Published online 2015 Dec 28. doi: 10.1177/2041669515622001
PMID: 27551365
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Abstract
We report on the results of two online experiments designed to compare different soundtracks that had been composed (by various researchers and sound designers) in order to evoke/match different basic tastes. In Experiment 1, 100 participants listened to samples from 24 soundtracks and chose the taste (sweet, sour, salty, or bitter) that best matched each sample. Overall, the sweet soundtracks most effectively evoked the taste intended by the composer (participants chose sweet 56.9% of the time for the sweet soundtracks), whereas the bitter soundtracks were the least effective (participants chose bitter 31.4% of the time for the bitter soundtracks), compared with chance (choosing any specific taste 25% of the time). In Experiment 2, 50 participants rated their emotional responses (in terms of pleasantness and arousal) to the same 24 soundtrack samples and also to imaginary sweet/sour/salty/bitter-tasting foods. Associations between soundtracks and tastes were partly mediated by pleasantness for the sweet and bitter tastes and partly by arousal for the sour tastes. These results demonstrate how emotion mediation may be an additional mechanism behind sound-taste correspondences.
Keywords: Crossmodal correspondences, Internet-based testing, soundtracks, taste, emotion mediation
Introduction
In recent years, a growing body of empirical research has started to emerge demonstrating the intriguing relationship between what we hear and what we taste. Naturally, part of this relationship involves how the sounds of consumption affect the experience of eating, for example, amplifying food crunching sounds has been shown to increase the perception of crispiness of crisps (Zampini & Spence, 2004; see also Demattè et al., 2014, and Spence, 2015, for a recent review). Another such area involves background noise and its impact on taste perception (Spence, Michel, & Smith, 2014). For example, white noise mimicking the conditions inside an airline cabin has been shown to selectively reduce the perceived intensity of sweet tastes (). Meanwhile, performing a vocal shadowing plus musical distraction task can significantly impair participants’ ability to discriminate the alcohol content of a drink (Stafford, Agobiani, & Fernandes, 2013; see Spence, 2014, for a review).
Moving beyond environmental sounds and their impact on taste/texture/flavor perception, one also has to consider the influence of crossmodal correspondences. These are the general associations that people make between seemingly unrelated attributes (or dimensions) of different sensory modalities (see , for a review). A growing list of correspondences have now been documented between specific sound and taste attributes—such as, for example, between high pitch and sourness, or between low pitch and bitterness (e.g., , ; ; see , for a review).
As part of this growing movement to study sound-taste correspondences, a number of researchers and sound designers have recently started to compose their own soundtracks to match (or, in some sense, go together well with) specific tastes. Increasingly, such soundscapes/soundtracks are being used in both scientific research and artistic performances (e.g., Crisinel et al., 2012; Knoeferle, Woods, Käppler, & Spence, 2015; Kontukoski et al., 2015; ; Reinoso Carvalho, Van Ee, Rychtarikova, Touhafi, Steenhaut, Persoone, & Spence, 2015; Reinoso Carvalho, Van Ee, Rychtarikova, Touhafi, Steenhaut, Persoone, Spence, & Leman, 2015; Wang, 2013). Such soundtracks could have either or both of the following aims: (a) to demonstrate a connection between taste and sound in terms of participants being able to associate certain soundtracks with specific tastes and (b) to alter the perceived taste of food and drink while participants listen to such soundtracks.
While the connection between soundscapes and tastes (or taste words) can initially seem surprising, it can also be seen as an extension of the power of music to express abstract ideas. Many years ago, when Rigg (1937) tested how well a group of college students could interpret the intended meanings of musical compositions, the participants could only reliably distinguish between broad categories of joyful and sad music but were unable to discriminate between more specific categories like farewell or mourning. More recently, however, have shown that music can be reliably associated with many higher level concepts, such as gender (i.e., male vs. female) and age (young vs. old). The fact that certain soundtracks can be reliably matched to particular taste words (e.g., Knoeferle et al., 2015; ) demonstrates the strength of the crossmodal correspondences that exist between sound/music and taste.
One potential explanation for such matching of sound/music with taste is emotion mediation. That is, certain crossmodal correspondences may be explained by the common emotional associations (such as pleasantness or arousal, see Collier, 1996, for a reduction of emotion space down to two dimensions) of the various different stimuli involved. In general, such a hedonic matching account between seemingly unrelated stimuli presented in different sensory modalities has been suggested by a variety of sources (see e.g., ; ; Velasco, Woods, Deroy, et al., 2015; Velasco, Woods, Liu, et al., 2016). Relevant evidence pertaining to the case of crossmodal correspondences between audition and taste has, however, been limited to the pleasantness account. In an experiment designed to test for any crossmodal mappings between differently flavored chocolates (milk, marzipan, and dark) and sounds varying in their pitch and timbre (i.e., by instrument type), Crisinel and Spence (2012) reported that while their participants’ choice of instrument could be predicted by the pleasantness ratings they gave to the various chocolates, their choice of pitch was not. Besides pleasantness, to date, no one has looked at the potential role of emotional arousal levels in crossmodal correspondences between audition and taste.
Up until now, the soundtracks produced by various researchers and designers have never been tested in the same setting. Furthermore, some of the soundtracks, such as those used in Knoeferle et al. (2015) and , have only previously been tested in a constrained context in which the participants were essentially given a four-alternative-forced-choice task (i.e., with four soundtracks to listen to and four taste words to choose from). Therefore, in Experiment 1, we tested a group of these recently created taste-inspired soundtracks together in the same sound and taste word matching task. The participants were free to choose any taste word they wished for each of the soundtracks, in order to determine which of them exhibited the strongest association with a given taste. In Experiment 2, we used the same soundtracks in order to measure the role of emotion as a possible mediator in the soundtrack-taste matching task. We did not ask participants to match the soundtracks to taste words but instead asked for their emotion ratings (for pleasantness and arousal) of the soundtracks and of bitter/salty/sour/sweet-tasting foods. These emotional ratings were then combined with the soundtrack-taste matching results from Experiment 1 in order to calculate the potential role of pleasantness and arousal in mediating the crossmodal correspondence between audition and taste.
Experiment 1
Methods
Participants
One hundred participants (51 women, 49 men) aged between 21 and 62 years (M = 34.06, SD = 9.53) took part in the study. The participants gave their informed consent and reported no cold or other impairment of their senses of smell, taste, or hearing. The participants were recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. The experiment was approved by the central university research ethics committee of Oxford University (MSD-IDREC-C1-2014-205).
Auditory stimuli
Twenty-four root-mean-square normalized soundtracks (McCarthy, 2007) were used (five bitter, five salty, seven sour, and seven sweet). The soundtracks varied originally from 30 seconds to 6 minutes in length. Since the soundtracks were generally uniform in texture, we decided to use only the first 15 seconds of each soundtrack in order to have uniform length auditory stimuli and to limit the overall length of the experiment. Here is a brief description of the motivation and origins of the soundtracks, categorized by composer/designer (in alphabetical order):
Condiment Junkie: A UK sound branding agency recently released an EP album of taste soundtracks. We used excerpts of the sweet, sour, salty, and bitter soundtracks from the album. Note that an earlier version of the sweet and bitter soundtracks had been used previously in a study by Crisinel et al. (2012). There, the participants rated samples of bittersweet toffee on a 7-point bitter-sweet scale while listening to the two sounds. Their results revealed that the participants rated the cinder toffee samples (which came from the same batch) significantly differently under the two auditory conditions. In the same study, the two soundtracks were pretested in a control experiment in order to ensure that the participants rated the soundtracks differently on a 1 to 9 bitter-sweet scale. As expected, the sweet soundtrack (M = 6.68, SD = 1.78) was rated as significantly sweeter on the bitter-sweet scale than the bitter soundtrack (M = 2.97, SD = 1.14).
Jialing Deng and Harlin Sun: Designed a set of sweet, bitter, salty, sour, and umami soundtracks for synesthetic appetizer, part of Deng’s Masters of Arts Thesis project (June, 2015). The stated aim was to create a narrative environment of a synesthetic world by offering augmented eating experiences through crossmodal interactions. The soundtracks were designed to evoke specific tastes, with the goal of helping those who suffer from some form of sensory dysfunction and who might not otherwise be able to taste normally.
Evan Kassof: Designed sounds to match each of the four basic tastes. These sounds were used in a citizen science experiment as part of the science museum cravings exhibit in London, UK. The participants could either access the experiment at the gallery or online, via the science museum’s homepage or the cravings exhibition information page (http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/Plan_your_visit/exhibitions/cravings/cravings-experiment.aspx). The sounds were composed from four basis soundtracks that, when combined in different ratios, created composite soundtracks that varied in terms of their articulation, pitch, loudness, and consonance (see , Table 1). In the science museum experiment, the participants were presented with individual sounds and had to match them to a taste word (sweet, bitter, sour, salty, umami, or else indicated that they were unsure).
Table 1.
