Intro To Psych Of Music

Front 1

Why do we study psychology of music?

Back 1

Universal: It is found in every known human society.
Ubiquitous: Music plays many important roles in
societies.
Mysterious: Origins and evolutionary advantages (if any) remain unknown.

Front 2

Music and Sexual Selection (Darwin)

Back 2

1. Music, like peacock feathers and animal mating calls, is useful for attracting mates, not for survival.

2. Music evokes emotions; most common: love.
3. Musical skill may imply self-confidence, extroversion, technical and coordination skills
4. Clear, loud singing voice may indicate good health.

Front 3

Music and Natural Selection

Back 3

Music as a social bond:
1. Music influences arousal and mood states; may be useful for defense and attack.
2. In other primates, bonding through grooming; impractical in large groups.
3. Vocalizations may have emerged along with other groups in Homo erectus, began to acquire meaning with Homo sapiens
*Perhaps language and music have a common origin in early vocalizations.*

Front 4

Natural Selection on a smaller scale: Parent-child bonding

Back 4

1. Gestures through vocal, bodily, facial expressions.
2. Meaning (like music/dance) conveyed through timing, intensity, pitch and timbre contours.
3. Such gestures allow pre-language communication between parent and child.
**Lullabies also seem universal**

Front 5

Music and Natural Selection
 Facilitating coordinated movement:

Back 5

 Useful in hunting, herding, rowing, religious and social ceremonies
 But perhaps emphasizes the rhythmic aspect of music too much.

Front 6

Music and Natural Selection: Enhancing cognitive skill

Back 6

Manipulating and perceiving structured sound involves:
 Working memory
 Pattern recognition
 Multimodal coordination

Front 7

Music and Natural Selection
 Affective Engagement

Back 7

 Music as an instantiation of the desire and ability to attune to, represent, and influence the affective states of others.
 Not specific to music
 May include many expressive idioms, including dance, visual arts, and prosody.

Front 8

Exaptation

Back 8

 Consider feathers (insulation) and insect wings (cooling)
 Change in phenotype with no corresponding change in genotype.

Front 9

Rhythm

Back 9

 Motor coordination (speech, action)
 Timing (speech, action)
 Multisensory integration (perception, speech, action)

Front 10

Pitch

Back 10

Contour (speech prosody, pattern recognition)

Front 11

Auditory scene analysis (grouping, segregation):

Back 11

-Any auditory task
-Auditory and visual pattern recognition

Front 12

Non-adaptive Accounts

Back 12

1. Rhythm

2. Pitch

3. Auditory scene analysis

Front 13

“Auditory Cheesecake”

Back 13

-Music as human technology, designed to activate and challenge multiple cognitive functions, thereby producing pleasure.
-“Auditory scene analysis”: Success may induce pleasure, and so music is designed to allow
the auditory system to succeed.
-Clearly audible musical lines within a piece may provide an exaggerated and enhanced simulation of a complex auditory environment

Front 14

Definition of evolutionary adaptation

Back 14

- Distinguish between sexual and natural selection (ie survival or reproductive benefits)
- Indications of trait as an evolutionary adaptation: Ancient and persistent; innate; universal; modular (specific genes and/or brain functions)

Front 15

Possible theories of music as an evolutionary adaptation

Back 15

- Musical prowess as an indication of sexual fitness
- Group bonding, social “grooming” through vocalizations (proto musi-language)
- “Affective engagement” ability to attune to and influence others’ affective states. (Not unique to
music.)

Front 16

Music has some commonalites with

Back 16

1. Speech
2. Animal calls
3. Bird song

Front 17

Both language and music operate on the “particulate principle”:

Back 17

finite elements combine to form many more, and more complex, higher-level forms

Front 18

Reasons against music as an evolutionary adaptation

Back 18

- “Auditory cheesecake”, stimulating cognitive and neural facilities that are designed for other
purposes (like recreational drugs).
- No clear survival benefit but may build upon things that have evolutionary value—exaptation.
- Sexual dimorphism: unlike other species, music does not seem to be unique to one gender (like
brightly colored male birds, etc).