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-- A psychological question...

Posted by ShaunLovesHouse on Sep-13-2006 18:31:

A psychological question...

Has anyone ever had the experience of music sound better (i.e. more aesthetically pleasing) in certain situations? For instance today I was walking to my English class listening to Atasco on my iPod. Normally I'd say its a pretty mediocre song - but for some reason at that moment I really enjoyed it. I could also name a few other situtations where this occurs but I'd like to keep the this thread devoid of any vulgarity. So are there any Psychologists/Psych majors here who can explain this? Why would I enjoy music more so in a public setting than just sitting in my room? Or am I the only person whos had this happen?

Posted by Gauss on Sep-13-2006 20:43:

This is maybe slightly offtopic, but it's incredible how music at parties affects people, you just let the music move you and dance like nobody's watching. Really wonderful feeling. And you obviously can't say that for listening to music at home.

Posted by sm44 on Sep-14-2006 01:26:

im about a month off getting a psyc major but guess it could be for a few reasons.

1. the louder the song the better it will sound
2. Sunlight has a positive affect on peoples mood. People deprived of sunlight are usually depressed
3. May have been the mood you were in

From what ive done so far in psyc though there isnt much research about music

it could be anything really

Posted by PETRAN on Sep-14-2006 02:09:

I must agree with the previous poster here and insist on the "mood hypotheses" (lol)...

1) It may not be the place per se but the mood you were into at that specific time of listening. We know from a theory called "Bower's network model" of mood-related-memory, that stronger memories are produced (and recalled) when a stimulus at the time of encoding (learning) is highly congruent (matches) with the individual's mood state. Now your experience was perceptual and not mnemonic. It could be though that your "higher then usual subjectuve enjoyment"(pleasure of aesthetics in your words) had resulted from the increased emotional correlation between perception of music and your specific (at that time) mood (emotional) state. As a result this resulted in a stronger memory-trace (which had ended in discussing your vivid experience here in TA!).

Furthermore, the whole system is dynamic. Your mood state matched the perceived emotional value of the music which in turn may had resulted in more enjoyment and therefore in the increasing of your "mood state" which again had increased the perceived aesthetic value of the music, a process which is usually refered to as a "positive feedback loop" or in Bower's words "spreading of activation", which in some situations (and depending on the person) may result, in bursts of tears (for melancholic music) or in bursts of hedonistic delirium! (for happy music).

2) Walking down the street is a highly varied experience in relation to just sitting in your room. As a result a person is continuously bombarded with various stimuli (from visual, to the feeling of the air and temperature in your skin)which dynamically probe the stream-of-consciousness in various ways and create more "Subjective experiences" at a given time. This "varied experience" may in turn somehow (well, this is not as scientific as the previous one, lol) result in an increase of the perceived aesthetic qualities of sound. Some of the environmental cues that may had an effect, could have been (as the previous poster said), the sunlight, the clouds, the colour of the sky, other people walking down the street etc etc. In the end of the day, it was your mood (emotional) state that was affected though IMO...

Posted by SYSTEM-J on Sep-14-2006 02:15:

I think a lot of things affect how good a piece of music sounds. Obviously your mood is crucial: listening an angry song when you're pissed off sounds unbelievably good- giving you a real lift where you feel the track so much more, where as when you're cheerful it doesn't have the same effect.

Another thing is what you're looking at. This is particularly true with evocative music. An example is BT's ESCM. Listening to it at my PC, in a fairly dull room looking at a screen of text... it's a pretty good album. But I remember waking up early one morning in winter and taking the dog a walk. The entire countryside was covered in white frost and every puddle was frozen. The sun was bright and it was a bit misty. I took ESCM on my walkman and it sounded painfully good. The best album you'd ever heard. A beautiful backdrop really enhances an album like that which thrives on the soundscape appearing big and rich.

I suppose this is obvious: all music is composed with a mood and (usually) a setting in mind, no matter how vague. The liner notes for ESCM say Firewater was "recorded in three feet of snow". BT knew what backdrop that music needed.

Posted by Allied Nations on Sep-14-2006 02:20:

Right place, right time.

That's what I live and DJ by.

Posted by Polt on Sep-14-2006 03:45:

I agree on this one. Many times I wil llisten to a song at my pc and skip to the next one because I don't like it. A few months later though, I will be driving in the car and the same song comes on and I fall in love with it.