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Relationships between expressed and felt emotions in music

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MS/Vol. XII-1/Spring 2008/RR 5/12/07 16:07 Page 75

Musicae Scientiae © 2008 by ESCOM European Society

Spring 2008, Vol XII, n° 1, 75-99 for the Cognitive Sciences of Music

Relationships between expressed

and felt emotions in music

PAUL EVANS* AND EMERY SCHUBERT**

* School of Music
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
** School of English, Media and Performing Arts
University of New South Wales

• ABSTRACT
This study examines empirically the possible relationships between the emotional
quality one can attribute to musical stimuli (expressed emotion, or external locus of
emotion) and the subjective emotional response one can have as a result of
listening to music (felt emotion, or internal locus). The relationship between the
two loci of emotion is often assumed to be positive, that is, when listening to music,
one feels the emotion that the music expresses. Gabrielsson has suggested, however,
that this assumption is simplistic, and has proposed a model that describes other
possible relationships. The present study quantitatively investigates Gabrielsson’s
proposal. Forty-five participants responded to questions about both expressed
emotion and felt emotion for two familiar experimenter-selected pieces (Pachelbel’s
Canon and Advance Australia Fair, the Australian national anthem) and one or two
pieces of their own selection. Participants were asked to “imagine” their self-
selected pieces in the absence of recordings or a live performance. An
experimenter-selected piece was both sounded and imagined, and no significant
difference was observed in responses between the two conditions. Quantitative
criteria were generated in order to compare the loci (internal and external) of each
piece in geometric space. Results showed that the positive relationship, where the
internal and external locus emotions are the same, occurred in 61% of cases. In
general, these pieces were preferred more than those exhibiting non-positive
relationships. Implications for practices that tacitly assume a 100% positive
relationship, or are not specific about the locus of emotion, are discussed.

Keywords: emotion, locus of emotion, imagery, expression, mood induction.

INTRODUCTION

It is not unusual for people to ascribe emotions to musical stimuli, for example, to
say a piece of music is expressive of happiness or anger. Music is unusual in this way
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because besides other sentient beings, there are very few objects or phenomena to
which we commonly ascribe emotional expressiveness (Kivy, 1990). Music does not,
of course, literally contain or express emotion. Rather, some explanations suggest
that we ascribe emotions to music because it sounds the way people sound when they
are expressing particular emotions (Davies, 2003), or even that music sounds the way
emotions themselves feel (Langer, 1966; Pratt, 1952). Theoretical and empirical
research suggests that people generally agree on the basic emotion that a particular
piece of music is expressing (Fabian & Schubert, 2003; Gabrielsson & Juslin, 1996;
Hevner, 1935, 1936; Kivy, 2002). Studies have also found musical characteristics
that are correlated with particular expressed emotions (Hevner, 1935, 1936; Juslin &
Laukka, 2004; Schubert, 2004). The emotion that a piece of music “expresses” is
referred to as being in the external locus, because the listeners generally perceive and
describe it as a part of the music itself.
Listening to music can also be accompanied by a felt emotional experience.
Scholars who are more concerned with the philosophy of art tend to regard this felt
emotion experience in music listening as unimportant or irrelevant (e.g., Pratt, 1952;
Scruton, 1983; Stravinsky & Craft, 1962). Kivy, for example, suggests that it is as
unhealthy to be moved emotionally by music as it is to be moved emotionally by “a
dandelion or a door knob” (2002, p. 24). In contrast, Davies (2003), for example,
locates the value and importance of music in what it makes us feel. Extensive
empirical studies of felt emotion show that many people associate strong memories
with musical sounds or works (e.g., Gabrielsson, 2001; Sloboda, 1992). In addition
to having rare strong emotional experiences with music, people can also experience
“everyday” emotions (see, for example, Sloboda, 1991; Sloboda & O’Neill, 2001).
The causes of emotional experiences in music are said to be a function of the
structure of the music, performer features, listener features, and contextual factors
(Scherer & Zentner, 2001).
Given that it is not uncommon to say that music expresses emotions, and that we
can also feel emotions in response to music, there may be some relationship between
the two. Perhaps the most likely or intuitive assumption about this possible
relationship is that the emotion we feel when listening to music is the emotion that
is being expressed by the music. In other words, it seems to make sense that listening
to a sad piece of music, for example, is likely to make us feel sad. As Gabrielsson
(2002) has suggested, however, this may not always be the case.

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN EXPRESSED AND FELT EMOTIONS

