What Your Favorite Songs Can Tell You About The Way Your Brain Works

[oldtimer]

What if your favorite songs tell you your brain doesn't work?

[garyrc]

O.K. when you have a very large group, as in Study 1 (N = 2,178), it is easy to get significance at .05, .01, and beyond, because such large groups make for sensitivity to very small relationships.  The correlations reported in Table 1 are, in fact, rather small.  If you square r to get the amount of variance "explained," and move the decimal point, you get less that 2%.   In intro to research classes, this is what we call "very significant, but not very important."

 

They might have gotten higher correlations if the MUSIC model (adapted from Rentfrow, Goldberg, & Levitin)

was not goofy (IMO), and if the categories were not so overlapping.  The investigators describe Intense as featuring distorted and not relaxing, not romantic, not inspiring attributes, and list as examples rock, punk, heavy metal, and power pop.  It looks like they selected music that, in their opinion, fit them, and then exposed the subjects to the music (reaction to "musical stimuli").  Fine.  I know investigators can operationally define any way they want (hunger = weight of peanuts eaten, in grams), but job one is to make the categories make some sense. The symphonies of Beethoven or Mahler fit the characteristics of the Sophisticated category (e.g. the dynamic, complex, intelligent, and inspiring), but, given the usual definition of the word, Intense also begs for symphonies of Beethoven and Mahler -- if they aren't intense, I don't know what is -- yet they don't have any of the characteristics of the Intense category except (sometimes) "loud," and they are sometimes "not relaxing," which might qualify them for the Intense category, but their ability to bundle up one's emotions and release them cathartically at the end, can be profoundly relaxing.  Overlap.  Complex. That's the nature of the music beast, but maybe someone could come up with better categories.   

 

Those interested in psychology and the arts should check out the arousal-release info in Berlyne's Aesthetics and Psychobiology.  It doesn't deal with music much, but the models probably do apply and would be a good area for future research into music, film, etc.  For the personality connection, the work of Frank Barron is good.  All of this is older research ... why?  Much of the new stuff seems to be very pop psychish.  Maybe there are fewer grants for psych & the arts research today.

Edited August 1, 2015 by garyrc

[minermark]

You lost me just after  "O.K. when you have a very large group"

It's Friday night, just finished machining some parts, break time.

I believe a libation is in order and some tunes.

[Cornman]

When a session of play is in my day, "Pizzing off the neighbors"  is NOT a problem, i think the reason(s) for little contact, is = they have no clue as to who will anser the door, cops expect to see a kid, existing neighbors place me as christopher LLoyd.

 

Reminds me of a night back in about 70-71,, Santa fe N>M> having super with Christopher & a couple of gals.  I am real sure my mind was very simple that night...   Gota lov the Einstein, like P.K. he got too the heart of the matter in only a few words.