Emotional responses in Papua New Guinea show negligible evidence for a universal effect of major versus minor music.

Music is a vital part of most cultures and has a strong impact on emotions [1-5]. In Western cultures, emotive valence is strongly influenced by major and minor melodies and harmony (chords and their progressions) [6-13]. Yet, how pitch and harmony affect our emotions, and to what extent these effects are culturally mediated or universal, is hotly debated [2, 5, 14-20]. Here, we report an experiment conducted in a remote cloud forest region of Papua New Guinea, across several communities with similar traditional music but differing levels of exposure to Western-influenced tonal music. One hundred and seventy participants were presented with pairs of major and minor cadences (chord progressions) and melodies, and chose which of them made them happier. The experiment was repeated by 60 non-musicians and 19 musicians in Sydney, Australia. Bayesian analyses show that, for cadences, there is strong evidence that greater happiness was reported for major than minor in every community except one: the community with minimal exposure to Western-like music. For melodies, there is strong evidence that greater happiness was reported for those with higher mean pitch (major melodies) than those with lower mean pitch (minor melodies) in only one of the three PNG communities and in both Sydney groups. The results show that the emotive valence of major and minor is strongly associated with exposure to Western-influenced music and culture, although we cannot exclude the possibility of universality.

Perception of affect in unfamiliar musical chords.

This study investigates the role of extrinsic and intrinsic predictors in the perception of affect in mostly unfamiliar musical chords from the Bohlen-Pierce microtonal tuning system. Extrinsic predictors are derived, in part, from long-term statistical regularities in music; for example, the prevalence of a chord in a corpus of music that is relevant to a participant. Conversely, intrinsic predictors make no use of long-term statistical regularities in music; for example, psychoacoustic features inherent in the music, such as roughness. Two types of affect were measured for each chord: pleasantness/unpleasantness and happiness/sadness. We modelled the data with a number of novel and well-established intrinsic predictors, namely roughness, harmonicity, spectral entropy and average pitch height; and a single extrinsic predictor, 12-TET Dissimilarity, which was estimated by the chord's smallest distance to any 12-tone equally tempered chord. Musical sophistication was modelled as a potential moderator of the above predictors. Two experiments were conducted, each using slightly different tunings of the Bohlen-Pierce musical system: a just intonation version and an equal-tempered version. It was found that, across both tunings and across both affective responses, all the tested intrinsic features and 12-TET Dissimilarity have consistent influences in the expected direction. These results contrast with much current music perception research, which tends to assume the dominance of extrinsic over intrinsic predictors. This study highlights the importance of both intrinsic characteristics of the acoustic signal itself, as well as extrinsic factors, such as 12-TET Dissimilarity, on perception of affect in music.

The effect of handedness on spatial and motor representation of pitch patterns in pianists.

This study investigated the effect of handedness on pianists' abilities to adjust their keyboard performance skills to new spatial and motor mappings. Left- and right-handed pianists practiced simple melodies on a regular MIDI piano keyboard (practice) and were then asked to perform these with modified melodic contours (the same or reversed melodic contour causing a change of fingering) and on a reversed MIDI piano keyboard (test). The difference of performance duration between the practice and the test phase as well as the amount of errors played were used as test measures. Overall, a stronger effect for modified melodic contours than for the reversed keyboard was observed. Furthermore, we observed a trend of left-handed pianists to be quicker and more accurate in playing melodies when reversing their fingering with reversed contours in their left-hand performances. This suggests that handedness may influence pianists' skill to adjust to new spatial and motor mappings.