Relationships between expressed and felt emotions (that is, the external and internal
locus of emotion, respectively) have been discussed since the ancient Greeks:
Aristotle and Plato described a relationship such that the listener experiences a
particular emotion (e.g., mournful and solemn), as a result of listening to music
which is itself expressive of people’s mournful and solemn behaviour (see Kivy,
2002). In empirical research, most studies in emotion thus far have been concerned
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with either the external locus or the internal locus, or they have not specified. Few
of them have examined both loci of emotion, and fewer have dealt with the
relationships between them. Only a handful of empirical studies that we are aware of
have acknowledged the complexity of the relationship between the emotion loci
(Collins, 1989; Dibben, 2004; Gabrielsson, 2002; Juslin & Laukka, 2004; Kallinen
& Ravaja, 2006; Schubert, 2007, in press). Gabrielsson’s (2002) review of the
relationship between felt emotion and “perceived” (expressed) emotion noted that
the distinction was “not always observed, neither in everyday conversation about
emotions, nor in scientific papers” (p. 123). Gabrielsson summarised the findings of
relevant research and found that the relationship can take various forms:
1. Positive relationship occurs when “the listener’s emotional response is in agreement
with the emotional expression in the music” (p. 131).
2. Negative relationship occurs when the “listener reacts with an emotion ‘opposite’
to that expressed in the music: positive emotion in the music elicits negative emotion
in the response, or negative emotion in the music elicits positive emotion in the
response” (p. 134).
3. No systematic relationship occurs when the listener stays “emotionally neutral”
regardless of the expression of the music, or experiences different emotions on
different occasions (p. 136).
4. No relationship occurs when there is not even a potential relationship, such as
when a person feels an emotion that cannot be expressed in music (p. 136).
Gabrielsson’s proposal represents the first attempt by music psychology research
to clearly define and categorise the types of relationships between expressed and felt
emotion in response to a piece of music (see Figure 1).
Of the possible emotion relationships, Gabrielsson (2002) suggested that the
positive relationship is potentially the most common, but he pointed out that it was
“far from general” (p. 139). He did not, however, suggest a value for the proportions
of the four types of relationships. The present study therefore aims to more directly
test Gabrielsson’s model and to determine the extent to which each category occurs.
In interpreting Gabrielsson’s model, we observed that another category is possible
for the case where the emotion expressed is different from the emotion felt in music,
but it is not directly “opposite” in emotional quality. According to the language used
to describe Gabrielsson’s categories, this case would not have a way of being
classified, as the emotion felt might not be directly opposite of the emotion
expressed, even if the two emotions are not the same. There is therefore a possibility
of including another emotion category that describes these cases (see Evans &
Schubert, 2006). For this study, however, we have retained the original categories
that Gabrielsson’s model suggested, interpreting “negative” relationship to refer to
“no correlation” between expressed and felt emotions in quantitative terms, rather
than using the criteria that emotions had to be directly opposite in emotional quality.
We note that such cases may be considered as a subcategory of “negative relationship”
called “opposite relationship.”
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Figure 1.
Relationships between expressed and felt emotions. Adapted from Gabrielsson (2002, p. 131).

Dibben (2004) examined the differences between expressed and felt emotions in
a study of peripheral feedback. To investigate the effects of physiological arousal on
emotion felt when listening to music, Dibben used a between-subjects design in
which participants judged the emotion expressed by music, and then either
performed physical exercise or completed a simple task, before reporting their
emotional response. Her study assumed that the participants’ reports of expressed
emotion in the music were unlikely to change with physical arousal, so by comparing
the expressed emotion to the felt emotion report, Dibben speculated that she would
be able to gauge how much felt emotion was influenced by physical arousal. The
study used stimulus materials that were unfamiliar to the participants in order to
eliminate any referential experiences such as associations with life events, or
preference judgements that participants may have already had. Dibben found that
the emotion expressed was stable across all conditions, so she was able to measure the
effects of exercise on the felt emotion. The results of the experiment support the
proposition that increased physiological arousal intensifies emotional experiences
with music.
A questionnaire study conducted by Juslin and Laukka (2004) investigated the
nature of emotion expression, perception, and induction in music. Participants in
the study responded to questions about their everyday listening to music, on themes
such as the listening context, musical expressivity, musical communication, emotion
perception, emotion induction, the relationship between emotion perception and
induction, and motives for listening to music. Responses to the question “If you
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perceive that the music expresses an emotion, do you also feel that emotion” showed
that participants thought this occurred often (Always 6%, Often 65%, Seldom 29%,
Never 1%) (Juslin & Laukka, 2004, p. 231). This result is evidence that while people
generally believe that it is common to feel the same emotions that the music
expresses, they recognise that this is not always the case.
Schubert (in press) examined the relationship between felt and expressed emotion
using five excerpts of classical music. He concluded that felt emotions are typically
lower in magnitude than expressed emotions, speculating that it might be possible
for felt emotion magnitude to be higher if participants chose their own music. One
way to deal with this problem is to test people individually so that they can listen to
their own pieces. However, another way which allows groups to be tested at the same
time would be to ask participants to imagine a piece of music of their choice. In a
further analysis of the question of locus of emotion relationships, Schubert (2007)
examined whether enjoyment occurred if the negative emotions were actually felt
rather than simply observed. Results showed that this was the case, demonstrating a
difference between the expressed and felt emotions. Notably, the study also found
that listeners prefer pieces where the felt emotion is the same as the expressed
emotion.
Kallinen and Ravaja (2006) sought to examine the relationships between
expressed and felt emotions according to Gabrielsson’s (2002) model in relation to
personality characteristics. They reported evidence that positive and negative emotion
relationships are indeed possible, concluding that the two emotions were, in general,
the same. They also found that participants “characterized by neurotic behaviour and
anxiety tend to evaluate stimuli as more emotional, but may nevertheless be unable
to engage emotionally with them owing to their high inhibitory tendencies”
(Kallinen & Ravaja, 2006, p. 207).
In sum, systematic research to date in this area has produced important but
limited findings. Evidence so far strongly suggests that while the emotions expressed
in music are often the same as those felt, it is also possible for them to be different.
The difference can be explained by neurological factors (Schubert, 1996),
physiological arousal (Dibben, 2004), personality characteristics (Kallinen & Ravaja,
2006), and autobiographical associations (Gabrielsson, 2001), although research is
perhaps far from providing a single model that explains all of the reasons between
the two emotion loci.

