Psychoacoustical and psychophysiological correlates of the emotional impact and the perception of music

Sometimes listening to music is accompanied by very pleasurable emotions, such as shivers down the spine or goose pimples, the so-called „chills“. The present thesis considers different aspects of these experiences, in particular, the role of psychoacoustical features, the social backgrounds of participants, and physiological correlates of chills. The emotions reported by participants in real-time while they experienced chills are shown and compared with psychophysiological parameters, such as heart rate and skin conductance. These change in coincidence with chills. The relationship between self-reported chills and the psychophysiological parameters is investigated in detail in this exploratory study. Furthermore, psychoacoustical parameters of the musical excerpts in which chills are experienced, such as loudness and roughness, are discussed. The ability of the participants to rate the potential of music to elicit chills is investigated and some criteria the participants use for such ratings are presented. Additionally, the coherence in participants' emotional ratings of music is analyzed. Lastly, a gender-related effect of music is demonstrated: females experience more chills than males, but also generally tend to give higher ratings than males on all emotional scales.