This paper explores the role of musical expertise, rumination, and the analytical versus experiential music focus (as a stable processing tendency or an induced processing mode) for the granularity of emotional responses to music (ERM granularity). A total of 316 musicians and nonmusicians volunteered for 3 studies. In Study 1, ERM granularity measured in a musical emotion discrimination task showed a strong positive relationship with musical expertise but not with rumination. In Study 2, the mode of music focus the participants used while listening revealed a modest effect of analytical versus experiential music focus induction procedures. In Study 3, ERM granularity was found to be independent of the temporary analytical versus experiential music focus, systemizing-empathizing, music systemizing–music empathizing, and amateur musical experience; but it was strongly positively associated with musical expertise. This paper demonstrates that ERM granularity is best explained by musical expertise and cannot be accounted for by any general information processing or music processing bias.

The main focus of the paper is the role of listeners’ emotion-relevant characteristics and musical expertise in the granularity of affective responses to music. Another objective of the study is to test the consistency of the granularity of affect that is perceived in music and/or experienced in response to it. In Experiment 1, 91 musicians and nonmusicians listened to musical excerpts and grouped them according to the similarity of the affects they experienced while listening. Finer grouping granularity was found in musicians and high rumination scorers. Male musicians with above-median scores in rumination produced a larger number of clusters than the other male participants. Experiment 2 that engaged 23 participants demonstrated moderate consistency with which listeners grouped affects that they perceived in music and affects they experienced while listening to music. The study suggests that affective responses to music are subject to individual differences in musical expertise and rumination. Affects perceived in music and felt in response to it seem to be categorized with reference to the common principles. However, the cues that are used in such instances of categorization seem to be different. The paper encourages further research on the importance of listeners’ personal characteristics for the affective responses to music.

WE INVESTIGATED THE CONTRIBUTION OF TONAL relationships to the perception of musical ideas and to the feelings of "arousal." Two excerpts of piano sonatas by Beethoven and two atonal variants were used as experimental stimuli. This manipulation destroyed the tonal relationships but preserved both the local and global temporal organization (rhythm and formal). Listeners were asked to indicate the onset of musical ideas, to estimate the arousing properties of the music in a continuous response task, and to rate the similarity of the pieces. A drastic change in the pitch structure strongly affected judgments of similarity. However, it had no effect on the segmentation of musical ideas, nor on the response of arousal. This finding emphasizes the importance of local and global levels of temporal structures on perceptual and emotional judgments, at the cost of the influence of tonal relationships.

The relationship between the listener's temperament and perceived magnitude of tempo and loudness of music was studied using the techniques of magnitude production, magnitude estimation scaling and cross‐modal matching. Four piano pieces were presented at several levels of tempo and loudness. In Study 1, participants adjusted tempo and loudness of music to their subjective level of comfort. In Study 2, participants estimated these parameters on a numerical scale and matched the length of a line segment to the estimates of these musical features. The results showed significant correlations of selected aspects of perceived tempo with perseveration and endurance as well as of selected aspects of perceived loudness with endurance and emotional reactivity. Perceived tempo and loudness, as measured by magnitude production and cross‐modal matching tasks, do not seem to systematically correlate with the six formal characteristics of behaviour distinguished in the most recent version of the Regulative Theory of Temperament (RTT). Additionally, there is some evidence that they are selectively associated with reactivity and activity, the dimensions of a previous version of the RTT. The study extends the methodology of research on music preferences and the stimulatory value of music. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Polish-language adaptation of EQ-Short is linguistically and psychometrically similar to the English original and meets the criteria of a reliable tool for measuring empathy.