The Relevance of a Conductor Competition for the Study of Emotional Synchronization Within and Between Groups in a Natural Musical Setting

Abstract

Group emotional dynamics are a central concern in the study of human interaction and communication. To study group emotions, the social context of a musical event in natural conditions may overcome several limits of laboratory experiments and could provide a suitable framework. This study aimed to evaluate if cultural events such as a conductor competition could welcome scientific research for the study of group emotional sharing. We led an observational study, which suggests that in this particular context, public, musicians and jury would agree to participate and to wear neurophysiological and physiological devices to monitor their emotional state during the competition. Self-administrated scales showed that, in the context of a musical competition, members of the public felt strong musical emotions such as music chills. Our results suggest that such a specific competition design is a suitable experimental model to lead an experiment under ecological conditions to effectively investigate collective emotional synchronization. In the future, with the implementation of an acquisition system recording synchronous neurophysiological data for a large group of participants, we may be able to highlight mechanisms involved in emotional synchronization in a natural musical setting.

Cortical Patterns of Pleasurable Musical Chills Revealed by High-Density EEG

“…This work is a first step for the study of musical chills using EEG in more ecological paradigms. In future experiments, with the development of wireless mobile EEG systems and coupled with physiological measures, EEG recordings characterizing musical pleasure and musical chills in both social contexts and live conditions would provide a relevant parameter to study emotional synchronization of groups (Chabin et al, 2020).…”

Are the new mobile wireless EEG headsets reliable for the evaluation of musical pleasure?

“…With the development of wireless headsets, fast and easy handling headsets, new perspectives are open for the study of social and affective neurosciences in multi-subject paradigms [ 68 ] in natural or ecological musical settings. The study of group dynamics both with subjective responses and objective neurophysiological devices would provide relevant and as-yet-unknown data about cerebral processing associated with behavior and even feeling/emotions [ 34 , 69 ].…”

“…However, the cerebral synchronization of multiple people in the context of music emotion has never been investigated, and its study should lead to progress in understanding group emotional dynamics. Recording the cerebral activity of several people simultaneously in a natural setting while they are listening to emotional music should partially cover this gap [ 34 ], despite being a very challenging prospect. A previous study assessed the feasibility of such a paradigm in a concert [ 34 ] and suggested a good adherence of the majority of public participants and musicians.…”

“…Recording the cerebral activity of several people simultaneously in a natural setting while they are listening to emotional music should partially cover this gap [ 34 ], despite being a very challenging prospect. A previous study assessed the feasibility of such a paradigm in a concert [ 34 ] and suggested a good adherence of the majority of public participants and musicians. Now, technical constraints and devices should be tested to ensure that musical emotion can be measured by wireless mobile devices with dry or gel-free electrodes.…”

“…This is all the more important for research into musical emotion, in which stimulations and situations need to be as ecological as possible and in which the social aspects of concert settings could greatly influence the emotional experience [33]. To study how musical emotions are shared between people with objective measures of cerebral activity, in natural or ecological conditions, would advance the understanding of the mechanisms underlying musical emotional communication [34][35][36][37]. Several studies have already investigated neural synchronization during social engagement tasks [20] or during interpersonal coordination of musicians [22,24,27].…”