The effect of social context on the relationship between music and emotions

Abstract

The research of the association between music and emotions investigates the emotions expressed in a song and those it provokes in the listener. Experimental designs generally lack a social context that controls the emotional origin of the songs. This study operationalizes the memories they evoke as emotional valence. With a sample of 100 individuals and 900 self-reports, the results show how semantic memory attenuates the relationship between valences and emotions. However, in aggregate terms the association remains statistically significant. This conclusion supports the use of surveys given that individual heterogeneity does not suppress the associations between valences and emotions.