor rhythms synchronize to the external tempo of music, such as walking or running to a beat.

Evaluative Conditioning

An associative process similar to classical conditioning where a piece of music induces an emotion or nostalgia without explicit recall of the pairing event.

Emotional Contagion

The mechanism wherein mirror neurons replicate observed or heard emotions, enabling physical reactions such as crying in response to sad music.

Visual Imagery (Mechanism)

The process wherein musical sound triggers internal visual representations or scenes in the listener's mind, such as a sunset.

Episodic Memory (Mechanism)

The musical emotional induction mechanism triggered when a specific piece of music evokes conscious memories of past autobiographical events.

Musical Expectancy

The anticipation of musical continuation that elicits satisfaction when fulfilled or a jarring feeling when violated.

Major Mode

A tonal organization universally perceived within Western cultures as communicating happy, light, cheerful, and exhilarating emotional states.

Minor Mode

A tonal organization universally perceived within Western cultures as communicating sad, mournful, weird, and mystical emotional states.

Cognitivism (in Music)

The theoretical position that music merely communicates or signifies emotional meaning without directly inducing real emotions in the listener.

Emotivism (in Music)

The theoretical position asserting that music directly stimulates and causes genuine emotional reactions within the listener.

Performance Dystonia

A task-specific neurological condition involving jumbled motor neurons that interferes with motor performance exclusively during instrument playing and is worsened by over-practicing.

Musical Structure

The explicit, notated musical components specified on the page, including score directions such as volume instructions and dynamics.

Musical Microstructure

Unwritten expressive nuances supplied interpretively by a performer, such as naturally decelerating tempo at the end of a musical phrase or piece.

Primary Movements

Deliberate physical and facial gestures utilized by a musician during performance to communicate meaning to the audience or fellow players.

Emblems

Standardized nonverbal gestures that carry a direct and explicit linguistic translation, such as showing a peace sign.

Illustrators

Physical gestures used to emphasize or accentuate specific melodic or rhythmic aspects of a piece (e.g., physical emphasis on 'someWHERE over the rainbow').

Regulators

Ensemble-coordinating movements, including head nods and direct eye contact, that govern musical pacing and interaction during performance.

Affect Displays

Facial or bodily expressions displayed by a performer to reflect the emotional mood conveyed by the music.

Secondary Movements

Involuntary bodily movements resulting entirely from the biomechanical and technical requirements of playing an instrument.

Social Facilitation

The psychological effect whereby the presence of an audience enhances or improves a musician's performance quality.

Associative Generation

A method of composition or improvisation where new musical ideas develop through sequential, associative mental links.

Interrupt Generation

A compositional or improvisational strategy where new musical material arises from deliberately breaking or interrupting ongoing musical patterns.