Generalisability and Bifurcation of Music Associated with Experiences of Awe

Awe is an interesting and powerful multivalenced emotion that is relatively unexplored through empirical research in music psychology. A seminal psychology paper exploring awe suggests that music meets the appraisal requirements to produce the state of awe (Keltner & Haidt, 2003). However, these experiences may vary greatly between individuals. This study investigates the music facilitating these experiences and whether it is recognisable and categorisable by a wider population as relating to states of awe. By conceptualising awe as a response to the sublime (Konenčni, 2005), we hypothesise that music related to these states of awe should be categorisable into two to domains based on valence. To test this hypothesis an online experiment was carried out (N = 80) in which participants listened to music excerpts that were previously reported to induce awe and rated the appropriateness of two images, the aroura borealis and a supercell thunderstorm. These images implicitly conveyed positive and negative valences, respectively, through their subject matter (Gordon et al., 2017). Results showed that that participants associated the music into two distinct image and valence categories, and that the overlap between associations of the two images was generally insignificant. These findings suggest that there is a recognisable subset of music involved in producing awe that can be generalisable in a way that larger populations share similar evaluations of the music. This does not describe all instances of musical awe, but it does suggest that these two valence categories constitute a broad perceptual division in experiences and our understanding of musical awe. Continuing studies are currently underway to further investigate emotional terms and additional appraisal criteria associated with this bifurcation.

Keywords: emotion, cross-modal, musical awe