Acoustic Properties of Each Soundtrack, Grouped by Taste.
Tastes | Composer / experimenter | Pitch | Instrument | Harmony | Articulation |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Bitter | Condiment Junkie | low | synthesized wave functions and trombone | consonant | legato (rumble) |
Kassof | medium | cello, synthesized clicking sound | dissonant | legato (rumble) | |
Reinoso Carvalho | medium | synthesized wave function | consonant | staccato | |
Deng | low | synthesized bass | consonant | legato | |
Knoeferle | low | synthesizer bass, pads, piano | dissonant | legato | |
Salty | Mesz | medium | marimba, percussion | consonant | staccato |
Condiment Junkie | medium | brass, salt shaker | dissonant | staccato | |
Kassof | medium | cello, synthesized clicking sound | dissonant | staccato | |
Deng | medium | salt shaker, tearing paper, bass, brass | dissonant | staccato | |
Knoeferle | low | synthesizer bass, pads, piano | consonant | staccato | |
Sour | Mesz–Hapan | high | piano, synthesized percussion | consonant | staccato |
Mesz–Tango | high | piccolo, clarinet | dissonant | staccato | |
Condiment Junkie | high | brass, woodwind | dissonant | staccato | |
Kassof | high | cello, synthesized clicking sound | dissonant | staccato | |
Wang | high | synthesized | dissonant | legato | |
Deng | high | drums, brass, bass | dissonant | staccato | |
Knoeferle | high | synthesizer bass, pads, piano | dissonant | staccato | |
Sweet | Mesz–Makea | high | piano | dissonant | staccato |
Mesz–Beethoven | medium | strings | consonant | legato | |
Condiment Junkie | high | synthesized piano reverb, wave functions | consonant | legato with chimes | |
Kassof | high | cello, synthesized clicking sound | consonant | legato with clicks | |
Reinoso Carvalho | high | synthesizer | consonant | legato | |
Deng | high | bells, piano, synthesizer | consonant | legato with chimes | |
Knoeferle | high | synthesizer bass, pads, piano | consonant | legato |
Klemens Knoeferle and Florian Kaüppler: Designed a set of taste soundtracks (sweet, bitter, sour, and salty) inspired by Knoeferle et al.’s (2015, Experiment 1) study in which the participants had to match a number of auditory parameters (attack, discontinuity, pitch, roughness, sharpness, and speed) to basic taste words (bitter, sweet, salty, and sour). Based on these results, low-level properties of a 30-second piece of synthesized music were systematically manipulated in order to create soundtracks matching different tastes (Knoeferle et al., 2015, Experiment 2). These soundtracks were then tested online with participants from the United States and India in a matching task where all four soundtracks and four taste words were presented as a group. On average, the North American participants matched 1.75 sounds correctly while the Indian participants matched 1.38 sounds correctly (as compared with matching one sound correctly by chance). Importantly, both groups performed at a level that was significantly better than chance.
Bruno Mesz: A group of musicians were initially asked to improvise on a MIDI keyboard based on the taste words sweet, sour, bitter, and salty (). Based on those improvisations, different loudness, pitch, duration, and articulation features were extracted for each taste. Those features were then used to design an algorithm that automatically generated music of specific tastes by combining fragments of classical and popular music that matched the aforementioned auditory features (). Note here that Mesz also composes his own pieces based on the same principles and uses his compositions for both research and multisensory performances. Five pieces from Mesz were tested in the present study (see Table 2 for details on each soundtrack).
Table 2.
Summary of Each Composer/Designer’s Soundtracks and Their Relationship to Research.
Composer/ designer | Taste soundtracks | Usage | Previous testing |
---|---|---|---|
Condiment Junkie | Bitter, sweet, sour, salty, umami | Featured in EP album. Earlier versions of the bitter and sweet soundtracks were used in Crisinel et al.’s (2012) study to test whether music can bias taste ratings of bittersweet toffee | Earlier versions of the bitter and sweet soundtracks were tested by Crisinel et al. (2012) in a control study. 31 participants rated these soundtracks as significantly different on a bitter-sweet scale |
Deng | Bitter, sweet, sour, salty, umami | MA thesis on multisensory eating experiences | None |
Kassof | Bitter, sweet, sour, salty | Used in study at science museum’s cravings exhibit. The participants had to match a basic taste word to each soundtrack. The soundtracks were presented independently and not all of the participants heard all of the soundtracks | Tested as part of science museum exhibit. No results as yet. The exhibit is currently on-going |
Knoeferle | Bitter, sweet, sour, salty | Used in Knoeferle et al.’s (2015) study where participants from India and the United States assigned four basic taste words to the four soundtracks presented together | Tested by Knoeferle et al. (2015). On average, United States participants assigned 1.75 of the four sounds to the correct taste word, while the Indian participants assigned 1.38 sounds correctly. Both groups performed at a level that was better than chance |
Mesz | Sweet, sour, salty | The sweet Makea soundtrack was used by . The sour tango piece was used by Kontukoski et al. (2015). The soundtracks have also been presented in a number of multisensory performances | The sweet Makea soundtrack appeared in , where it was tested by in a four-taste four-soundtrack matching task |
Reinoso Carvalho | Bitter, sweet, neutral | Used in Reinoso Carvalho et al. (2015) to study how participants matched soundscapes to different chocolates, and how soundscapes influenced the taste ratings of chocolates | A control experiment was conducted in which 78 participants rated the soundtracks as significantly different on a bitter-sweet scale (the three soundtracks were presented together and the participant could compare between them) |
Wang | Sour | Used to test perceptual effects of sweet, sour, and bitter music on drinks (Wang, 2013) | None |
Felipe Reinoso Carvalho: In collaboration with the Institute for Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music at the University of Ghent, Reinoso Carvalho designed sweet and bitter soundtracks. The soundtracks were produced by Tim Vets @ IPEM, UGent; coproduced by Felipe Reinoso Carvalho, Sander de Keer, and Tomas Serrine; and mastered by Felipe Reinoso Carvalho at sonictaste.flavours.me (2013).
The bitter and sweet soundtracks (along with a neutral soundtrack which was not used in the present study) were used in a recent chocolate-tasting study (see Reinoso Carvalho, Van Ee, Rychtarikova, Touhafi, Steenhaut, Persoone, Spence, & Leman, 2015). These soundtracks were designed to be congruent with the taste of bitter and sweet chocolate, respectively. The soundtracks were inspired by ; Crisinel et al., 2012) previous work.
The sounds were first tested in an online study by 78 participants, who rated the soundtracks as significantly different on a 6-point bitter-sweet scale. During the actual study, the participants first matched chocolate samples to the soundtracks and then tasted the samples while listening to the soundtracks.
Qian (Janice) Wang: Designed a sour soundtrack for a study on the effect of taste-congruent sounds on taste evaluation, as part of her masters’ degree at the MIT Media Lab (Wang, 2013). The soundtrack was composed in Ableton Live with features of high pitch, fast tempo, and high dissonance (). The soundtrack consisted of notes played by synthetic instruments. The pitch of the notes ranged from C2 to C6. During the study, the participants listened to bitter, sweet, and sour soundtracks (bitter and sweet soundtracks were the same as used in Crisinel et al., 2012) while rating juice samples in terms of their bitterness, sweetness, and sourness.
The soundtrack excerpts selected for use in the present study can all be heard at https://soundcloud.com/janicewang09/sets/taste-soundscapes-test. See Table 1 for a list of soundtracks and their descriptions, organized by taste; see Table 2 for a list of all soundtracks, their usages, and any previous tests of taste associations. Note that the italicized soundtracks were not used in the present study.
Procedure
The experiment was programmed on the Xperiment experiment-design and hosting platform.1 Before the actual study began, the participants specified their gender, age, country of origin, and self-rated their musical expertise levels (the choices were none, amateur, intermediate, or advanced). The participants had to listen to all 24 soundtracks in a random order. After each soundtrack, the participants had to choose which basic taste (sweet, sour, bitter, or salty) best matched the sound clip that they had just heard and rate how confident they were in having decoded the correct taste on a scale from 0 to 100. The presentation of taste choices was randomized for each trial.
The study lasted for approximately 10 minutes, and the participants were paid $1.20 USD for taking part in the study.
Results
The choices for the best-matching taste word were tallied for each soundtrack (see Figure 1 for chart and Appendix A for a table listing the precise values). The soundtracks with the highest rate of matching for each taste were as follows: for bitterness, Condiment Junkie (42% of participants matched it with bitter, and they were 1.82 times more likely to match it with bitter than with salty, the next most popular choice); for saltiness, Deng (58% of participants matched it with salty and were 2.76 times more likely to match it with salty than with sour, the next most popular choice); for sourness, Mesz–Tango (58% of participants matched it with sour and were 1.76 times more likely to match it with sour than with bitter, the next most popular choice); and for sweetness, Deng (89% of participants matched it with sweet and were 14.83 times more likely to match it with sweet than with salty, the next most popular choice). In comparison, had the participants been responding randomly, 25% of them would have been expected to match each taste (bitter, salty, sour, and sweet) to any given soundtrack.
