RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Music and movement share a dynamic structure that supports universal expressions of emotion
JF Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
JO Proc Natl Acad Sci USA
FD National Academy of Sciences
SP 70
OP 75
DO 10.1073/pnas.1209023110
VO 110
IS 1
A1 Sievers, Beau
A1 Polansky, Larry
A1 Casey, Michael
A1 Wheatley, Thalia
YR 2013
UL http://www.pnas.org/content/110/1/70.abstract
AB Music moves us. Its kinetic power is the foundation of human behaviors as diverse as dance, romance, lullabies, and the military march. Despite its significance, the music-movement relationship is poorly understood. We present an empirical method for testing whether music and movement share a common structure that affords equivalent and universal emotional expressions. Our method uses a computer program that can generate matching examples of music and movement from a single set of features: rate, jitter (regularity of rate), direction, step size, and dissonance/visual spikiness. We applied our method in two experiments, one in the United States and another in an isolated tribal village in Cambodia. These experiments revealed three things: (i) each emotion was represented by a unique combination of features, (ii) each combination expressed the same emotion in both music and movement, and (iii) this common structure between music and movement was evident within and across cultures.