Date of Award

1-1-2015

Language

English

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

College/School/Department

Department of Psychology

Program

Psychology (Masters)

Content Description

1 online resource (ii, 31 pages) : illustrations (some color)

Dissertation/Thesis Chair

Ronald S Friedman

Committee Members

Anna Newheiser

Keywords

emotion, interpersonal, music, preference, sad mood, Music, Music, Influence of, Emotions in music, Sadness in music, Sadness, Grief, Mood (Psychology)

Subject Categories

Psychology

Abstract

In two studies, I examined the effect of induced interpersonal sadness versus non-interpersonal sadness while controlling for intensity. Lee, Andrade, and Palmer (2013) examined this initially by comparing the loss of someone to losing a competition. They found a significant difference in music preference between those induced into interpersonal versus non-interpersonal sadness groups such that those in the interpersonal group reported a stronger preference for mood-congruent, sad music. However, they unintentionally confounded the effects of intensity with the effects of type of sadness. The current study attempted to equate the sadness intensities between the interpersonal and non-interpersonal mood inductions. After equating the intensity of the sadness (interpersonal vs. non-interpersonal), the present studies failed to replicate Lee et al.’s findings (2013, study 3) in that they found no differences in music preferences between the interpersonal versus non-interpersonal sadness groups when they were of equal intensity. However, consistent with Lee et al.’s findings, people in the interpersonal sadness group did show stronger mood-congruent preferences than those in the neutral group in both studies. Therefore, the findings from this study provide some support for the idea that interpersonal sadness creates stronger mood-congruent music preference.

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