An Investigation of Emotional Response to Music and Text

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of musical and textual settings (text alone, commercial-type background music, commeicial-type background music with text, atonal music, atonal music with text) o1n affective response and mood of naive listeners. Non-musicians (N 1= U) enrolled in a large university were randomly assigned to one of the fivc experimental conditions. Affective response was measured bh semantic differential scales and the 9-Affective Di,ue,isiouz. Subjects were also asked to indicate mood prior to and following the experimental task. Analyses revealed significant differences across the five experimental conditions ftlo affective response and a significant differences in mood from preto posttesting. Further examination of the activity and evaluation semantic diffcrential scales indicated that the relationship of evaluation to activitv followed the curvilinear (U-shaped) relationship reported in many expei-imental aesthetics studies.