Results of participants’ soundtrack-taste matching organized by each taste that the soundtracks were designed to evoke in Experiment 1. The chart reveals the distribution of participants’ choice of taste matches for each soundtrack, with a total of 100 responses for each soundtrack. Soundtracks with nonrandom distributions of taste ratings (i.e., participants are not just matching tastes by chance) are shown with asterisks (p < .05); out of these, the soundtracks where the most chosen taste was also the taste intended by the composer are shown by larger asterisks.
Averaging over all of the soundtracks that were associated with each taste, 31.4% of the participants’ responses were correct for bitter soundtracks, 44.4% of participants’ responses were correct for salty soundtracks, 41.7% of the participants’ responses were correct for sour soundtracks, and 56.9% of participants’ responses were correct for sweet soundtracks (see Figure 2). A chi-square test for independence was conducted in order to assess whether different taste words were chosen for different taste soundtracks, tallied over all of the soundtracks that had been generated for each taste. The results indicated that the different taste soundtracks influenced the choice of taste words (χ2(9, 2400) = 720.62, p < .0001). The strength of this effect, measured by computing Cramer’s V, can be classified as medium (V = .32).
Overall distribution of participants’ taste word matches in Experiment 1, averaged over all soundtracks in each taste category.
A chi-square test of goodness of fit was calculated for each soundtrack to determine which of them induced a distribution of taste matches that was significantly different from chance. In fact, out of the 24 soundtracks, only three had nonsignificant preferences in the choice of taste matches (Knoeferle-bitter, Knoeferle-sour, Kassof-sweet). The resulting chi-square values can be seen in Table 3. Out of the 21 soundtracks with nonrandom distributions of responses, for 14 of them, the most chosen taste word was also the one intended by the composer (see Figure 1).
Table 3.
Results of Chi-Square Test of Good of Fit for Participant’s Choice of Taste Word Matches for Each Soundtrack in Experiment 1, Grouped by Taste Category.
Tastes | Composer/designer | χ2(3,100) | p |
---|---|---|---|
Bitter | Condiment Junkie | 16.24 | .001 |
Kassof | 17.44 | .001 | |
Reinoso Carvalho | 33.36 | <.0005 | |
Deng | 13.44 | .004 | |
Knoeferle | 6.56 | .087 | |
Salty | Mesz | 17.20 | .001 |
Condiment Junkie | 28.96 | <.0005 | |
Kassof | 27.84 | <.0005 | |
Deng | 61.2 | <.0005 | |
Knoeferle | 29.2 | <.0005 | |
Sour | Mesz–Hapan | 34.00 | <.0005 |
Mesz–Tango | 36.02 | <.0005 | |
Condiment Junkie | 67.76 | <.0005 | |
Kassof | 38.96 | <.0005 | |
Wang | 21.84 | <.0005 | |
Deng | 15.44 | <.0005 | |
Knoeferle | 4.64 | .20 | |
Sweet | Mesz–Makea | 8.24 | .041 |
Mesz–Beethoven | 38.96 | <.0005 | |
Condiment Junkie | 156.08 | <.0005 | |
Kassof | 2.16 | .54 | |
Reinoso Carvalho | 68.88 | <.0005 | |
Deng | 218.96 | <.0005 | |
Knoeferle | 104.56 | <.0005 |
To check that there was no response bias from the participants (i.e., there were not some taste words that were simply chosen more frequently than others), we computed the total number of responses given to each taste word. There were a total of 595 bitter responses, 587 salty responses, 606 sour responses, and 612 sweet responses. A chi-square test of goodness of fit was calculated and we did not find a distribution that was significantly different from chance (χ2 (3, 2400) = 0.62, p = .89). In other words, we did not find any response bias from the participants (Erlebacher & Sekuler, 1971).
Out of 100 participants, 29 identified themselves as having no particular musical expertise, 51 identified themselves as amateurs, 17 identified as intermediates, and 3 as advanced. The participants were assigned to two groups, those with no expertise (29 people) and those with some expertise (71 people). For each soundtrack, we performed a chi-square test of independence to determine whether there was an association between musical expertise and choosing the intended taste word to match the soundtracks (see Appendix B). Did musical expertise contribute to our participants’ ability to match tastes? Out of 24 soundtracks, only Mesz’s sweet Makea soundtrack was found to have a different distribution of right/wrong choices depending on the self-reported musical expertise of the participant. In particular, a higher percentage of those participants without musical expertise chose to match the soundtrack with sweetness than participants with musical expertise.
The confidence ratings for each soundtrack are shown in Figure 3. Repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) testing was performed within each group of soundtracks (categorized by taste) to determine if there are significant differences in confidence ratings between soundtracks. We found significant differences in confidence ratings between soundtracks in each group. For the bitter soundtracks, F(3.75, 371.0) = 14.24, η2 = .126, p < .0005; for the salty soundtracks, F(4, 396) = 5.95, η2 = .057, p < .0005; for the sour soundtracks, F(6, 594) = 8.16, η2 = .076, p < .0005; and for the sweet soundtracks, F(6, 594) = 8.16, η2 = .076, p < .0005.
Confidence ratings of taste matches for all of the soundtracks, organized by each taste that the soundtracks were designed to evoke in Experiment 1. Confidence ratings were given on a scale from 0 to 100. For each soundtrack, the average confidence ratings over all taste matches are shown. The error bars represent the standard error of means.
More specifically, for bitter soundtracks, participants were the least confident about their taste word choice for the Deng bitter soundtrack compared with all other bitter soundtracks. The participants were also less confident about the Condiment Junkie bitter soundtrack as compared with the Reinoso Carvalho bitter soundtrack (p < .005 for all comparisons). Ironically, the two bitter soundtracks that participants were the least confident about—Deng and Condiment Junkie—were also the only soundtracks where bitter was chosen by the highest percentage of participants. For salty soundtracks, participants were significantly more confident about the Deng salty soundtrack than for Mesz and Knoeferle, and more confident about the Condiment Junkie soundtrack than for Knoeferle (p < .05 for all comparisons). This together with the fact that the Deng salty soundtrack was the most matched with salty validates the effectiveness of the soundtrack in evoking salty tastes. For sour soundtracks, participants were significantly more confident about their taste matches for the Mesz–Tango soundtrack than for the Kassof, Wang, and Knoeferle soundtracks; participants were also more confident about the Deng soundtrack as compared with the Wang and Knoeferle soundtracks; finally, they were more confident about the Condiment Junkie soundtrack than the Knoeferle soundtrack (p < .05 for all comparisons). The Mesz–Tango soundtrack was also the one that was most frequently matched with sourness, followed by the Deng soundtrack. For sweet soundtracks, participants were significantly more confident about the Deng soundtrack than all other sweet soundtracks. In addition, they were more confident about the Condiment Junkie soundtrack than all other sweet soundtracks except for Deng’s (p < .005 for all comparisons). As in the sour soundtrack case, the Deng soundtrack was also the soundtrack that was matched most with sweetness, followed by Condiment Junkie’s soundtrack. All post-hoc comparisons used Bonferroni corrections.
In summary, for the salty, sour, and sweet soundtracks, the soundtracks that were most frequently matched with the tastes that had been intended by the composers were also those where the participants were most confident about their choices. The only exception was for the bitter soundtracks.
On average, the confidence levels for the bitter soundtracks were 57.80, SD = 17.57, for the salty soundtracks: M = 64.50, SD = 17.03, for the sour soundtracks: M = 68.18, SD = 16.18, and for the sweet soundtracks: M = 69.53, SD = 15.78 (see Figure 4). A repeated measures analysis of variance with Huynh-Feldt corrections was performed on the average of the confidence ratings, where significant differences were found between the confidence ratings F(2.59, 297) = 51.01, p < .0005, η2 = 0.34. Specifically, pairwise comparisons with Bonferroni corrections revealed that the confidence ratings for the bitter soundtracks were significantly lower than for all of the other soundtracks (p < .0005 for all comparisons), the confidence ratings for the salty soundtracks were significantly higher than for the bitter soundtracks (p < .0005) but lower than for the sweet (p < .0005) and sour (p = .001) soundtracks, and confidence ratings for sour and sweet soundtracks were not significantly different from each other, but both were significantly higher than for bitter and salty.
Overall confidence ratings for the various soundtracks in Experiment 1. Participants rated their taste match choices on a scale of 0 to 100 for each soundtrack. The error bars represent the standard error of means.
