New research shows that people who are good at interpreting other people's emotional states may be better at assessing the emotions conveyed by music.
Humans have been making music for a long time, but it doesn't seem to serve any obvious biological function
One explanation for the evolution of music is that it facilitates social connection.
The study was led by Wallmark and Tabak. The journal Emotion contains their findings.
Wallmark and Tabak looked at people's skill in interpreting others' feelings instead of asking them to assess their own.
They showed participants videos of people talking about emotional events in their lives, as well as clips of piano music that was specially composed to convey an emotional narrative. Participants were asked to identify the emotions being shared, as well as track positive and negative affect over the course of the clips.
The videotaped people's and musicians' responses were compared against those of the participants. The people who were better at tracking the emotions in the videos were more accurate at assessing the emotions conveyed by the music.
Wallmark says that if music evolved to help us navigate our social environment, then we would expect there to be some sort of shared neural processes underlying both.
There is a suggestion that there may be a connection. He and his team are looking at the brain to see if there are any similarities. People with social-cognitive impairments could benefit from the research.
The University of Oregon is located there.
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