Dissonant music brings out the animal in listeners

  • Context: Medical 
  • Thread starter Thread starter zoobyshoe
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Animal Music
Click For Summary

Discussion Overview

The discussion centers on the emotional and psychological effects of dissonant music, particularly in relation to animal distress calls and human responses. It explores the mechanisms behind why certain types of music evoke strong reactions, referencing research findings and personal interpretations of music in film contexts.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Technical explanation
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants suggest that dissonant music evokes strong emotional responses due to its similarity to animal distress calls, as noted by researchers from UCLA.
  • Others propose an evolutionary perspective, arguing that individuals who reacted to distress calls may have had survival advantages, leading to a predisposition to respond to such sounds.
  • One participant raises the idea that the emotional impact of music may be influenced by pre-conditioning to specific genres, particularly when paired with evocative imagery.
  • Another participant notes that when dissonant music is paired with non-evocative visuals, its emotional impact is significantly diminished, although the negative emotional content remains.
  • There is a mention of cognitive dissonance in relation to musical dissonance, indicating a distinction between different types of dissonance experienced in music and thought.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express varying viewpoints on the reasons behind the emotional effects of dissonant music, with no consensus reached on the underlying mechanisms or the implications of the research findings.

Contextual Notes

Some discussions highlight the limitations of the studies referenced, such as the dependence on specific visual pairings and the potential influence of prior conditioning on participants' reactions to music.

zoobyshoe
Messages
6,514
Reaction score
1,255
"Dissonant music brings out the animal in listeners"

Ever wonder why Jimi Hendrix's rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" moved so many people in 1969 or why the music in the shower scene of "Psycho" still sends chills down your spine?

A UCLA-based team of researchers has isolated some of the ways in which distorted and jarring music is so evocative, and they believe that the mechanisms are closely related to distress calls in animals.

They report their findings in the latest issue of the peer-reviewed scientific journal Biology Letters, which publishes online June 12.

"Music that shares aural characteristics with the vocalizations of distressed animals captures human attention and is uniquely arousing," said Daniel Blumstein, one of the study's authors and chair of the UCLA Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

I don't know about this. Dissonance is effective because it reminds us of animal distress calls, but why are animal distress calls effective? Because they're dissonant, maybe?
 
Biology news on Phys.org


Maybe just because, randomly, people who were bothered by animals distress, ran away from the distress calls, survived, and had children, more often then people who didn't respond at all?
 


Here is the actual article (zoob you forgot the link).

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/dissonant-music-brings-out-the-234656.aspx

I was wondering if the reactions they noted could be the pre-conditioning of the test subjects to certain types of music they relate to certain movie genres, and sure enough, when the music was shown with opposing video, the impact was removed or lessened considerably.

When the music featured distortion, subjects rated it as more exciting than the compositions without distortion. They also were more likely to describe the music as charged with negative emotion.

<snip>

Most of the effects, however, are undermined if the music is paired with unevocative imagery, the researchers found.

In a second study, they paired the same music compositions with 10-second video clips designed to be minimally evocative, showing, for example, people walking or drinking a sip of coffee. The researchers presented the pairings to another group of undergraduates. When the subjects heard the distorted musical pieces in the context of the videos, they did not find the music arousing but they did find the pieces more negative than when they were not paired with the videos.

"The video eliminated how exciting the distorted-sounding music seemed, but it didn't trump the emotional content of the music," Bryant said.
 


Evo said:
(zoob you forgot the link).
DOH! Thanks for locating it.
 


Evo said:
Here is the actual article (zoob you forgot the link).

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/dissonant-music-brings-out-the-234656.aspx

I was wondering if the reactions they noted could be the pre-conditioning of the test subjects to certain types of music they relate to certain movie genres, and sure enough, when the music was shown with opposing video, the impact was removed or lessened considerably.
This brings to mind the (opening movement to) Moonlight Sonata, as played in Crimson Tide. It felt rather eerie.

Tvtropes.org even has a page on this: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SoundtrackDissonance
 


Hurkyl said:
This brings to mind the (opening movement to) Moonlight Sonata, as played in Crimson Tide. It felt rather eerie.

Tvtropes.org even has a page on this: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SoundtrackDissonance
This is a whole different type of dissonance, though. This would be cognitive dissonance as opposed to musical dissonance.