The Effect of Expertise in Evaluating Emotions in Music

2013

This study investigates the role of expertise in the listener judgment of emotion in music. Previous studies suggest that the most important factors are mode and tempo, respectively influencing valence and arousal. The effect is stronger when the two parameters converge (major mode combined with fast tempo and vice versa), whereas tempo predominates when they do not converge. An open question is whether and how these judgments vary with the expertise of the listener. Our hypothesis is that non-experts will base their evaluation mainly on tempo, disregarding mode, which is more complex to be aware of. On the other hand, experts will take advantage of both sources of information. The experime…