Discussion
Overall, based on the taste-matching and confidence rating data, the results of the present study demonstrate that out of 24 soundtracks (five bitter, five salty, seven sour, and seven sweet) the sweet soundtracks most effectively evoked the tastes intended by the composer (i.e., sweetness), while the bitter soundtracks were the least effective. Specifically, 56.9% of the participants’ responses were correct for sweet soundtracks, and confidence ratings for sweet soundtracks were significantly higher (M = 69.53, SD = 15.78) than for bitter and salty soundtracks; on the other hand, 31.4% of participants’ responses were correct for bitter soundtracks, and confidence ratings were significantly lower for bitter soundtracks (M = 57.80, SD = 17.57) than for all other soundtracks. The reason why our participants found it easiest to match soundtracks to sweetness is possibly because, out of all the tastes, people typically like sweetness most (). Unlike the other tastes, sweetness is almost always pleasant, so perhaps there is a straightforward association here for participants with music and soundscapes that they find pleasant, whereas all the other tastes become associated with unpleasant music. In addition, it is perhaps worth noting that sweetness is the only taste term that is also used in musical notation, that is, dolce, meaning to play in a gentle, sweet style (see Fallows, 2015). Therefore participants—especially those with musical training—might more readily associate music with sweetness (though, it should be said, we did not observe this in the present study). Furthermore, our finding that sweetness somehow stands out from other tastes does not only apply to sound-taste correspondences; in shape-taste matching studies, sweetness is consistently matched to round shapes, whereas all of the other tastes are consistently matched to shapes that are more or less angular (Velasco et al., 2015, 2016).
Looking more closely at Table 1, we can try to deduce why certain soundtracks were more highly matched with tastes other than the one that had been intended by the composer.2 For instance, the Reinoso Carvalho bitter soundtrack was the only nonlegato bitter soundtrack and it was matched mostly with salty or sweet tastes. Similarly, Mesz–Makea, the only nonconsonant sweet soundtrack, was rated as more bitter than sweet.
Given the above-chance results of participants in matching soundtracks to their intended tastes, we were curious whether emotion played a role in mediating the associations between the soundtracks and tastes, and whether the degree and type (pleasantness or arousal) of emotion mediation differed for each basic taste. These questions are addressed in Experiment 2.
Experiment 2
Methods
Participants
Fifty participants (21 women, 29 men) aged between 20 and 64 years (M = 35.71, SD = 11.30) took part in the study. The participants gave their informed consent and reported no cold or other impairment of their senses of smell, taste, or hearing. The participants were recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (; ). The experiment was approved by the central university research ethics committee of Oxford University (MSD-IDREC-C1-2014-205).
Procedure
The experiment was programmed on the Xperiment experiment-design and hosting platform. Before the actual study began, the participants specified their gender, age, country of origin, and self-rated their musical expertise levels (the choices were none, amateur, intermediate, or advanced). The participants had to listen to all 24 soundtracks in a random order. After each soundtrack, the participants had to rate how pleasant and how energizing/exciting they found the soundtrack, each on a scale from 0 to 100. At the end of the test, participants were also asked how pleasant and how energizing/exciting they found bitter/salty/sour/sweet-tasting foods.
The study lasted for approximately 10 minutes, and the participants were paid $1.20 USD for taking part in the study.
Results
The mean pleasantness and arousal ratings for each soundtrack are shown in Figure 5. The mean pleasantness and arousal ratings for foods of a given taste are shown in Figure 6.
Mean pleasantness (a) and arousal (b) rating for each soundtrack, organized by each taste that the soundtracks were designed to evoke in Experiment 2. Pleasantness and arousal are each rated on a scale of 0 to 100. The error bars represent the standard error of means.
Mean pleasantness (a) and arousal (b) rating for each taste word, each on a scale of 0 to 100 in Experiment 2. The error bars represent the standard error of means.
To analyze the role of pleasantness and arousal in mediating the matching between soundtracks and a given taste (T), we used the method documented in . For each of the 24 × 4 = 96 possible soundtrack-taste combinations, we calculated the absolute difference between the mean pleasantness rating of the soundtrack and the mean pleasantness rating of the given taste. We then calculated the correlation between this soundtrack-taste difference and the % of responses that matched the given taste to the soundtrack. If the pleasantness of a taste T and of a soundtrack S influenced the way people matched T and S, then we would expect the measure of pleasantness difference between taste T and soundtrack S to be negatively related to the % responses that match taste T to soundtrack S. The same procedure was repeated for arousal.
For pleasantness, Pearson correlation coefficients of −0.85 (p < .0005) were observed for bitterness, −0.15 (p = .48) for saltiness, 0.53 (p = .008) for sourness, and −0.84 (p < .0005) for sweetness (see Figure 7(a) for plots). This suggests that pleasantness partly mediates the soundtrack-taste correspondence for bitterness and sweetness.
A measure of the degree of pleasantness (a) and arousal (b) mediation in soundtrack-taste matching, shown as the relationship between soundtrack-taste discrepancy from Experiment 2 (in terms of differences in pleasantness/arousal ratings of a given soundtrack-taste pair) and the degree of fit between each soundtrack and a given taste (represented by the % of responses to the soundtrack-taste matching question for a given taste from Experiment 1). The Pearson correlation coefficient is shown on each plot along with a linear regression trend line. Asterisks after the correlation coefficient indicate statistical significance (p < .05).
As far as arousal was concerned, Pearson correlation coefficients of 0.19 (p = .39) were obtained for bitterness, −0.323 (p = .12) for saltiness, −0.60 (p = .002) for sourness, and 0.67 (p < .0005) for sweetness (see Figure 7(b) for plots). This suggests that arousal partly mediates the soundtrack-taste correspondence for sourness.
Furthermore, we calculated partial correlation coefficients to assess whether the effects for pleasantness and arousal are independent. The coefficient for pleasantness remained significant for the soundtrack-bitter taste (r = −.78, p < .0005) and soundtrack-sweet taste (r = −.72, p < .0005) matches when it was controlled for the effect of arousal. Similarly, the coefficient for arousal (r = −.53, p = .009) remained significant for soundtrack-sour taste matches when the effect of pleasantness was controlled for.
General Discussion
The results of Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrate that participants performed at an above-chance level in matching soundtracks to their intended tastes, and that pleasantness and arousal partially mediated this sound-taste association. So then, to summarize, what are the factors governing people’s associations of these soundtracks with basic tastes (taste words)? First and foremost, the studies where many of the soundtracks originated have already demonstrated associations between auditory parameters and tastes (Bronner, Frieler, Bruhn, Hirt, & Piper, 2012; , ; ; see , for a review). For instance, bitterness appears to be associated with sounds that are low in pitch (; Knoeferle et al., 2015; ); interestingly, Condiment Junkie’s bitter soundtrack, the most effective bitter soundtrack, also had the lowest pitch of all the bitter soundtracks (in fact, it had the lowest pitch of all 24 of the soundtracks). It has also been shown that the sound of the piano is most closely matched with sweetness (); the Deng sweet soundtrack, which was matched with the word sweet by 89% of participants, makes liberal use of consonant high piano notes in the composition.
In addition, an important role of emotional mediation was also highlighted. As shown by the results of Experiment 2, pleasantness partly mediates soundtrack-taste matches for sweetness and bitterness, while arousal partly mediates soundtrack-taste matches for sourness. Whether intentional or not, the soundtrack designers seem to have captured some emotional aspects of tastes in their soundtracks. For instance, sweet soundtracks tend to be pleasant, whereas bitter soundtracks tend to be unpleasant. As for sour soundtracks, they tend to be the most arousing/exciting of all the soundtracks.
Lastly, some of the soundtracks—such as those by Condiment Junkie and Deng—also used semantic associations in the form of salt shaker sounds in the salty soundtrack (in fact, the prominent salt shaker sound in the background of Deng’s soundtrack might have been the reason why it had the highest matching rate—58%—out of all the salty soundtracks). In light of the emotion mediation results from Experiment 2, it is interesting to note that saltiness is the only taste whose crossmodal correspondence with the soundtracks does not appear to be mediated by pleasantness or arousal. Perhaps this is why the use of straight-forward semantic associations was so effective for the salty soundtracks. On the other hand, relying on semantic associations obscures crossmodal correspondences that are yet to be discovered between sounds and saltiness. In the future, it may be useful for researchers and designers to focus their energy on a creating a salty soundtrack which does not involve salt shaker sounds!
Incidentally, it is interesting to note that for three out of the seven sour soundtracks, bitter and sour constituted the majority of the responses (for instance, Mesz–tango had 58 responses for sour and 33 responses for bitter, Deng’s sour soundtrack had 50 responses for sour and 32 for bitter. See also Figures 1 and and2).2). Relevant here are previous findings that people tend to confuse sour and bitter more than the other tastes (e.g., Meiselman & Dzendolet, 1967; O’Mahony, Goldenberg, Stedmon, & Alford, 1979). So, for instance, O’Mahony et al. found that when participants were asked to apply taste adjectives (sweet, sour, salty, and bitter) to actual taste solutions, the most common error was calling the citric acid solution bitter instead of sour. In the context of the present study, the sour soundtracks might have evoked the idea or sensation of sourness, but for those participants who associate the feeling of sourness with the word bitter, they might have chosen to match the soundtracks with bitterness instead of sourness. A follow-up experiment in which the participants are asked to match soundtracks with unlabeled taste solutions as opposed to taste words would verify whether the sour-bitter confusion contributed to many sour soundtracks being labeled as bitter.
