Cross-cultural anger communication in music: Towards a stereotype theory of emotion in music

Abstract

Anger perception in music was investigated to determine if this emotion is cross-culturally decoded. A literature review of studies which investigated anger cross-culturally revealed variance between encoders and decoders. In an attempt to explain this variance, these data were examined using existing cross-cultural theories in music psychology, but each was poor in explaining some of the variance observed. For example, none were able to explain explicitly why anger expressed in Japanese music was poorly decoded by Indian, Japanese, and Swedish listeners. New interpretations of the published data were conducted through Hofstede's cross-cultural dimensions theory and the theory of musical fit. Building on these theories, the Stereotype Theory of Emotion in Music (STEM) was proposed. According to STEM, listeners filter the emotion they perceive according to stereotypes of the encoding culture. For example, Japanese culture is stereotyped as an anger-reticent culture, explaining the low anger decoder ratings for 'anger-encoded' music. STEM suggests that anger perception is culturally influenced by a stereotyping process. The theory predicts that anger will be perceived if the decoding culture has no stereotype associated with the culture the music is believed to be from, leaving the music free to be interpreted through psychophysical or culture-specific cues. STEM presents a new way forward in understanding the cognitive processing of emotion in music.

Negative Emotion Responses to Heavy-Metal and Hip-Hop Music with Positive Lyrics

“…These results are consistent with the STEM predictions (Susino & Schubert, 2017) that music can trigger an automated mental representation of emotion held by the listener about the music genre. Emotion perception was not solely a function of the content of lyrics because if they were, responses would have been the same, regardless of the genre in which the lyrics were presented.…”

“…EXTRA-MUSICAL aspects of music contribute to the perception of emotion in music (Juslin & Västfjäll, 2008). One such aspect is emotional stereotyping of music genres (Susino & Schubert, 2017). Stereotyping refers to a socially-constructed, spontaneous, generalized reaction to a stimulus, and can be applied to emotional associations, such as "all hip-hop music expresses negative emotion".…”

“…The Stereotype Theory of Emotion in Music (STEM, Susino & Schubert, 2017) proposes that listeners can perceive emotion in music based on stereotyped associations held by the listener about the culture in which the music is thought to emanate (i.e., the culture representative of a particular music genre, such as Brazilian culture encoded in bossa-nova music). A listener who has a stereotyped association through the encoding culture of the music will filter out the otherwise intended emotion by the composer or performer and instead identify the music as expressing the stereotyped emotion.…”

Measuring Stereotypes in Music: A Commentary on Susino and Schubert (2019)

“…MUSIC stereotyping can play an influential role in a number of music-related phenomena, including musical judgements and preferences, emotion perception, music education, and music and identity (Dunbar, Kubrin, & Scurich, 2016;Negut & Sârbescu, 2014;Lonsdale & North, 2011;Rentfrow & Gosling, 2007;Susino & Schubert, 2017, 2018. The target paper makes an important contribution by investigating negative emotion stereotyping of music genres.…”

“…Susino and Schubert (2019) discussed their findings within the Stereotype Theory of Emotion in Music (STEM; Susino & Schubert, 2017, 2018, adding a relevant theoretical contribution to the paper. To conclude this commentary, I would like to present an alternative theoretical account for music stereotyping, namely, the Representativeness Heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974).…”