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

By Valorie N. Salimpoor, Mitchel Benovoy, G. Longo, Jeremy R. Cooperstock, Robert J. Zatorre. PLoS ONE, 2009

620 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Background Listening to music is amongst the most rewarding experiences for humans. Music has no functional resemblance to other rewarding stimuli, and has no demonstrated biological value, yet individuals continue listening to music for pleasure. It has been suggested that the pleasurable aspects of music listening are related to a change in emotional arousal, although this link has not been directly investigated. In this study, using methods of high temporal sensitivity we investigated whether there is a systematic relationship between dynamic increases in pleasure states and physiological indicators of emotional arousal, including changes in heart rate, respiration, electrodermal activity, body temperature, and blood volume pulse. Methodology Twenty-six participants listened to self-selected intensely pleasurable music and “neutral” music that was individually selected for them based on low pleasure ratings they provided on other participants' music. The “chills” phenomenon was used to index intensely pleasurable responses to music. During music listening, continuous real-time recordings of subjective pleasure states and simultaneous recordings of sympathetic nervous system activity, an objective measure of emotional arousal, were obtained. Principal Findings Results revealed a strong positive correlation between ratings of pleasure and emotional arousal. Importantly, a dissociation was revealed as individuals who did not experience pleasure also showed no significant increases in emotional arousal. Conclusions/Significance These results have broader implications by demonstrating that strongly felt emotions could be rewarding in themselves in the absence of a physically tangible reward or a specific functional goal.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0fc1ae731a3935f49f3b4c8ffa5d5c8eb99c11c5

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Citations in the corpus

Music, biological evolution, and the brain (2010, background): “Thus neuroendocrine effects on the brain are conceptually and mechanistically distinct from transient neurotransmitter effects, e.g., the release of dopamine associated with musical chills ( " goosebumps " ) (Blood and Zatorre, 2001; Salimpoor et al., 2009).”
Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music (2011, neutral): “Chills involve a clear and discrete pattern of autonomic nervous system (ANS) arousa”
Current Emotion Research in Music Psychology (2015, background): “Chills that are evoked in response to self-selected music are accompanied by physiological changes indicative of emotional arousal, such as increases in electro-dermal activity (EDA), heart rate, and respiration rate, but decreases in body temperature (Grewe et al., 2009; Rickard, 2004; Salimpoor et”
Emotional and psychophysiological responses to tempo, mode, and percussiveness (2011, background): “Several other researchers have also demonstrated the relation between arousal in the music and SCL responses (Lundqvist, Carlsson, Hilmersson, & Juslin, 2009; Salimpoor et al., 2009; Witvliet & Vrana, 2007).”
Enhancing wellbeing: An emerging model of the adaptive functions of music listening (2016, result): “…quantitative and experimental methods also supports the thesis that music listening can induce positive emotions (e.g. Juslin, Liljestrom, Vastfjall, Barradas & Silva, 2008; Salimpoor, Benovoy, Longo, Cooperstock & Zatorre, 2009) and regulate negative affect (Thayer, Newman, & McClain, 1994).”