To be fair, some of the soundtracks—such as those created by Knoeferle and Kassof—were designed as a set in which some auditory parameters varied over the same melody (while others remained constant). This may not be as effective when participants are asked to match the sounds to tastes without having the relevant context (in Knoeferle et al.’s, 2015, study, e.g., the participants heard all four sounds and were asked to make a one-to-one mapping with the four taste words), which might account for why we did not observe a distribution of responses that was significantly different from chance for some of the soundtracks by Knoeferle and Kassof.
In addition, a possible limiting factor in the design of the present study was the fact that we only used a 15-second excerpt from each soundtrack. One could argue that, because we did not use the soundtracks in their entirety, the excerpts that were sampled might not have been the ideal (most informative) sections for matching with the desired tastes. Our decision to limit the length of each sound sample was designed to avoid participant fatigue. As all the soundtracks were looping and fairly uniform in texture, it should not make a difference where we sampled the music. To be sure, this is quite different from traditional music where there is a defined beginning, middle, and end. For taste, music is usually atmospheric and hence has more of a repetitive nature.We thought the first 15 seconds should be sufficient to evoke the desired tastes, especially for the soundtracks used in experiments involving tasting real food products (soundtracks by Condiment Junkie, Mesz, Reinoso Carvalho, and Wang), where participants should feel the effect of matched taste as soon as possible.
Lastly, the present results highlighted an example of the role that musical expertise can play in matching music with tastes. For Mesz’s sweet Makea piece, those with no musical experience were significantly more likely to match it to sweetness than those with musical experience (for whom bitterness was the most common choice). This was potentially because Makea features dissonant chords and high pitched piano instrumentation; as musical novices tend to focus on timbre while those with musical experience tend to focus on melody and harmony (Wolpert, 1990), perhaps novices matched the high-pitched piano sounds to sweetness, while more experienced listeners matched the dissonant chords to bitterness. This highlights the importance for future compositions to have consistent musical features across all levels of music cognition.
The recent explosion of studies and performances that have attempted to bring together sound and taste demonstrate the level of interest in sonic seasoning, by which sound can be used to alter the taste of a dish. This study contributes to the effort by validating which soundtracks that people can reliably match to tastes. Once these correspondences are found, one can then study any perceptual effects of these soundtracks on the taste of real foodstuffs. From the soundtracks studied here, the earlier versions of bitter and sweet soundtracks by Condiment Junkie have been shown to significantly change people’s ratings of toffee on a bitter-sweet scale (Crisinel et al., 2012). Meanwhile, the bitter and sweet soundtracks generated by Reinoso Carvalho were used in a chocolate-tasting study in which the sweet soundtrack significantly changed people’s rating of bitter chocolate on a bitter-sweet scale (Reinoso Carvalho, Van Ee, Rychtarikova, Touhafi, Steenhaut, Persoone, Spence, & Leman, 2015). It remains to be seen whether the most effective soundtracks here, such as Mesz’ sour tango soundtrack or Deng’s sweet soundtrack, can lead to measurable taste modifications.
Surely, in the years to come, the demand for future research into sound-taste correspondences will only increase, especially in the light of recent studies showing how customers are willing to pay significantly more for food/drink when it is accompanied by matching multisensory stimuli than without (Michel, Velasco, Gatti, & Spence, 2014; Reinoso Carvalho, Van Ee, Rychtarikova, Touhafi, Steenhaut, Persoone, & Spence, 2015). The hope is that this type of comparative study will help guide design decisions for soundtracks and experiments as more people explore this intriguing area between sound and taste.
Acknowledgements
CS would thank the AHRC grant entitled ‘Rethinking the senses’ (AH/L007053/1) for supporting this research.
Author Biographies
Qian (Janice) Wang has a BS in computer science from Caltech and a MS in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT. She is currently doing PhD at the Crossmodal Research Laboratory in the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University, on crossmodal correspondences between sound and flavor.
Andy Woods is the founder at Flying Fish Research, a company that focuses on online behavioural research and head of Online Research in the Crossmodal Research Laboratory in Oxford. His research focuses on multisensory psychology and neuroscience.
Charles Spence is the head of the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at the Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford University, where he is currently a professor. His research is about the integration of information across different sensory modalities, and he is interested in applying the latest insights concerning the multisensory nature of human perception to the real world, in everything from the design of food and packaging, to car warning signals and handheld technologies.
Appendix A
Taste-matching counts from the soundtrack-taste matching task: For each soundtrack, the participants had to choose one taste word (bitter, salty, sour, or sweet) that best matched the soundtrack. The tables below highlight the number of responses per taste word that each soundtrack received.
Bitter soundtracks | Condiment Junkie | Kassof | Reinoso Carvalho | Deng | Knoeferle |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Bitter | 42 | 30 | 16 | 39 | 30 |
Salty | 23 | 26 | 39 | 27 | 32 |
Sour | 17 | 36 | 6 | 15 | 22 |
Sweet | 18 | 8 | 39 | 19 | 16 |
Salty soundtracks | Mesz | Condiment Junkie | Kassof | Deng | Knoeferle |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Salty | 42 | 42 | 33 | 58 | 47 |
Sour | 21 | 32 | 27 | 21 | 11 |
Sweet | 23 | 6 | 3 | 9 | 24 |
Bitter | 14 | 20 | 37 | 12 | 18 |
Sour soundtracks | Mesz–Hapan | Mesz–Tango | Condiment Junkie | Kassof | Wang | Deng | Knoeferle |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Sour | 36 | 58 | 45 | 39 | 38 | 50 | 26 |
Bitter | 39 | 33 | 46 | 41 | 35 | 32 | 16 |
Salty | 23 | 9 | 7 | 16 | 16 | 18 | 28 |
Sweet | 2 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 11 | 0 | 30 |
Sweet soundtracks | Mesz–Makea | Mesz–Beethoven | Condiment Junkie | Kassof | Reinoso Carvalho | Deng | Knoeferle |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Sweet | 28 | 52 | 79 | 21 | 60 | 89 | 69 |
Salty | 16 | 15 | 9 | 30 | 10 | 6 | 15 |
Sour | 21 | 17 | 8 | 27 | 21 | 4 | 8 |
Bitter | 35 | 16 | 4 | 22 | 9 | 1 | 8 |
Appendix B
Taste-matching counts from soundtrack-taste matching task, sorted by musical expertise.
Bitter soundtracks | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Experience | Condiment Junkie | Kassof | Reinoso Carvalho | Deng | Knoeferle | |
None | Bitter | 14 | 7 | 4 | 10 | 12 |
Other | 15 | 22 | 25 | 19 | 17 | |
Some | Bitter | 28 | 23 | 12 | 29 | 18 |
Other | 43 | 48 | 59 | 42 | 53 |
Salty soundtracks | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Experience | Mesz | Condiment Junkie | Kassof | Deng | Knoeferle | |
None | Salty | 11 | 10 | 8 | 16 | 17 |
Other | 18 | 19 | 21 | 13 | 12 | |
Some | Salty | 31 | 32 | 25 | 42 | 30 |
Other | 40 | 39 | 46 | 29 | 41 |
Sour soundtracks | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Experience | Mesz–Hapan | Mesz–Tango | Condiment Junkie | Kassof | Wang | Deng | Knoeferle | |
None | Sour | 12 | 17 | 13 | 10 | 12 | 13 | 4 |
Other | 17 | 12 | 16 | 19 | 17 | 16 | 25 | |
Some | Sour | 24 | 41 | 32 | 29 | 26 | 37 | 22 |
Other | 47 | 30 | 39 | 42 | 45 | 34 | 49 |
Sweet soundtracks | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Experience | Mesz–Makea | Mesz– Beethoven | Condiment Junkie | Kassof | Reinoso Carvalho | Deng | Knoeferle | |
None | Sweet | 14 | 13 | 24 | 5 | 15 | 27 | 19 |
Other | 15 | 16 | 5 | 24 | 14 | 2 | 10 | |
Some | Sweet | 14 | 39 | 55 | 16 | 45 | 62 | 50 |
Other | 57 | 32 | 16 | 55 | 26 | 9 | 21 |
Notes
1 Xperiment is an open-source research platform that offers experiment development, hosting, and data collection on a variety of devices (http://www.xperiment.mobi). It offers experimenters a script-based system to create and upload experiments and publishes directly to crowd sourcing sites ().
2 Three sour soundtracks had nonrandomly distributed matches but participants matched them slightly more with bitter than sour taste words. The sour-bitter conundrum is addressed further in general discussions.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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Published online 2013 Aug 13. Prepublished online 2013 May 24. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00511
PMID: 23964257
This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.
