Context changes judgments of liking and predictability for melodies

Resumen

Predictability plays an important role in the experience of musical pleasure. By leveraging expectations, music induces pleasure through tension and surprise. However, musical predictions draw on both prior knowledge and immediate context. Similarly, musical pleasure, which has been shown to depend on predictability, may also vary relative to the individual and context. Although research has demonstrated the influence of both long-term knowledge and stimulus features in influencing expectations, it is unclear how perceptions of a melody are influenced by comparisons to other music pieces heard in the same context. To examine the effects of context we compared how listeners’ judgments of two distinct sets of stimuli differed when they were presented alone or in combination. Stimuli were excerpts from Western music and artificial, experimenter created melodies. Separate groups of participants rated liking and predictability for each set of stimuli alone and in combination. We found that when heard together, the natural stimuli were more liked and rated as less predictable than if they were heard alone, with the opposite pattern being observed for the artificial stimuli. This effect was driven by a change in each stimulus set between ratings in the Alone and Combined conditions. This demonstrates a context-based shift of predictability ratings and derived pleasure, suggesting that judgments stem not only from the physical properties of the stimulus, but also vary relative to other options available in the immediate context. This suggests that musical expectations are intertwined with the experience of pleasure and based on integration of contextual information at different time scales.

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Cómo citar (APA 7)

Albury, A., Bianco, R., Gold, B., & Penhune, V. (2023). Context changes judgments of liking and predictability for melodies. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1175682