DIMENSIONAL MODEL OF EMOTION

The dimensional model of emotion (in contrast to the categorical model, e.g.,
Plutchik, 1980; Tomkins, 1962; cf., Sloboda & Juslin, 2001) proposes that a limited
number of dimensions can describe most of the variations between emotions. One
such dimensional model, which has stimulated much research, is Russell’s (1980)
circumplex model of affect. Russell found that two dimensions, valence (positive
versus negative) and arousal (sleepy versus active), provided parsimonious
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explanations of emotions. These two dimensions can be visualised on geometrically

perpendicular axes, suggesting that they are independent of each other. The
reduction of emotional qualities to two dimensions lends itself to being used in
experimental settings. For example, Russell et al. (1989) later developed the Affect
Grid, which allows its users to record judgements about single instances of affect in
one response. The grid is divided into a number of squares which divide the two-
dimensional space created by the valence and arousal axes (see Figure 2).

Figure 2.
Two-dimensional emotion space used in the Affect Grid (Russell, 1989).

There is continuing debate about the labels that should be used for the emotion
dimensions, and indeed whether two dimensions are sufficient. Recently it has been
argued that arousal is actually comprised of two separate dimensions (Ilie &
Thompson, 2006; Schimmack & Grob, 2000). This way, better distinctions can be
made between terms such as angry and frightened, which, in the valence-arousal
model, are represented in the same spatial region. However, having two separate
arousal dimensions might disrupt the meaningful geometric relationships between
many emotions which the valence-arousal model represents. Killgore (1999), among
others, proposed an alternative approach by adding a third dimension labelled
dominance, which would explain differences between dominant emotions, such as
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majestic and angry, and submissive emotions, such as fear and surprise. By using the
dominance dimension, it is possible to retain the valence-arousal model and the
beneficial geometric properties it provides. This, however, negates the advantage of
being able to represent emotions in two-dimensional space, and an instrument to
assess single instances of affect has not been tested in the way the Affect Grid has.

AIMS
There is quite clearly ambiguity in the relationship between expressed emotions and
felt emotions in music listening, as noted by Gabrielsson (2002). Gabrielsson’s
framework was devised as a result of his extensive research and a review of related
literature concerned with emotional responses to music. Using his ideas as our basis,
the present study was devised to ascertain how often each type of relationship is likely
to occur. We have used the dimensional model of emotion to do this, because it
provides a simple means of gaining participants’ responses while still being able to
describe subtle variations between emotions.

METHOD

PARTICIPANTS
Forty-five undergraduate music students (28 females, 15 males, two did not indicate
gender) aged between 17 and 28 (M = 19.8; SD = 2.02) participated in the study.
For practical reasons, the study was conducted in four approximately equal groups.
Two of the groups participated in a shorter form of the study with less stimuli (see
details in Procedure).

STIMULUS MATERIALS
The study included pieces selected by the experimenters as well as pieces selected by
participants. When recordings were used, they were played on a classroom stereo
system at a comfortable listening level.
Rather than playing the participant-selected pieces live or from a recording,
participants were asked to “imagine” hearing the piece for about 30 seconds. Based
on research findings in visual imagery (Craver-Lemley, Arterberry, & Reeves, 1999;
Kahan, Mohsen, Tandez, & McDonald, 1999; Robinson & Clore, 2001), cognitive
neuroscience (Halpern, 2003), and limited research in musical imagery (Weber &
Brown, 2001), it was assumed that imagining a piece would elicit the same
emotional response as hearing it sounded (cf., Schubert, Evans, & Rink, 2006).
While the evidence suggests that this is the case, we designed the experiment in such
a way that we could test this assertion. We did this by choosing a piece of music that
was familiar to the participants, and then comparing the responses when participants
imagined the piece to when it was played to them.
The first experimenter-selected piece used was Pachelbel’s Canon (hereafter,
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Pachelbel). This piece was chosen because it was likely to be highly familiar to the
participants, and could therefore be easily imagined. We also believed that this piece
would create a variety of experiences such as feelings of dislike because of a belief that
it is overused or clichéd, to associations with specific emotional life events, such as
weddings. The second experimenter-selected stimulus was Advance Australia Fair,
the Australian national anthem (hereafter, Anthem). In a similar way to Pachelbel’s
Canon, this piece was considered likely to be familiar, stimulate a range of responses,
and perhaps remind people of previous life experiences.

PROCEDURE
Participants sat in a classroom and each was given a booklet titled “Strong Personal
Experiences with Music”. The front page explained the purpose of the study and the
instructions for tasks that each participant would perform, including the task of
imagining pieces of music selected by the experimenter as well as pieces of their own
selection that evoke a strong emotional response. These instructions were read by the
experimenter, and time was given for questions. Participants then turned the page
and followed the instructions.
Participants first responded to Pachelbel, answering questions about how the
music made them feel and why. They also rated the valence, arousal, emotional
strength and dominance that they felt in response to the music on 11-point scales.
Valence was rated from positive (with example words serene, happy) to negative (sad,
angry); arousal from aroused (excited, nervous) to non-aroused (depressed, calm);
dominance from dominant (majestic, angry) to submissive (fear, surprise); and
strength from “no emotion” to “strong emotion.” Liking was rated from “hate it” to
“love it,” and familiarity from “unfamiliar” to “overly familiar” with “familiar”
marked at the midpoint (familiarity was a 15-point scale). Participants were then
asked to indicate the emotions that the music expresses in the same way as for the
emotions they felt (with an open-ended question followed by the rating scales). The
expressed emotions were always rated after the felt emotions (see Kallinen & Ravaja,
2006).
For two groups, Pachelbel was imagined (imagined condition), for the remaining
two groups it was sounded (sounded condition). In the imagined condition,
participants were played a 10-second memory cue, then instructed, “close your eyes
and imagine the rest of this piece in your head for about 30-60 seconds.” In the
sounded condition, participants heard a recording of the piece in full.
The second stimulus (Anthem) used the same procedure as the “imagined”
condition described above. The shorter form of the study did not include this
stimulus.
Next, the participants were asked to give information about their selected piece
in as much detail as possible (e.g., title, composer, artist, performer). They were then
instructed, “imagine this piece of music in your head. Close your eyes and play the
sound of the music in your mind. Do this for about 30 to 60 seconds.” The
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questions were then identical to the questions asked for the other imagined items.
The shorter form of the study asked participants to do this for one piece, the
extended form asked participants to do this for two pieces, one after the other.
Finally, Pachelbel was responded to again. The two groups that heard the first
item sounded would now be asked to imagine it, with an initial 10 seconds sounded
as a reminder. The groups who imagined the first item would now respond to the
sounded recording.
At the end of this final item, demographic information was collected, as well as
some questions about the adequacy of the emotion scales and what participants
thought the experiment was about.

