With regard to popular music, love, happiness, and excitement were the highest reported emotions associated with this music genre, as reported by American men and women. Again, gender differences were evident here with women reportedly associating music with emotion more than men. Interesting to note here too, is that race and ethnicity had no effect on the emotions felt by women and men (Wells and Hakanen, 1991). Somewhat contradictory, more recent research into popular music has found that music over the past five decades has become progessively sadder in sound and “emotionally ambiguous”, emphasising mixed emotions (Schellenberg and von Scheve, 2012). With regard to classical music, it is evident from a study looking at the neuroanatomy
