Digital Commons Network^™

Do You Chill When I Chill? Exploring Strong Emotional Responses To Unfamiliar Musical Traditions, Eleonora Judith Beier

Senior Projects Spring 2016

While research suggests that listeners from diverse cultural backgrounds can infer what mood is expressed in a piece from a different culture, no study to date has assessed whether peak emotional responses can also be induced cross-culturally. The chill response in particular has been defined as a sudden increase in emotional arousal elicited by a passage in music. This study addressed the question of whether listeners could experience chills for traditional Chinese music – with which they were either familiar or unfamiliar – as well as for Western classical music – with which all participants were familiar. Chills were measured …