Abstract
Why do people listen to music? Over the past several decades, scholars have proposed numerous functions that listening to music might fulfill. However, different theoretical approaches, different methods, and different samples have left a heterogeneous picture regarding the number and nature of musical functions. Moreover, there remains no agreement about the underlying dimensions of these functions. Part one of the paper reviews the research contributions that have explicitly referred to musical functions. It is concluded that a comprehensive investigation addressing the basic dimensions underlying the plethora of functions of music listening is warranted. Part two of the paper presents an empirical investigation of hundreds of functions that could be extracted from the reviewed contributions. These functions were distilled to 129 non-redundant functions that were then rated by 834 respondents. Principal component analysis suggested three distinct underlying dimensions: People listen to music to regulate arousal and mood, to achieve self-awareness, and as an expression of social relatedness. The first and second dimensions were judged to be much more important than the third—a result that contrasts with the idea that music has evolved primarily as a means for social cohesion and communication. The implications of these results are discussed in light of theories on the origin and the functionality of music listening and also for the application of musical stimuli in all areas of psychology and for research in music cognition.
Keywords: music, functions of music, self-awareness, social relatedness, arousal regulation, mood regulation
Introduction
Music listening is one of the most enigmatic of human behaviors. Most common behaviors have a recognizable utility that can be plausibly traced to the practical motives of survival and procreation. Moreover, in the array of seemingly odd behaviors, few behaviors match music for commandeering so much time, energy, and money. Music listening is one of the most popular leisure activities. Music is a ubiquitous companion to people's everyday lives.
The enthusiasm for music is not a recent development. Recognizably musical activities appear to have been present in every known culture on earth, with ancient roots extending back 250,000 years or more (see Zatorre and Peretz, 2001). The ubiquity and antiquity of music has inspired considerable speculation regarding its origin and function.
Throughout history, scholars of various stripes have pondered the nature of music. Philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, musicologists, and neuroscientists have proposed a number of theories concerning the origin and purpose of music and some have pursued scientific approaches to investigating them (e.g., Fitch, ; Peretz, ; Levitin, 2007; Schäfer and Sedlmeier, 2010).
The origin of music is shrouded in prehistory. There is little physical evidence—like stone carvings or fossilized footprints—that might provide clues to music's past. Necessarily, hypotheses concerning the original functions of music will remain speculative. Nevertheless, there are a number of plausible and interesting conjectures that offer useful starting-points for investigating the functions of music.
A promising approach to the question of music's origins focuses on how music is used—that is, it's various functions. In fact, many scholars have endeavored to enumerate various musical functions (see below). The assumption is that the function(s) that music is presumed to have served in the past would be echoed in at least one of the functions that music serves today. Of course, how music is used today need have no relationship with music's function(s) in the remote past. Nevertheless, evidence from modern listeners might provide useful clues pertinent to theorizing about origins.
In proposing various musical functions, not all scholars have related these functions to music's presumed evolutionary roots. For many scholars, the motivation has been simply to identify the multiple ways in which music is used in everyday lives (e.g., Chamorro-Premuzic and Furnham, ; Boer, 2009; Lonsdale and North, ; Packer and Ballantyne, 2011). Empirical studies of musical functions have been very heterogeneous. Some studies were motivated by questions related to development. Many related to social identity. Others were motivated by cognitive psychology, aesthetics, cultural psychology, or personality psychology. In addition, studies differed according to the target population. While some studies attempted to assemble representative samples of listeners, others explicitly focused on specific populations such as adolescents. Most studies rely on convenient samples of students. Consequently, the existing literature is something of a hodgepodge.
The aim of the present study is to use the extant literature as a point of departure for a fresh re-appraisal of possible musical functions. In Part 1 of our study, we summarize the results of an extensive literature survey concerning the possible functions of music. Specifically, we identified and skimmed hundreds of publications that explicitly suggest various functions, uses, or benefits for music. We provide separate overviews for the empirical literatures and the theoretical literatures. This survey resulted in just over 500 proposed musical functions. We do not refer to each of the identified publications but concentrate on the ones that have identified either more than one single function of music listening or a single unique function that is not captured in any other publication. In Part 2, we present the results of an empirical study whose purpose was to distill—using principal components analysis (PCA)—the many proposed functions of music listening. To anticipate our results, we will see that PCA suggests three main dimensions that can account for much of the shared variance in the proposed musical functions.
Review of the research on the functions of music
Discussions and speculations regarding the functions of music listening can be found in both theoretical literature concerning music as well as in empirical studies of music. Below, we offer a review of both literatures. The contents of the reviews are summarized in Tables TablesA1,A1, ,A2.A2. Table TableA1A1 provides an overview of theoretical proposals regarding musical function, whereas Table TableA2A2 provides an overview of empirical studies regarding musical function. Together, the two tables provide a broad inventory of potential functions for music.
Theoretical approaches
Many scholars have discussed potential functions of music exclusively from a theoretical point of view. The most prominent of these approaches or theories are the ones that make explicit evolutionary claims. However, there are also other, non-evolutionary approaches such as experimental aesthetics or the uses-and-gratifications approach. Functions of music were derived deductively from these approaches and theories. In addition, in the literature, one commonly finds lists or collections of functions that music can have. Most of these lists are the result of literature searches; in other cases authors provide no clear explanation for how they came up with the functions they list. Given the aim of assembling a comprehensive list, all works are included in our summary.
Functions of music as they derive from specific approaches or theories
Evolutionary approaches. Evolutionary discussions of music can already be found in the writings of Darwin. Darwin discussed some possibilities but felt there was no satisfactory solution to music's origins (Darwin, 1871, 1872). His intellectual heirs have been less cautious. Miller (2000), for instance, has argued that music making is a reasonable index of biological fitness, and so a manifestation of sexual selection—analogous to the peacock's tail. Anyone who can afford the biological luxury of making music must be strong and healthy. Thus, music would offer an honest social signal of physiological fitness.
Another line of theorizing refers to music as a means of social and emotional communication. For example, Panksepp and Bernatzky (, p. 139) argued that
in social creatures like ourselves, whose ancestors lived in arboreal environments where sound was one of the most effective ways to coordinate cohesive group activities, reinforce social bonds, resolve animosities, and to establish stable hierarchies of submission and dominance, there could have been a premium on being able to communicate shades of emotional meaning by the melodic character (prosody) of emitted sounds.
A similar idea is that music contributes to social cohesion and thereby increases the effectiveness of group action. Work and war songs, lullabies, and national anthems have bound together families, groups, or whole nations. Relatedly, music may provide a means to reduce social stress and temper aggression in others. The idea that music may function as a social cement has many proponents (see Huron, ; Mithen, 2006; Bicknell, 2007).
A novel evolutionary theory is offered by Falk (,b) who has proposed that music arose from humming or singing intended to maintain infant-mother attachment. Falk's “putting-down-the-baby hypothesis” suggests that mothers would have profited from putting down their infants in order to make their hands free for other activities. Humming or singing consequently arose as a consoling signal indicating caretaker proximity in the absence of physical touch.
Another interesting conjecture relates music to human anxiety related to death, and the consequent quest for meaning. Dissanayake (2009), for example, has argued that humans have used music to help cope with awareness of life's transitoriness. In a manner similar to religious beliefs about the hereafter or a higher transcendental purpose, music can help assuage human anxiety concerning mortality (see, e.g., Newberg et al., 2001). Neurophysiological studies regarding music-induced chills can be interpreted as congruent with this conjecture. For example, music-induced chills produce reduced activity in brain structures associated with anxiety (Blood and Zatorre, ).
Related ideas stress the role music plays in feelings of transcendence. For example, (Frith, 1996, p. 275) has noted that: “We all hear the music we like as something special, as something that defies the mundane, takes us “out of ourselves,” puts us somewhere else.” Thus, music may provide a means of escape. The experience of flow states (Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi, 2009), peaks (Maslow, 1968), and chills (Panksepp, 1995), which are often evoked by music listening, might similarly be interpreted as forms of transcendence or escapism (see also Fachner, 2008).
More generally, Schubert (2009) has argued that the fundamental function of music is its potential to produce pleasure in the listener (and in the performer, as well). All other functions may be considered subordinate to music's pleasure-producing capacity. Relatedly, music might have emerged as a safe form of time-passing—analogous to the sleeping behaviors found among many predators. As humans became more effective hunters, music might have emerged merely as an entertaining and innocuous way to pass time during waking hours (see Huron, ).
The above theories each stress a single account of music's origins. In addition, there are mixed theories that posit a constellation of several concurrent functions. Anthropological accounts of music often refer to multiple social and cultural benefits arising from music. Merriam (1964) provides a seminal example. In his book, The anthropology of music, Merriam proposed 10 social functions music can serve (e.g., emotional expression, communication, and symbolic representation). Merriam's work has had a lasting influence among music scholars, but also led many scholars to focus exclusively on the social functions of music. Following in the tradition of Merriam, Dissanayake (2006) proposed six social functions of ritual music (such as display of resources, control, and channeling of individual aggression, and the facilitation of courtship).
