Emotional Responses to Music Genres

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to see how different genres of music elicit positive or negative emotional responses, as well as whether listening to a preferred genre affects their emotional responses. Genres that elicitpositive emotional responses are blues, jazz, rap, hip-hop, soul, funk, electronica, and dance (Cook et al., 2017). Genres that elicit negative emotional responses are blue, jazz, classical, folk, alternative, soundtrack, soul, funk, and death metal (Cook et al., 2017; Thompson et al., 2019). Furthermore, when individuals listen to genres they prefer to listen to, they experience greater positive emotional responses than if they listened to a genre they weren't as fond of(Swaminathan & Schellenberg, 2015).