The psychology of music seeks to explain musical behavior and experience, including how music is perceived, created and integrated into everyday life, through empirical research. Its findings have applications to musical performance, composition and education, to music therapy, and to a broader understanding of human creativity and social behavior.
Facts
Central QuestionThe psychology of music asks how people perceive, create, respond to and are emotionally moved by music, and how those processes connect to performance, composition, education, therapy and everyday life. 1 Key DebateResearchers disagree over why music affects people at all. One view, tracing to Darwin, holds that music is a genuine evolutionary adaptation that once functioned as a kind of protolanguage, while an opposing view treats music as a mere byproduct of language evolution, an auditory pleasure with no adaptive function of its own, a claim other music researchers have directly disputed. 1 Connections
Includes
Source Amusia (Wikipedia)
Source Wikipedia: Deutsch's Scale Illusion
Source Wikipedia: Earworm
Source Wikipedia: Tritone Paradox
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Psychology of music
Wikimedia Foundationlead section
The psychology of music, or music psychology, is a branch of psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and/or musicology. It aims to explain and understand musical behaviour and experience, including the processes through which music is perceived, created, responded to, and incorporated into everyday life.
Evolutionary musicology section
An alternate view sees music as a by-product of linguistic evolution; a type of "auditory cheesecake" that pleases the senses without providing any adaptive function. This view has been directly countered by numerous music researchers.
View the Source Wikipedia: Deutsch's Scale Illusion
WikipediaIncludes: Deutsch's Scale Illusion, Article categories: Music psychologyView the Source Amusia (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia: Earworm
Wikipedia: Tritone Paradox
WikipediaIncludes: Tritone Paradox, LeadQuote, Includes: Tritone Paradox, Lead
However, psychology of music researcher Diana Deutsch in 1986 discovered that when the judgments of individual listeners were considered separately, their judgments depended on the positions of the tones along the chromatic circle.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.