Non-evolutionary approaches. Many scholars have steered clear of evolutionary speculation about music, and have instead focused on the ways in which people use music in their everyday lives today. A prominent approach is the “uses-and-gratifications” approach (e.g., Arnett, 1995). This approach focuses on the needs and concerns of the listeners and tries to explain how people actively select and use media such as music to serve these needs and concerns. Arnett (1995) provides a list of potential uses of music such as entertainment, identity formation, sensation seeking, or culture identification.
Another line of research is “experimental aesthetics” whose proponents investigate the subjective experience of beauty (both artificial or natural), and the ensuing experience of pleasure. For example, in discussing the “recent work in experimental aesthetics,” Bullough (1921) distinguished several types of listeners and pointed to the fact that music can be used to activate associations, memories, experiences, moods, and emotions.
By way of summary, many musical functions have been proposed in the research literature. Evolutionary speculations have tended to focus on single-source causes such as music as an indicator of biological fitness, music as a means for social and emotional communication, music as social glue, music as a way of facilitating caretaker mobility, music as a means of tempering anxiety about mortality, music as escapism or transcendental meaning, music as a source of pleasure, and music as a means for passing time. Other accounts have posited multiple concurrent functions such as the plethora of social and cultural functions of music found in anthropological writings about music. Non-evolutionary approaches are evident in the uses-and-gratifications approach—which revealed a large number of functions that can be summarized as cognitive, emotional, social, and physiological functions—and the experimental aesthetics approach, whose proposed functions can similarly be summarized as cognitive and emotional functions.
Functions of music as they derive from literature research
As noted, many publications posit musical functions without providing a clear connection to any theory. Most of these works are just collections of functions of music from the literature. Not least, there are also accounts of such collections where it remained unclear how the author(s) came up with the functions contained. Some of these works refer to only one single function of music—most often because this functional aspect was investigated not with the focus on music but with a focus on other psychological phenomena. Yet other works list extensive collections of purported musical functions.
Works that refer to only one single functional aspect of music include possible therapeutic functions for music in clinical settings (Cook, ; Frohne-Hagemann and Pleß-Adamczyk, 2005), the use of music for symbolic exclusion in political terms (Bryson, 1996), the syntactic, semantic, and mediatizing use of film music (Maas, 1993), and the use of music to manage physiological arousal (Bartlett, 1996).
The vast majority of publications identify several possible musical functions, most of which—as stated above—are clearly focused on social aspects. Several comprehensive collections have been assembled, such as those by Baacke (1984), Gregory (1997), Ruud (1997), Roberts and Christenson (2001), Engh (2006), and Laiho (2004). Most of these studies identified a very large number of potential functions of music.
By way of summary, there exists a long tradition of theorizing about the potential functions of music. Although some of these theories have been deduced from a prior theoretical framework, none was the result of empirical testing or exploratory rules='groups'>I listen to music … [Ich höre Musik …]StatisticsFactor loadingsMSD123Because it helps me think about myself.[weil ich dann gut über mich nachdenken kann.]3.531.820.715Because it can lead my thoughts to somewhere else.[weil ich dann in Gedanken ganz weit weg sein kann.]4.211.700.671Because it makes me believe I am better able to cope with my worries.[weil ich dann das Gefühl habe, mit meinen Sorgen besser fertig zu werden.]3.371.870.668Because it helps me better understand my thoughts and emotions.[weil sie hilft, meine Gedanken und Gefühle besser zu verstehen.]3.021.850.667Because it helps me think about my identity.[weil sie mir hilft, über meine Identität nachzudenken.]2.871.940.665Because it is therapy for my soul.[weil sie eine Therapie für meine Seele ist.]3.821.840.656Because it gives comfort to me when I'm sad.[weil sie mir Trost spendet, wenn ich traurig bin.]4.101.730.645Because it makes me feel secure.[weil ich mich dann geborgen fühle.]3.001.790.637Because it is a means to express myself.[weil sie mir eine Möglichkeit bietet, mich selbst auszudrücken]3.391.890.632Because it helps me find my own way.[weil sie mir hilft, meinen Weg zu finden.]3.071.850.625Because it mirrors my feelings and moods.[weil ich darin meine Gefühle und Stimmungen wiederfinde.]4.921.310.610Because it conveys feelings.[weil sie Gefühle transportiert.]4.801.380.608Because it expresses something that cannot be expressed in words.[weil sie etwas vermittelt, was sich in Worten nicht ausdrücken lässt.]3.821.910.602Because it helps me learn about myself.[weil ich dadurch etwas über mich lernen kann.]2.301.820.589Because it helps me be contemplative.[weil sie mir beim Nachdenken hilft.]3.651.820.572Because it helps me escape from my daily routines.[weil ich dann aus dem grauen Alltag fliehen kann.]3.621.850.567Because it often induces visual imagery.[weil ich dabei oft bildhafte Vorstellungen habe.]3.881.720.564Because it can make me dream.[weil ich dabei träumen kann.]4.491.500.562Because it distracts my mind from the outside world.[weil sie mich von der “Außenwelt” ablenkt.]3.741.780.552Because it lets me forget the world around me.[weil ich dann die Welt um mich herum vergessen kann.]4.481.570.551Because it makes me forget about reality.[weil sie mich die Realität vergessen lässt.]3.301.910.544Because it puts fantastic images or stories in my head.[weil mir dann tolle Bilder oder Geschichten in den Kopf kommen.]3.881.760.543Because it alleviates my inner tension.[weil das die Anspannung in mir verringert.]3.851.550.542Because it helps me reminisce.[weil ich dabei in Erinnerungen schwelgen kann.]4.241.640.532Because it gives me the energy I need for the day.[weil sie mir Energie für den Tag gibt.]4.441.470.531Because I can recognize myself in the lyrics.[weil ich mich in den Texten wiederfinden kann.]3.721.700.524Because it makes me feel somebody else feels the same as I do.[weil sie mir das Gefühl gibt, dass jemand anderes dasselbe fühlt wie ich.]3.131.940.521Because it supports my ideas.[weil sie meine Ideen unterstützt.]2.861.820.512Because it lets me be the way I am.[weil ich dadurch so sein kann, wie ich bin.]3.661.890.508Because it enables me to experiment with different facets of my personality.[weil sie mir ermöglicht, mit verschiedenen Seiten meiner Persönlichkeit zu experimentieren.]2.521.940.508Because it calms me.[weil sie mich beruhigt.]4.321.370.501Because it adds meaning to my life.[weil sie mir Sinn im Leben gibt.]2.242.030.496Because it can reduce my anxiety.[weil sie meine Angst reduzieren kann.]2.511.930.493Because it makes me feel that I want to change the world.[weil ich dann das Gefühl bekomme, dass ich die Welt verändern möchte.]2.341.960.489Because it is a means of venting my frustration.[weil sie eine Möglichkeit bietet, meine Frustration abzuladen.]3.821.820.488Because it can reduce my stress.[weil sie meinen Stress reduziert.]4.421.390.487Because it can make me feel less lonely.[weil ich mich dann weniger einsam fühle.]2.931.920.486Because I like the bodily changes it evokes (changes of heartbeat, prickling, etc.)[weil ich die körperlichen Wirkungen mag (Veränderung des Herzschlags, Kribbeln auf der Haut usw.), die sie auslöst.]3.332.020.483Because it gives me a way to let off steam.[weil ich dadurch Dampf ablassen kann.]3.821.830.479Because it can lighten my mood.[weil sie meine Gefühle positiv beeinflussen kann.]4.861.220.473Because it gives me pleasure.[weil sie Wohlgefallen auslöst.]4.541.490.473Because it reminds me of certain periods of my life or past experiences.[weil sie mich an bestimmte Phasen meines Lebens bzw. an vergangene Ereignisse erinnert.]4.621.510.471Because I just enjoy listening to music.[weil ich es einfach genieße, Musik zu hören.]5.331.060.460Because it gives me intellectual stimulation.[weil es eine intellektuelle Stimulation für mich ist.]2.941.900.434Because it gives me something that is mine alone.[weil ich dann etwas für mich alleine habe.]2.582.000.418Because it gives me goose bumps.[weil ich dann Gänsehaut bekomme.]3.161.910.416Because it addresses my sense of aesthetics.[weil sie meinen Sinn für Ästhetik anspricht.]2.942.040.386Because it reminds me of a particular person.[weil sie mich an eine bestimmte Person erinnert.]3.391.880.379Because it makes me feel my body.[weil ich dabei meinen Körper spüre.]2.431.890.376Because I can enjoy it as art.