RESULTS
• General observations. Most of the participants reacted positively to the
experience of the study itself, with one, for example, reporting, “I felt good having
done this and recalling my favourite pieces of music.” The answers all showed a rich
variety of music choices (see Appendix) and reports of listening behaviour, with
participants seemingly willing to share many personal experiences. None of the
participants indicated that the aim of the experiment was to study the relationships
between expressed and felt emotions.

• Equivalence of sounded and imagined responses. Responses to the questions

based on Pachelbel in both modes of presentation (sounded and imagined) were
compared to determine whether there was a difference between the two. A doubly
multivariate, repeated measures ANOVA was conducted with two within-subject
factors, mode of presentation (imagined and heard) and emotion locus (external or
internal). Four dependent variables were used: valence, arousal, dominance, and
emotional strength. There was no significant difference between imagined and
sounded responses at the 0.05 level, F(4,35) = 2.216, p = 0.087. Participants were
generally able to imagine the pieces well (M = 8.36, SE = 0.23). According to a two-
sample t-test, no significant difference was found in ease-of-imagining scores
between averaged experimenter-selected stimuli and averaged participant-selected
stimuli, t(85) = 0.369, p = 0.713 (two-tailed), Cohen’s d = 0.0791. ANOVA revealed
that there was a significant overall difference between locus of emotion (expressed
and felt), F(4, 35) = 6.36, p < 0.001. There were no interactions between mode of
presentation (imagined and heard) and locus (internal and external) responses,
F(4, 35) = 0.807, p = 0.524.

• Use of the emotion dimensions. Across all pieces, the full range of each emotion
scale was used for valence and arousal. Dominance, however, was rated more
frequently on the “dominant” side of the scale. An examination of participant
comments about the emotion scales revealed that the dominance scale was “difficult,”
and that several did not really understand the distinction between dominant and
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submissive emotions. Given the difficulty reported by these participants, and the
loadings of the dominance scale toward the dominant side, we chose not to include
the dominance scale in further analysis. Omitting the dominance dimension from
further analysis in the current study also had the advantage of allowing conceptually
simple mappings of emotions onto two-dimensional space.

• Classification of responses. To quantify the emotion relationship categories, it

was necessary to classify the responses according to the relationship types (see
Figure 1). Criteria for each relationship needed to be defined that would enable the
quantitative data to be classified according to Gabrielsson’s definitions.
To categorise the responses, we simply took the values reported by the
participants for valence and arousal and plotted them on two-dimensional space. We
then converted the dimensional (rectangular) co-ordinates to polar co-ordinates,
which provide useful information about the geometric relationship of points to each
other. Instead of giving an x and a y co-ordinate in the rectangular co-ordinates
system (for valence and arousal), polar co-ordinates produce values for the angle (in
degrees) and the distance from the origin (radius). Figure 3 shows examples of the
same points in the emotion space described using both the rectangular and polar
coordinates systems. Using polar coordinates, information about the angle alone can
be used to determine whether two emotions are in proximity to each other (where
the difference between the angles of the two emotions is around 0 degrees, within a
specified criteria) or if they are negative (the difference between angles of the two
emotions would be greater). The radius value would also be useful for determining
the “no relationship” and “no systematic relationship” responses: points that are close
to the centre of the emotion space would be considered as “no emotion” (Russell,
Weiss, & Mendelsohn, 1989).

Figure 3.
Diagrammatic representations of two-dimensional emotion space, showing examples of
rectangular co-ordinates (left) and polar co-ordinates (right).

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With data from all groups pooled, a grand total of 171 emotion data coordinates
were collected. 63 were from participant-selected pieces (see Appendix) and the
remaining 118 from the experimenter selected pieces.
First, we calculated the number of responses for “no relationship.” We
determined that when the radius (distance from the origin) of either the expressed
emotion, or both the expressed and felt emotion, was less than two (on a bipolar
scale of –5 to 5), the response would be classified as “no relationship” (there is not
even a potential relationship between expressed and felt emotion because no emotion
is expressed). This accounted for 20 pairs of coordinates. The radius of the felt
emotion was also used to determine how many responses would be classified as “no
systematic relationship” (the listener stays emotionally neutral regardless of the
expression in the music). This category accounted for nine pairs of coordinates.
For the remaining categories (positive and negative), we used the angle measure.
We assumed that when the angle between the expressed emotion and felt emotion
on the two-dimensional space is small, or in other words, when the expressed and
felt emotions are similar, the relationship is positive. We therefore needed to define
a range within which two emotions need to be in order to be considered similar.
After some piloting, it was decided that if the angle between the “expressed” and
“felt” points on the emotion space is less than 45 degrees, then we would consider
those two points to be representative of the same emotion. Using this criterion,
105 responses were classified as “positive relationship”, and 37 were classified as
“negative relationship”. Forty-five degrees was used as the threshold for two reasons:
first, gradually increasing the range threshold from a smaller angle (e.g., 10 degrees)
to a higher one (e.g. up to 90 degrees) demonstrates that the numbers of positive
relationships begin to plateau from 29 degrees up to about 45 degrees; second, to
challenge the common assumption of a positive relationship, the results would be
more conservative if they were biased towards the accommodation of a large number
of positive relationships.
The frequency of each relationship category was obtained for each stimulus
group (see Figure 4). The positive relationship occurred, on average (collapsed across
each stimulus), for 61% of all cases.

