Emotional Valence and Vividness of Imagery Predict Aesthetic Appeal in Music

Although prior work indicates that most people find music appealing, it is unclear which characteristics of music most strongly contribute to judgments of its aesthetic appeal. This study sought to examine which of a set of subjective feelings-emotional valence, emotional arousal, and vividness of evoked imagery-best predicted the aesthetic appeal of musical excerpts. A large sample of online participants (N = 300) listened to and rated music from three genres: classical, jazz, and electronics. Listeners rated the musical excerpts on four characteristics: emotional valence, emotional arousal, vividness of evoked imagery. and aesthetic appeal. Linear mixed-effects modeling was conducted to identify the relationships between these characteristics. Results indicated that emotional valence was the strongest predictor of aesthetic appeal. followed by vividness of evoked imagery, and that both showed a positive relationship with aesthetic appeal. Conversely, emotional arousal showed a weak, but negative, relationship with aesthetic appeal. Despite the overall predictive ability of these features across listeners, listeners showed a high level of disagreement as to which pieces they found particularly appealing and vivid (intraclass correlation coefficient values <0.2). In sum, the results presented here indicate that emotional valence and vividness of imagery are strongly related to the aesthetic appeal of music, and highlight the importance of acknowledging individual differences in musical aesthetics.