Branches of Psychology

Psychology of Music

Psychology and the Humanities

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 Question
The 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 Debate
Researchers 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
Method
Observation 1
Connections

Includes

Source Amusia (Wikipedia)
Source Carl Seashore (Wikipedia)
Source Wikipedia: Deutsch's Scale Illusion
Source Diana Deutsch (Wikipedia)
Source Wikipedia: Earworm
Source Wikipedia: Tritone Paradox

Related Branch

Source Wikipedia: Psychology of music
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Psychology of music
Wikimedia Foundation
  • lead 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.
  • Lead
    interpretations of data collected by systematic observation of and interaction with human participants
  • Related Branch: Cognitive Psychology, Article text
    While the techniques of cognitive psychology allowed for more objective examinations of musical behavior and experience, the theoretical and technological advancements of neuroscience have greatly shaped the direction of the field into the 21st century.
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Wikipedia: Deutsch's Scale Illusion
WikipediaIncludes: Deutsch's Scale Illusion, Article categories: Music psychologyView the Source
Amusia (Wikipedia)
Includes: Amusia, Article categories: Music psychologyView the Source
Wikipedia: Earworm
Includes: Earworm, Article categories: Music psychologyView the Source
Carl Seashore (Wikipedia)
Includes: Carl Seashore, Career
Quote, Includes: Carl Seashore, Career
Seashore was interested in audiology, the psychology of music, the psychology of speech and stuttering
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Diana Deutsch (Wikipedia)
Includes: Diana Deutsch, Lead
Quote, Includes: Diana Deutsch, Lead
She is a professor of psychology at the University of California, San Diego, and is a researcher on the psychology of music
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Wikipedia: Tritone Paradox
WikipediaIncludes: Tritone Paradox, Lead
Quote, 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.
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