Emptying Rooms: When the Inverted-U Model of Preference Fails—An Investigation Using Music With Collative Extremes

Abstract

Daniel Berlyne's inverted-U model remains a simple, well-supported explanation of music preference as a function of collative variables. However, after reviewing the literature, we identified a gap in studies examining preference for music exhibiting collative variable levels that were classified as extreme. A small number of studies using examples of extreme music suggested a floor-effect for preference, where preference ratings remained at near the minimum for subsequent exposures. To further investigate this, we tracked preference ratings for two music stimuli over three weekly exposures: One stimulus deemed as an example of extreme music, and a second stimulus deemed as moderately unusual. The moderately unusual stimulus produced results compatible with the inverted-U model, whereas the extreme stimulus did not. In addition, a substantial percentage (32%) of individual preference trajectories for the extreme stimulus outlined a floor-effect. We conclude that the inverted-U might break down for extreme music.

Psycho-Historical Contextualization for Music and Visual Works: A Literature Review and Comparison Between Artistic Mediums

“…A small amount of research currently exists suggesting that listeners may respond to extreme music in a notably different manner compared to “typical” styles of music. For example, while subsequent exposures to typical music stimuli will tend to produce an increase in appreciation at some point, as the first “segment” of an overall inverted-U trajectory (Heyduk, 1975; Chmiel and Schubert, 2017), in cases where the music exhibits “extreme” 3 properties (subjectively, to the listener), this overall inverted-U trajectory appears to become less apparent (for a review, see Chmiel and Schubert, 2018a,b). While there are only a few cases in the literature examining aesthetic responses to examples of extreme music, in such cases music appreciation appears to produce a floor-effect in which it remains at or close to the minimum rating, regardless of the number of subsequent exposures (e.g., Downey and Knapp, 1927; Hargreaves, 1984).…”

“… 3 We refer to the “abstractness” of the stimuli as “unusualness,” being a proposed collative variable (see Chmiel and Schubert, 2018a,b). …”

Unusualness as a predictor of music preference

“…Alternatively, they used highly artificial tone sequences explicitly designed to test theories of music preference (that is, stimuli lacking in ecological credibility). Apart from these, only a handful of studies have investigated music that could be considered "ecologically realistic" but unusual, and even fewer have used music that could be considered extreme cases (Chmiel & Schubert, 2017b). A conceptual problem exists in that the typical, accessible styles of music generally used in aesthetic studies (such as those mentioned above) should only produce a small range of a collative variable such as complexity (North & Hargreaves, 2000a).…”

“…Additionally, music belonging to a culture that the listener is not familiar with may produce a similar result; For a Western listener, elements such as wide vibrato, large glissandi, radical tonal changes, and the presence of a foreign language might be perceived as contextually extreme. For further discussion on this, see Chmiel and Schubert (2017b). In Berlyne’s conceptualisation we would assume “extreme music” to refer to any example of music that produces an extremely high perception of the collative variable complexity.…”

“…Extreme music is a particularly interesting area of aesthetics because it appears to challenge the robustness of the inverted-U preference path that is found in the literature as a general function of exposure (Chmiel & Schubert, 2017b). Rather, the few studies using extreme stimuli seem to suggest a floor-effect trend of preference, in which preference ratings remain at or close to the minimal rating regardless of subsequent exposures, counter to the predictions of the inverted-U model.…”