[weil ich sie als Kunst genießen kann.]3.631.930.358Because I want to play or sing it myself.[weil ich sie nachspielen oder nachsingen möchte.]3.131.980.316Because it helps me show that I belong to a given social group.1.301.620.726[weil ich damit zeigen kann, dass ich einer bestimmten sozialen Gruppe angehöre.]Because it makes me feel connected to all people who like the same kind of music.[weil ich mich dann allen Leuten zugehörig fühle, die solche Musik hören.]1.681.710.686Because it makes me feel connected to my friends.[weil sie dazu führt, dass ich mich mit meinen Freunden verbunden fühle.]2.021.730.671Because it provides me useful information for my everyday life.[weil ich dadurch nützliche Informationen für das alltägliche Leben sammeln kann.]1.671.650.665Because it is a reason to meet my friends.[weil sie einen Grund dafür bietet, mit meinen Freunden zusammen zu sein.]1.861.730.662Because it makes me feel connected to others.[weil ich mich durch sie mit anderen verbunden fühle.]2.281.750.661Because it can help me meet other people.[weil ich dadurch neue Leute kennenlernen kann.]2.151.780.661Because it helps me form friendships with people who have similar musical taste.[weil sie mir hilft, Freundschaften mit Personen zu schließen, die einen ähnlichen Musikgeschmack haben wie ich.]2.171.820.660Because it tells me how other people think.[weil ich dann weiß, wie andere Leute denken.]1.891.720.636Because I can learn something about other people.[weil ich dadurch etwas über andere lernen kann.]2.491.760.629Because music is a social experience.[weil Musik eine Gruppenerfahrung ist.]2.001.770.628Because it helps me develop social values.[weil Musik hilft, soziale Werte zu entwickeln.]2.441.800.622Because I would like to identify with a particular music scene.[weil ich mich mit einer bestimmten Musikszene identifizieren möchte.]1.751.830.608Because it helps me understand the world better.[weil ich dadurch die Welt besser verstehen kann.]2.261.750.600Because it mirrors the history and culture of my country.[weil sie die Kultur und die Geschichte meines Landes widerspiegelt.]1.151.580.588Because it can be a means to show political engagement.[weil sie ein wichtiges Mittel für mich ist, um politisches Engagement zu zeigen.]1.001.500.582Because it helps me develop my personal values.[weil sie mir hilft, meine persönlichen Werte zu entwickeln.]2.341.790.581Because it is a good way to express the uniqueness of our culture.[weil das ein gutes Mittel ist, um die Einzigartigkeit unserer Kultur auszudrücken.]1.951.840.581Because I would like to take the artists/musicians as role models.[weil ich mir die Künstler/Musiker als Vorbild nehmen möchte.]1.831.830.575Because it is something my friends like to do, as well.[weil das etwas ist, was meine Freundinnen und Freunde auch gerne tun.]1.711.690.575Because it makes me feel connected to the world.[weil ich mich dann mit der Welt verbunden fühle.]2.031.760.571Because it is something I can talk about with my friends.[weil ich dann etwas habe, worüber ich mich mit meinen Freundinnen und Freunden unterhalten kann.]2.041.650.567Because I can be together with my family.[weil ich dabei mit meiner Familie zusammen sein kann.]1.381.530.565Because it makes me belong.[weil ich somit “dazu gehöre.”].881.320.560Because my best friend and I can enthuse about it together.[weil meine beste Freundin/mein bester Freund und ich dann gemeinsam für etwas schwärmen können.]1.621.690.543Because it can express my political attitudes.[weil sie meine politischen Überzeugungen ausdrücken kann.]1.481.770.531Because my friends like the same music as I do.[weil sie auch meinen Freundinnen und Freunden gefällt.]1.761.650.523Because when listening, I can imagine how the music would sound in a concert.[weil ich mir dabei vorstellen kann, wie die Musik wohl im Konzert wäre.]2.541.970.496Because it is related to spirituality.[weil sie für mich eng mit Spiritualität verbunden ist.]1.171.710.483Because I learn a lot about the world.[weil ich dadurch viel von der Welt erfahre.]2.301.640.472Because I can identify with the musicians or bands.[weil ich mich dadurch mit einigen MusikerInnen oder Gruppen so gut identifizieren kann.]2.581.790.465Because it supports my religious faith.[weil sie meinen Glauben unterstützt.]1.221.830.448Because it has a supernatural meaning to me.[weil sie für mich eine übersinnliche Bedeutung hat.]1.181.750.446Because I want to know what's going on in the music scene.[weil ich darüber Bescheid wissen will, was in der Musikszene gerade aktuell ist.]1.971.820.429Because I want to find out something about the music.[weil ich etwas über die Musik herausfinden möchte.]2.601.810.428Because it makes me let go of myself when I'm in company.[weil sie mir hilft, aus mir herauszugehen, wenn ich in Gesellschaft bin.]2.811.840.422Because it contributes to my health.[weil sie zu meiner Gesundheit beiträgt.]2.511.880.415Because it can soothe my physical pain.[weil sie meine körperlichen Beschwerden lindern kann.]1.951.820.412Because you can learn something from the music.[weil man etwas dabei lernen kann.]2.751.760.404Because I want to be informed about hits and trends.[weil ich mich über Hits und Trends informieren will.]1.861.710.402Because it structures my everyday life.[weil sie meinem Alltag Struktur gibt.]2.241.850.397Because I can get away from my family.[weil ich damit meiner Familie entkommen kann.]1.311.730.378Because it is a means to share my memories with my friends.[weil sie eine Möglichkeit bietet, Erinnerungen mit Freunden zu teilen.]3.401.810.375Because it makes me feel sexy.[weil ich mich dann sexy fühle.]1.681.870.372Because I can learn about new pieces.[weil ich dabei neue Stücke kennenlernen kann.]3.501.860.369Because I'm interested in the musicians and bands.[weil ich die MusikerInnen und Gruppen interessant finde.]3.861.660.312Because it is a great pastime.3.971.680.640[weil sie ein prima Zeitvertreib ist.]Because it can take my mind off things.[weil sie mich ablenken kann.]4.521.450.627Because it prevents me from being bored while I do other things.[weil ich dann weniger gelangweilt bin, während ich etwas anderes tue.]3.391.940.621Because it makes time pass markedly faster.[weil dann die Zeit deutlich schneller vergeht.]3.571.850.609Because it enables me to kill time.[weil ich damit die Zeit totschlagen kann.]2.641.990.598Because I'm less bored then.[weil es dann nicht so langweilig ist.]3.991.750.584Because I need it in the background while I do other things.[weil ich sie im Hintergrund brauche, während ich etwas anderes tue.]3.761.790.564Because it makes me cheerful.[weil ich dann gute Laune bekomme.]4.761.280.555Because it can enhance my mood.[weil sie meine Stimmung verbessern kann.]5.041.150.539Because it fills the unpleasant silence when no one speaks.[weil Musik die unangenehme Stille füllt, wenn gerade niemand spricht.]3.152.000.537Because it helps me get up in the morning.[weil sie mir morgens hilft, wach zu werden.]3.751.940.532Because it helps me relax.[weil ich mich dann besser entspannen kann.]4.841.180.520Because it provides diversion.[weil sie für mich eine gute Abwechslung bietet.]4.241.440.511Because it puts me in the right mood for going out.[weil ich mich damit einstimmen kann, bevor ich ausgehe.]3.692.050.508Because it enhances my drive or my motivation for certain actions.[weil sie meinen Antrieb bzw. meine Motivation für bestimmte Tätigkeiten steigert.]4.411.550.505Because it is a good way to entertain myself.[weil das eine gute Art ist, mich selbst zu unterhalten.]4.151.560.492Because I take delight in doing so.[weil ich dabei Spaß habe.]5.101.150.491Because it makes me more alert.[weil ich dann wacher bin.]3.321.720.477Because it makes doing things seem effortless.[weil mir dann vieles lockerer von der Hand geht.]4.401.400.464Because it stimulates me.[weil sie mich animiert.]3.961.630.441Because I can dance to it.[weil ich dazu tanzen kann.]3.532.040.436Because it makes me feel fitter.[weil ich mich dann fitter fühle.]3.371.810.432Because it enables me to work off my aggression.[weil ich dabei meine Aggressionen abreagieren kann.]3.482.020.427Because it takes my mind off things.[weil sie mich auf andere Gedanken bringt.]4.821.270.421Because it provides a pleasant ambience for conversations.[weil sie eine angenehme Atmosphäre beim Gespräch schafft.]3.171.720.416Because music just fits into my life.[weil Musik einfach gut in mein Leben passt.]4.901.370.403Because it fits my sports.[weil es zu meinem Sport passt.]2.622.160.400Because working is easier with music.[weil ich dann besser arbeiten kann.]3.431.830.389Because it helps me fall asleep.[weil sie mir beim Einschlafen hilft.]2.682.030.357Because I can cuddle with my partner.[weil ich mit meinem Partner bzw. meiner Partnerin dabei gut kuscheln kann.]2.501.850.354Because I can sing or hum along.[weil ich dabei mitsingen oder mitsummen kann.]3.911.800.346Because I can try out new movements.[weil ich dann neue Bewegungen ausprobieren kann.]1.831.830.337
Dimension 1, self-awareness; Dimension 2, social relatedness; Dimension 3, arousal and mood regulation.
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