When Emotions are Triggered by Single Musical Notes: Revealing the Underlying Factors of Auditory-Emotion Associations

Can emotion be experienced when the auditory sense is stimulated by a single musical note (Q1), and do variables such as musical skills, age, and personality traits have an influence in auditory-emotion associations (Q2) An experiment was conducted, in which 130 participants were asked to listen to single musical notes and rate their experienced emotional state. They also had to rate their musical proficiency, sound sensitivity, strongest learning style, and complete a reduced version of the Big-Five personality test (BFI-10). Results regarding Q1 show a correlation between lower notes and sadness, and higher notes and joy, confirming previous auditory-emotion association research, while presenting new knowledge into how emotion associates with single musical notes. Results regarding Q2 show that musical proficiency (low vs high), learning style (aural vs physical), personality (level of Conscientiousness) had an effect on how participants emotionally experienced single musical notes. The results presented in this study will provide a starting point that can help develop a new auditory-visual framework that uses understandings on emotion, personality and other variables in the development of more personalised human-computer interfaces. This new framework can be used in applications that can help in learning to paint or play an instrument; promoting positive mental health, or exploring new forms of creative expression e.g., writing a song with a paint brush as the instrument or painting a picture with a piano as your brush.