• Sample responses. To provide additional face validity to the locus of emotion

relationship categories, we examined the comments participants wrote after selecting
emotion scales for felt and expressed conditions. We report one response from each
category as illustrative examples of participants’ listening experiences. The sample
responses are shown in Figure 5. The samples show how self-reported emotions
correspond to the quantitative ratings for valence and arousal. However, several self-
reported responses also indicated complex mixtures of emotions. For example, in
response to Pachelbel, one participant reported feeling “mixed emotions—happiness,
sadness, sorrow, love” and another reported, “this is difficult. I feel both happy and
sad. The music itself is beautiful—it’s one of my favourite pieces. I think the most
appropriate term is that it makes me feel ‘emotional’—it invokes emotion.”
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Figure 4.
Representation of each emotion relationship (collapsed across stimuli).

• Difference in preference for each category. Mean preference responses for each
of the four locus relationship categories were examined. Figure 6 shows that the
preference for positive emotional locus relationship is higher than any of the other
categories, in agreement with the finding reported by Schubert (2007) that a match
between felt and expressed emotion is preferred more than a mismatch. In several
self-reports participants included preference information in addition to (and
sometimes in place of ) emotional information. For example, one respondent
reported that Pachelbel’s Canon expressed “serenity; calm”, but felt “disappointed
and bored; I thought it was going to be a more interesting song.” The reduction of
preference because the music is reported to be boring may be indicative of the
listener’s failure to dissociate the evaluative pleasure of the listening experience from
the emotion felt—that is, the felt emotional response becomes mixed with the
evaluation (in this case, boredom), producing an overall more negative felt emotional
response (see Schubert, 1996, 2007). This explains why some negative relationship
responses produce lower preference scores, as shown in Figure 6.

DISCUSSION

The study aimed to investigate the possible relationships between expressed and felt
emotions, and the feasibility of having participants imagine music in an experimental
setting to elicit the same emotional response as when the music is sounded (e.g. by
playback of a recording). The results provide evidence to suggest that for familiar
stimuli, imagined music produces results similar to those for sounded music, and that
a variety of relationships between expressed and felt emotion occurred.
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Figure 5.
Examples of corresponding qualitative and quantitative responses in each relationship category.

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Figure 6.
Preference (on a scale of 1 “hate it” to 11 “love it”) as a function of relationship (error bars
show 1 SE).

• Imagined Stimuli. The use of imagined stimuli seems to be a valid way of

producing emotional reactions to music. This is reflected by the close match between
imagined and sounded emotions of Pachelbel, and with the occurrence of high scores
for the “How well the piece was imagined” scale. This raises important philosophical
and methodological issues. With respect to the former, the implication is that
appreciating one of the very important aspects of the musical experience—its
emotional content—is possible in the absence of the physical musical signal.
Methodologically, it means that large groups of participants can be tested using self-
selected stimuli simultaneously in the same location without every person having to
listen to each piece of music, or supplying or requiring participants with iPods or
other portable music players, for example. A by-product for this kind of research is
that a wide variety of musical pieces can be spontaneously experienced, as
demonstrated in the Appendix listing the choice of self-selected stimuli that the
participants imagined.
We reported that the ANOVA conducted was not significant. The p-value of
0.087 is nevertheless approaching significance, and we therefore state this finding
with some caution. However, there are several factors that may contribute to a
difference in the scores outside the task under investigation. For example,
participants may simply have felt differently about the piece after the time between
the two playings had elapsed. They may also have been some participants who found
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it difficult to concentrate on the imagined piece, or who had insufficient expertise to

perform the imagination task. This may have led to systematic differences between
the sounded and imagined conditions in the experimental situation which were not
due to a difference between the actual act of responding to imaged versus sounded
music. Considering the substantial research that suggests that imagined and real
perceptions of music would be similar (Craver-Lemley, Arterberry, & Reeves, 1999;
Halpern, 2003; Kahan, Mohsen, Tandez, & McDonald, 1999; Robinson & Clore,
2001; Weber & Brown, 2001), and in the absence of any explanation of why they
would be substantially or systematically different, we interpret the result as showing
that the imagined results are similar to what they would be if the stimuli were heard,
but note that further study may be necessary (cf. Schubert, Evans, & Rink, 2006).

• Dimensional model. For the purpose of this exploration of Gabrielsson’s model,

we felt it was important to err on the side of simplicity in demonstrating the utility of
the dimensional model of emotion as a means of quantifying emotional locus
categories. The emotions mapped onto the emotion space are a highly simplified
representation of emotion. Some participants, for example, reported feeling multiple
emotions in the open-ended responses. Because the four emotion rating scales
(valence, arousal, dominance and strength) forced the participants to make a single
choice for each, we can assume that in cases where participants felt multiple emotions,
either some kind of averaging was performed by the listener, or they sampled one of
the several emotions they reported in the open-ended questions. While being
cognisant that the model of emotion used is a simplification, especially given the
omission of a third dimension (dominance), the simplification is a meaningful one,
providing new insights into the locus of emotion problem. Indeed, it would be
possible to instantiate the various relationships in three, four and n-dimensional space.

