Hauke Egermann

Expectation and Emotion in a Live Concert Experiment (18/01/11)

In the presented study, the often theorized role of musical expectations in inducing listener’s emotions will be investigated. Therefore the talk will present preliminary results from a live flute concert experiment with 50 participants. To confirm the existence of the link between expectation and emotion, a three-fold approach will be undertaken: (1) Based on an information theoretic model, musical expectancies will be predicted by analyzing the musical stimuli used. (2) A continuous expectation rating scale was used to measure the subjective unexpectedness of the music heard. (3) Finally, emotions were also measured using a multi-component measurement approach (subjective feeling, expressive behavior and peripheral arousal). A causal relationship will be predicted between the violation of musical expectations and emotional reactions. Thus, musical structures leading to expectation reactions are also thought to be manifested in emotional reactions at different emotion component levels.

Department of Computing, Goldsmiths College, University of London, New Cross, London, SE14 6NW

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