A Simulation Theory of Musical Expressivity

Abstract

This paper examines the causal basis of our ability to attribute emotions to music, developing and synthesizing the existing arousal, resemblance and persona theories of musical expressivity to do so. The principal claim is that music hijacks the simulation mechanism of the brain, a mechanism which has evolved to detect one's own and other people's emotions.

Notes

¹See Cochrane [unpublished] for a detailed exposition and defence of this view. Note that the perception of the status of the organism is necessary and sufficient for the emotion, though a conceptual appraisal of the situation that triggers the bodily reaction may be considered part of the complete emotional state.

²See Laird 2007 for an extensive review.

³Note that simulation theory has been applied to artistic expression before, most notably by Currie and Ravenscroft 2002 and Currie 2004. Yet the kind of simulation that Currie and Ravenscroft appeal to is based on adopting pretend beliefs and desires, which, when processed by one's own cognitive machinery, output certain emotional states that one can then attribute to the target. This is the kind of empathy that one may engage in when the other person is absent, and is highly suitable for literary presentations.

⁴Later I provide more defence for the claim that music captures the felt sensation of emotions.

⁵Note that since the arousal I identify can take the form of simulated bodily changes or attenuated bodily changes, this view is compatible with the possibility that one have an additional and simultaneous emotional response which one identifies as one's own (e.g. schadenfreude or sympathy). For instance, the other's response may be simulated whilst one's own is realized with actual physiological changes, or different emotional mechanisms may simply be active at the same time. One may then experience a mixed emotional feeling, or one's attention may successively shift from one aspect of the experience to another.

⁶Cf. Storr 1992: 23].

⁷Music also has the capacity to imitate other specific cues such as sighs, tremors, hoarseness, weeping or laughing, though only in a highly stylized way, and as such not particularly accurately.

⁸Davies [forthcoming] has recently connected musical expression to what he calls ‘attentional’ emotional contagion in explaining how people can be aroused by music. Cf. also Robinson 2006: Ch. 13].

⁹Cited in Damasio 2004: 312].

¹⁰Slack 2007.

¹¹Neuroscientists Molnar-Szakacs and Overy 2006 similarly hypothesize that recognizing emotions in music is grounded by the mirror neuron system. However, they focus on mirroring the intentional actions required to produce the movements we perceive in music rather than the more generalized mirroring of bodily patterns (some of which could be generated by deliberate actions).

¹²Cited in Davies 1994: 231–2].

¹³Antonio Damasio also describes experiments where both adults and children spontaneously describe the movements of a chip moving on a screen in emotional terms [Damasio 2000: 70].

¹⁴If one defers to the resemblance between the mask and a real sad face, then one simply pushes the question back to why real faces are expressive of emotion.

¹⁵Cf. Robinson 2006: 309].

¹⁶Davies has said to me that the effects of music due to timbre may simply be another channel to expression. However, there is no clear reason to motivate a distinction like this other than to protect the appearance resemblance theory. Timbre is very closely related to both harmonic texture and dynamics, all of which have an easily discernible resemblance to tactile and proprioceptive feeling. The arguments from intermodality and simulation provide a unified account of resemblance.

¹⁷Vocal timbre similarly conveys a sense of the speaker's body.

¹⁸Cited in Budd 1985: 39]. Budd similarly recognizes the resemblance to the general phenomenology of feeling [1995: 207].

¹⁹Nussbaum 2007: 51–4] discusses this point at length, noting the ‘strong affinity’ between sound and tactile feeling.

²⁰Walton [1997: 78], noting our tendency to experientially separate sounds from their sources, says,

We reify or objectify feelings and sensations, as we do sounds, and we conceptualize them and our relations to them in similar ways. We think of feelings of exuberance or anguish as entities distinct from their sources, and sometimes as leaving their sources and surrounding or entering us. A feeling, like a sound, may come over me. It may permeate my consciousness.

²¹E.g. Cone 1974, Vermazen 1986 and especially Levinson 2005.

²²Kivy 1980: 59] similarly points to a general ‘animating tendency’ to imbue natural objects with human characteristics. As he says, ‘far from being difficult to hear or see things as animate, it is, apparently, difficult not to’.

²³Similarly, where people with Huntington's disease confuse expressions of fear and anger, we should expect them to also confuse music that expresses fear or anger.

²⁴Cf. Trivedi 2001.

²⁵I would like to acknowledge the help I received from Greg Currie, who supervised the PhD from which this article was derived. I'd also like to thank the organizers of and participants in the conference, ‘Aesthetic Psychology’ (Durham University, September 2007) where I presented an earlier version of this paper, as well as two anonymous referees for this journal for their helpful criticisms.