• Relationships between expressed and felt emotion. This study shows that there
are several ways in which expressed emotion and felt emotion are related. The
positive relationship is most frequent, occurring, on average, in 62% of cases. Thus,
although the positive relationship is a logical one, it is indeed far from general, as
Gabrielsson (2002, p. 139) suggests. Notably, the positive relationship angle range
criterion of 45 degrees between felt and expressed emotions might be considered
generous. On one hand, a stricter criterion could justifiably be used, such as 20 or
10 degrees (i.e., suggesting a relationship is only positive when the response for
expressed emotion is almost exactly the same as the response for felt emotion). The
result reported here therefore shows that even when allowing a large angle to be
considered a positive relationship, other relationships are still well represented. On
the other hand, using an even higher yet unrealistic threshold of 90 degrees, the
proportion of positive relationships became 87%, still leaving 13% of relationships
in other categories. The 61% result is therefore a fairly conservative estimate of
positive relationships that were possible.
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• Causal mechanisms of emotion relationships. While applying Gabrielsson’s

(2002) model to the data, we were aware that the categories only provide a
description of the emotional experience that occurred—they do not provide a causal
explanation of how one emotion (or a set of emotions) becomes attached to the music
when felt, and possibly another set of emotions when observed. In Gabrielsson’s
original model, an arrow was used between the expressed emotion and the felt
emotion, perhaps suggesting a causal relationship between expressed and felt
emotion. In our adaptation, we removed the arrows (see Figure 1), in order to
propose that this might not be the case. Indeed, it could be that a person’s judgement
of the expressed emotion of a piece of music might be clouded if they have an
intensely strong emotional response to it, reversing the causality. We therefore
considered the idea of using double-headed arrows between expressed and felt
emotions to indicate this possibility. We chose instead to remove the arrowheads
altogether, in order to emphasise that, as Gabrielsson originally noted, the
relationship between expressed and felt emotions is influenced by many other factors
or “causes.”
In considering an adaptation of the model that might seek to explain the causal
mechanisms of emotional response, Meyer’s (1956) categories of value in music may
provide a framework. Meyer proposed that, in the broadest sense, there are two
broad ways that emotion can be connected with music: referentialist and absolute
expressionist. “Referentialist” connections refer to associations outside the music
itself such as when a happy piece of music reminds a person of a depressing or sad
time in his or her life; or as Gabrielsson (2002) describes, the situations in which
“music in the past has been associated with an event of opposite emotional quality”
(p. 134). In this respect, referentialism refers to possibly arbitrary associations
between music and emotion (or events leaving emotional traces), and provides a
causal explanation of the negative relationship between expressed and felt emotion.
The term “absolute expressionist,” on the other hand, suggests experiences where the
emotion felt is in response purely to the emotion that is expressed in the music.
Mechanistic explanations of the absolute expressionist approach have been raised by
Schubert (in press) through theories of empathy and mirror neurons (cf., Rizolatti &
Craighero, 2004; Tettamenti et al., 2005). Absolute expressionism therefore lends
itself fairly neatly to a causal explanation of the positive relationship response: The
emotion expressed is responded to with an empathy response or an autonomic neural
mirroring mechanism.
Absolute expressionism does not, however, provide a unique explanation of the
positive relationship category. Consider two cases: one where a happy piece of music
reminds a person of a blissful or exciting event, and the other where a happy piece
of music causes a person to feel happy for seemingly no other reason. Meyer’s (1956)
framework suggests that the first case is a referentialist experience, but the second
case is an absolute expressionist experience, but under Gabrielsson’s (2002) framework,
they would be placed in the same category. We propose that a categorisation of
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emotion locus relationships could be extended to incorporate the causal mechanisms

for those relationships. For example, the negative relationship could be viewed as
mostly referentialist experiences, and the positive category could be divided into two
components: a referentialist category for the coincidentally positive experiences, and
an absolute expressionist category for the others. It may be, however, that the
absolute expressionist experience is simply a theoretical one, for it is difficult to
dissociate experiences of music from life events and contextual factors, whether these
are stimulated by the piece of music itself, the performance, the genre, and so on.
Further speculation on how these referentialist and absolute expressionist causes are
learnt, and what their proportionate representations are, is beyond the scope of this
study (for a developmental discussion of learning via these mechanisms, see Schubert
& McPherson, 2006). The issue of causality of the relationships therefore requires
further examination in the future (for further discussions and reviews on the causes
of emotion perception and emotion induction, see Juslin & Laukka, 2004; Scherer
& Zentner, 2001)

CONCLUSIONS

The present research supports the view that any investigation of emotion and music
must acknowledge the difference between expressed and felt emotion, as a variety of
relationships are possible between these two emotion loci. Most importantly, in
experimental situations, unless it is stipulated to participants whether they should be
reporting felt or expressed emotions, confusion may occur in the response and could
produce unclear or misleading results.
This is among the first studies to investigate the difference between expressed and
felt emotions, and further research is therefore necessary to validate the findings. In
particular, future research should seek to determine the extent to which the occurrence
of the relationships between felt and expressed emotions is also dependent on factors
such as familiarity, musical genre, and style.
In addition, this study provides evidence for the feasibility of asking participants
to imagine a piece of familiar music and report their emotional response to it. This
alternative approach to using sound stimuli in experiments may be capitalized upon
in the future, but will require further investigation.
Empirical research of this kind in the differences between expressed and felt
emotions is in its infancy. Gabrielsson’s (2002) framework provided a basis for
further investigations in a quantitative paradigm. The research reported here
provides support for that framework, as well as for Gabrielsson’s belief that the
musical experience is inevitably a complex interaction between the sound stimuli,
environmental factors, and autobiographical events and memories. The value of
research in this area lies in its endeavour to systematically investigate and explain the
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factors that contribute to creating the variety of relationships that exist between
expressed and felt emotions in music, which, left ignored in music psychology
applications, can lead to erroneous results.

