A comparison of the discrete and dimensional models of emotion in music

By Tuomas Eerola, Jonna Vuoskoski. 2011

694 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The primary aim of the present study was to systematically compare perceived emotions in music using two different theoretical frameworks: the discrete emotion model, and the dimensional model of affect. A secondary aim was to introduce a new, improved set of stimuli for the study of music-mediated emotions. A large pilot study established a set of 110 film music excerpts, half were moderately and highly representative examples of five discrete emotions (anger, fear, sadness, happiness and tenderness), and the other half moderate and high examples of the six extremes of three bipolar dimensions (valence, energy arousal and tension arousal). These excerpts were rated in a listening experiment by 116 non-musicians. All target emotions of highly representative examples in both conceptual sets were discriminated by self-ratings. Linear mapping techniques between the discrete and dimensional models revealed a high correspondence along two central dimensions that can be labelled as valence and arousal, and the three dimensions could be reduced to two without significantly reducing the goodness of fit. The major difference between the discrete and categorical models concerned the poorer resolution of the discrete model in characterizing emotionally ambiguous examples. The study offers systematically structured and rich stimulus material for exploring emotional processing.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Signal Processing

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c58e151aca1f5f4a4247c5dfdde427aac9d00c3c

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cognitive Neuroscience

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

In Signal Processing

Citations in the corpus

Measuring music-induced emotion (2011, methodology): “These excerpts were selected on the following basis: using previously obtained valence and arousal ratings (Eerola & Vuoskoski, 2011), the excerpts were selected evenly from the 4 quadrants of the two-dimensional valence-arousal space: 4 excerpts from each quadrant.”
The neuroaesthetics of music. (2013, background): “In a study of excerpts of film music, Eerola and Vuoskoski (2011) found that participants were able to correctly discriminate examples differing in the three dimensions, and noted that removing tension did not impair the fit of the model.”
Are the Emotions Expressed in Music Genre-specific? An Audio-based Evaluation of Datasets Spanning Classical, Film, Pop and Mixed Genres (2011, methodology): “…earlier, but they have other drawbacks: (a) many rely on small datasets (about 2/3 of all music and emotion studies have less than 20 stimuli, Eerola & Vuoskoski, 2011), (b) some models are constructed without using cross-validation with an external dataset (e.g. Schubert, 2004; Leman et…”
Single chords convey distinct emotional qualities to both naïve and expert listeners (2016, background): “However, none of the dimensions demonstrated complete overlap with each other and most correlations were in line with past research using complete excerpts with a noteworthy exception of valence and energy (.48), which have not been correlated in past studies (Eerola & Vuoskoski, 2011).”
Current Emotion Research in Music Psychology (2015, background): “In line with this view, pieces that are perceived to sound sad also tend to be judged as beautiful (Eerola & Vuoskoski, 2010), and exposure to sad sounding music can improve sad mood states (Tsai, Chen, & Tsai, 2014; van den Tol & Edwards, 2014).”
Emotional and psychophysiological responses to tempo, mode, and percussiveness (2011, methodology): “One well-grounded way to measure emotion is by means of the valence–arousal model, which gives a dimensional description of emotions (Eerola & Vuoskoski, 2011; Russell, 1980; Russell, 2003; van den Broek, Schut, Westerink, & Tuinenbreijer, 2009; van den Broek & Westerink, 2009).”
Music for anxiety? Meta-analysis of anxiety reduction in non-clinical samples (2018, neutral): “Give detailed information on the music excerpts used (e.g., tempo, mode); if possible, use pre-validated music excerpts that induce positive emotions (e.g., “Shallow Grave” from the Jyväskylä dataset; Eerola & Vuoskoski, 2011).”