Science of sound: Study reveals how music makes us move and feel

By Isobel Williams via SWNS

Happy music makes you want to dance whereas soulful sounds go straight to the heart no matter what culture you come from, a new study reveals.

Researchers found that emotional music evokes similar bodily sensations across different cultures around the globe.

Happy music makes us want to move our arms and legs, whereas soulful music affects our chest area.

However dissonant, jarring music such as metal or punk evoked aggression.

Music can be felt directly in the body, having the power to activate our autonomic nervous system and even cause shivers down the spine.

Different emotional songs can cause a range of physical sensations in different parts of the human body.

The researchers from the Turku PET Centre in Finland researched both Western and Asian listeners to see what bodily sensations occurred when they were playing music.

To get their results they used an online survey of 1,500 participants, where people rated their emotions and bodily sensations evoked by a range of Western and Asian songs.

The results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that the emotions and bodily sensations evoked by music were similar across Western and Asian listeners.

Research Fellow Dr. Vesa Putkinen said: “Music that evoked different emotions, such as happiness, sadness or fear, caused different bodily sensations in our study.

“For example, happy and danceable music was felt in the arms and legs, while tender and sad music was felt in the chest area.

“Music’s influence on the body is universal. People move to music in all cultures and synchronized postures, movements and vocalizations are a universal sign for affiliation.

“Music may have emerged during the evolution of human species to promote social interaction and sense of community by synchronizing the bodies and emotions of the listeners.”

The researchers also note that certain acoustic features were associated with similar emotions across the participants.

Professor Lauri Nummenmaa from the University of Turku added: “Certain acoustic features of music were associated with similar emotions in both Western and Asian listeners.

“Music with a clear beat was found happy and danceable while dissonance in music was associated with aggressiveness.

“Since these sensations are similar across different cultures, music-induced emotions are likely independent of culture and learning and based on inherited biological mechanisms.”