Address for correspondence:

Paul Evans
School of Music
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
1114 W Nevada St
Urbana IL 61801
United States
e-mail: pevans2@uiuc.edu

Emery Schubert
School of English, Media and Performing Arts
University of New South Wales
Sydney NSW 2052
Australia
e-mail: e.schubert@unsw.edu.au
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Appendix

This list contains the participants’ self-selected pieces intended to evoke strong emotions (63
in total). Participants mostly responded with the artist name and the name of the piece,
sometimes with a specific movement number or even a point in the song. Some missing data
were gathered using the information available and Internet databases.

Aerosmith, Don’t want to miss a thing Jade Kwan, The End

Andrew Lloyd Webber, Phantom of the Kylie Minogue, Spinning Around
Opera Lamb, Goreki
Ani DiFranco, Gray Liszt, Piano etude “La Campanella”
Baby Mine Liszt, Funerailles
Bach, Partita No. 2 in D minor for Lonely Teardrops
unaccompanied violin Natalie Cole, This Will Be
Beethoven, Sonata Op 27, No. 2 “Moonlight” Not just Another Lover
- I. Adagio Oriental Flower,
Beethoven, Symphony No. 5 Phish, Free
Beethoven, Symphony No. 5 - II. Pierre and the Vibe Tribe, Respect
Black-Eyed Peas, Where’s the Love Rachmaninov, Piano Concerto No. 2
Brahms, Clarinet Trio Ravel, Bolero
Brahms, Intermezzo Op 118 Ravel, Daspond de la Nail: “Ondine”
Brahms, Piano Concerto No. 2 REM, Daysleeper
Brian Bowen, Comfort and Strength Rochelle Ferrell, Bye Bye Blackbird
Britney Spears, One more time Samuel Barber, Virgin’s Slumber Song
Dan Schutte, Here I Am, Lord Sarah McLachlan, Angel*
Debussy, Arabesque Sesame Street, Oh I’d Like to Visit the Moon
Debussy, Clare de Lune Shostakovich, Piano Trio Op 67 in E minor
Debussy, The Girl with the Flaxen Hair Shostakovich, Symphony No. 7
Elliot Smith, Alphabet City Stevie Wonder, Living in the City
Elton John, Circle of Life Sting, Roxanne
Eric Korngold, Aria from “The Dead City” Switchfoot, Dare you to Move
George Benson and Al Jerou, Nothing’s Tchaikovsky, Barcarolle
gonna change my love for you The Frames, Fake
Georges Enesco, Cantabile and Presto The Grates, Trampoline
Gilbert and Sullivan, Pirates of Penzance The Rembrandts, I’ll be there for you
Greig, Piano Concerto in A minor – The Thrills, Big Sur
1st movement The Whitlams, Met my match
Guns ‘n’ Roses, November Rain Thirsty Merc, Someday
Handel, Sarabande Tori Amos, Hey Jupiter
Hariss, Faire is the Heavin Vivaldi, Concerto in C Minor RV441 -
Herbie Hancock, Fat Mama 2nd movement (Largo)

* This piece was selected by two participants.

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• Relaciones en música entre emociones expresadas y sentidas

Este estudio examina empíricamente las posibles relaciones entre la cualidad

emocional que se puede atribuir a estímulos musicales (emoción expresada o
espacio externo de emoción) y la respuesta emocional subjetiva que se puede tener
como resultado de escuchar música (emoción sentida o espacio interno). La relación
entre los dos espacios de emoción es asumida con frecuencia como positiva, es
decir, cuando escuchamos música, uno siente la emoción que la música expresa.
Gabrielsson ha sugerido, sin embargo, que esta asunción es excesivamente
simplista, y ha propuesto un modelo que describe otras posibles relaciones. El
presente estudio investiga cuantitativamente la propuesta de Gabrielsson. Cuarenta
y cinco participantes han respondido a preguntas sobre emoción expresada y
emoción sentida en dos piezas familiares, seleccionadas para esta experiencia (el
Canon de Pachelbel y Advance Australia Fair, la antífona nacional australiana) y
una o dos piezas de su propia selección. Se pidió a los participantes que imaginaran
las piezas seleccionadas por ellos, en ausencia de grabaciones o una interpretación
en vivo. Se hizo sonar y fue imaginada una pieza seleccionada para el experimento,
sin observarse diferencia significativa en las respuestas a ambas situaciones. Se
generaron criterios cuantitativos para comparar los espacios emocionales (interno y
externo) de cada pieza con el espacio geométrico. Los resultados mostraron que la
relación positiva, donde los espacios emocionales interno y externo son los mismos,
se dio en un 61% de los casos. En general, fueron preferidas estas piezas frente a
aquéllas que revelaron relaciones no positivas. Se discuten las implicaciones de
prácticas que tácitamente asumen un 100% de relación positiva o no son
específicas frente al espacio emocional.

• Relazioni fra emozioni espresse ed emozioni percepite in musica

Il presente studio esamina empiricamente le possibili relazioni fra la qualità emotiva

attribuibile a determinati stimoli musicali (emozione espressa, o locus esterno
dell’emozione) e la risposta emotiva soggettiva che può risultare dall’ascolto della
musica (emozione percepita, o locus interno). Si assume spesso come positiva la
relazione fra i due loci emotivi, ossia: ascoltando una musica, un individuo percepisce
l’emozione che la musica stessa esprime. Gabrielsson ha tuttavia suggerito che
questo assunto è semplicistico, ed ha proposto un modello capace di descrivere
altre possibili relazioni. Il presente studio indaga quantitativamente la proposta di
Gabrielsson. Quarantacinque partecipanti hanno risposto a domande relative sia
all’emozione espressa che all’emozione percepita circa due brani familiari scelti dai
ricercatori (il Canone di Pachelbel e Advance Australia Fair, l’inno nazionale
australiano) e uno o due brani di loro stessa selezione. Si è chiesto ai partecipanti di
“immaginare” i brani da loro scelti in assenza di una registrazione audio o di
un’esecuzione dal vivo. Un brano scelto dai ricercatori è stato sia riprodotto che
immaginato, e non si è osservata alcuna differenza significativa nelle risposte
relative alle due condizioni. Si sono generati criteri quantitativi allo scopo di
confrontare i loci (interno ed esterno) di ciascun brano nello spazio geometrico. I
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risultati hanno mostrato che la relazione positiva, quando le emozioni di entrambi i

loci sono le stesse, compare nel 61% dei casi. In generale, questi brani venivano
preferiti a quelli che manifestavano relazioni non-positive. Vengono discusse le
implicazioni per pratiche che assumono implicitamente una relazione positiva al
100%, o non sono specifiche circa il locus dell’emozione.

• Les rapports entre émotions exprimées et ressenties en musique

Dans cette étude empirique, nous considérons les rapports possibles entre la qualité
de l’émotion que l’on peut attribuer à des stimuli musicaux (émotion ressentie ou
locus interne). Le rapport entre les deux loci de l’émotion est souvent considéré
comme étant positif ; en écoutant de la musique, on ressent l’émotion qu’elle
exprime. Cependant, Gabrielsson considère que cette hypothèse est simpliste et
propose un modèle décrivant d’autres rapports possibles. Dans ce travail, nous
étudions la proposition de Gabrielsson de manière quantitative. Quarante-cinq
participants ont répondu à des questions concernant leurs émotions exprimées et
ressenties à l’écoute de deux pièces connues choisies par les expérimentateurs (Le
Canon de Pachelbel et l’hymne national australien, Advance Australia Fair) ainsi
qu’une ou deux pièces de leur choix. On leur a demandé d’« imaginer » les pièces
qu’ils avaient choisies sans entendre d’enregistrement ou d’interprétation. On a
généré des critères quantitatifs afin de comparer les loci (internes et externes) de
chaque pièce dans l’espace géométrique. Les résultats ont montré qu’il y avait
rapport positif lorsque les loci internes et externes des émotions sont les mêmes,
dans 61% des cas. D’une façon générale, ces pièces étaient préférées par rapport
à celles qui généraient des rapports non positifs. Nous discutons des implications de
ces résultats pour l’hypothèse tacite de rapports positifs à 100%, ou bien qui ne
précisent rien au sujet du locus de l’émotion.

• Beziehungen zwischen ausgedrückten und gefühlten Emotionen

in der Musik

Diese empirische Studie untersuchte mögliche Beziehungen zwischen der

emotionalen Qualität, die sich musikalischen Stimuli zuschreiben lässt (ausgedrückte
Emotion oder externer Locus der Emotion) und der subjektiven emotionalen
Reaktion beim Hören von Musik (gefühlte Emotion oder interner Locus). Oft wurde
angenommen, dass die Beziehung zwischen den beiden Emotions-Loci positiv
ist, also dass man beim Musikhören die Emotionen fühlt, die auch durch die
Musik ausgedrückt werden. Gabrielsson meinte allerdings, dass diese Annahme zu
einfach sei und schlug ein Modell vor, das andere denkbare Zusammenhänge
beschreibt. Die vorliegende Studie untersuchte Gabrielssons Vorschlag quantitativ.
45 Versuchsteilnehmer beantworteten Fragen zu ausgedrückten und gefühlten
Emotionen sowohl bei zwei bekannten Stücken, die von den Versuchsleitern
ausgewählt wurden (Pachelbels Kanon and Advance Australia Fair, die australische
Nationalhymne), als auch zu einem oder zwei weiteren Stücken eigener Wahl. Die
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Teilnehmer sollten sich ihre selbst ausgewählten Stücke innerlich „vorstellen“ ohne
Zuspielung oder Live-Darbietung. Ein von den Versuchsleitern ausgewähltes Stück
wurde sowohl innerlich vorgestellt als auch vorgespielt, wobei keine signifikanten
Unterschiede in den Reaktionen auf die beiden Versuchsbedingungen zu
beobachten waren. Quantitative Kriterien wurden erstellt, um die Loci (intern und
extern) jedes Stücks im geometrischen Raum zu vergleichen. Die Ergebnisse zeigten
positive Zusammenhänge zwischen internen und externen Emotions-Loci bei 61%
der Fälle. Insgesamt wurden diese Stücke stärker präferiert als solche, die keine
positiven Zusammenhänge aufwiesen. Implikationen für Praktiken, die einfach
einen 100% positiven Zusammenhang annehmen oder den Emotions-Locus nicht
spezifizieren, werden diskutiert.

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