A Cross-Cultural Investigation of the Perception of Emotion in Music: Psychophysical and Cultural Cues

1999 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura-Lee Balkwill ◽  
William Forde Thompson

Studies of the link between music and emotion have primarily focused on listeners' sensitivity to emotion in the music of their own culture. This sensitivity may reflect listeners' enculturation to the conventions of their culture's tonal system. However, it may also reflect responses to psychophysical dimensions of sound that are independent of musical experience. A model of listeners' perception of emotion in music is proposed in which emotion in music is communicated through a combination of universal and cultural cues. Listeners may rely on either of these cues, or both, to arrive at an understanding of musically expressed emotion. The current study addressed the hypotheses derived from this model using a cross-cultural approach. The following questions were investigated: Can people identify the intended emotion in music from an unfamiliar tonal system? If they can, is their sensitivity to intended emotions associated with perceived changes in psychophysical dimensions of music? Thirty Western listeners rated the degree of joy, sadness, anger, and peace in 12 Hindustani raga excerpts (field recordings obtained in North India). In accordance with the raga-rasa system, each excerpt was intended to convey one of the four moods or "rasas" that corresponded to the four emotions rated by listeners. Listeners also provided ratings of four psychophysical variables: tempo, rhythmic complexity, melodic complexity, and pitch range. Listeners were sensitive to the intended emotion in ragas when that emotion was joy, sadness, or anger. Judgments of emotion were significantly related to judgments of psychophysical dimensions, and, in some cases, to instrument timbre. The findings suggest that listeners are sensitive to musically expressed emotion in an unfamiliar tonal system, and that this sensitivity is facilitated by psychophysical cues.

1987 ◽  
Vol 151 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. N. Wig ◽  
D. K. Menon ◽  
H. Bedi ◽  
A. Ghosh ◽  
L. Kuipers ◽  
...  

A bilingual rater was trained in English in a technique of assessing relatives emotional attitudes to patients, and was then required to rate material in Hindi without any further experience. This strategy revealed that the rating of critical comments, hostility and positive remarks could be transferred from English to Hindi without distortion. There were problems with the remaining two scales, over-involvement and warmth, but these were due to technical issues connected with rating and not to cross-cultural distortion.


2011 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandrine Ballester ◽  
Fatima Chatri ◽  
Maria Teresa Muñoz Sastre ◽  
Sheila Rivière ◽  
Etienne Mullet

The structure of the motives invoked by people for forgiveness and for unforgiveness was assessed, and the relationships between these motives and demographic characteristics, conceptualizations of forgiveness, forgivingness, personality and culture were examined. Forgiveness appeared to be fueled mainly by three largely independent kinds of motives: having recovered sympathy for a repentant offender, applying a moral principle and preserving a meaningful relationship. Forgiveness may sometimes, however, amount to exploiting the offense for dominating or for challenging the offender as well as others. Unforgiveness appeared to be fueled mainly by persistent anger and indignation, sometimes associated with the desire for self-affirmation and self-protection, and, for a few participants, it was the only response to outgroup members. For each kind of invoked motive a meaningful pattern of relationships with the other measurements, including culture, was found.


Author(s):  
Natalia P Dichek ◽  
Igor M Kopotun ◽  
Svitlana M Shevchenko ◽  
Natalia B Antonets ◽  
Daria V Pohribna

High-quality interaction on a personal or educational, professional level is possible in today’s world only through enhanced cultural exchange. It is based on the principles of intercultural tolerance and mutual enrichment. The cross-cultural identity of a student’s personality provides for psychological openness to interact with other cultures without losing one’s own national or ethnic identity. Evidence of the effective application of the cross-cultural approach in the education of schoolchildren is the high-level cross-cultural competence (CCС). Aims. The aim of the study is a comprehensive analysis of the implementation of a cross-cultural approach to the organization of the educational process in senior school. Methods: general scientific method, molding experiment, qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data obtained through diagnostic methodic of the experiment, statistical and mathematical interpretation of empirical data and their representation in the visual (table, diagrams) form, functional analysis of the data (while generalizing empirical data and making conclusions). Results. Effective, complex (multicomponent) models of primary (input) and secondary (output) diagnostics of CCC were developed. A model of an integrated school environment aimed at intensifying the CCC was also defined. Secondary diagnostics revealed a tendency to improve CCC in both groups. However, the percentage increase in the level of CCC was 4 times greater in the experimental group, than the level of the control group (+ 4.3% vs. + 17.8%, respectively). The mean values of CCC in the experimental group were confidently at a Good Level (85.7%), that is improved by one order. CCC in the control group was detected at 73.0% (within the Sufficient Level of CCC). The relationship between the level of CCC and the level of foreign language proficiency is proved: CCC is higher in respondents with higher academic achievements in foreign languages. Conclusions. The implementation of a cross-cultural approach to the curricula of school-age children requires close attention of scholars and qualified practical support by the staff of the school. It is advisable to implement a cross-cultural approach in the context of modern schooling through the tactics of facilitation and multicultural modelling. The modern information age opens new horizons for the implementation of the cross-cultural approach in modern schools. Prospects. Further research on the topic involve the effectiveness of integrated learning tactics to increase CCC at other levels of school education, taking into account the variability of the interdisciplinary component (for example, involving also potential of Geography to develop and impove CCC).


2018 ◽  
Vol 125 ◽  
pp. 126-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony A. Volk ◽  
Katerina Schiralli ◽  
Xiaoyang Xia ◽  
Junru Zhao ◽  
Andrew V. Dane

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Kostina ◽  
Svetlana Khoroshilova

"The main idea of modern education is to build competences as a produce of university educational process. One of the most important competences of intending teachers to be built is mobility competence, which is a component of professional pedagogical competence. We believe, to train a mobile teacher is possible within a purposefully created cross-cultural educational university environment, where the designed technology of developing intending teachers’ academic mobility based on the cross-cultural approach is implemented. The empirical methods of the research are represented by observation, interlocution, interview, questioning, testing, expert review, generalization of independent data, pedagogical experiment, and mathematical statistics. To estimate the readiness of intending teachers for academic mobility under the conditions of cross-cultural educational environment, four levels of readiness are offered: optimal (high), admissible (middle), critical (low), and inadmissible (not ready). To determine the level, we have developed three criteria (cognitive, motivational-valuable, acting-reflective) and their indicators. At the motivating stage of the pedagogical experiment we conducted surveys of different respondent groups (random sample including online format, 1261 respondents) with the help of the questionnaires we had developed. The received data were used in the training course “Teaching a foreign language through the culture of native speakers”, which contributed to the building of mobility competence of intending teachers. At the monitoring stage of our experimental education the comparison of the results of the incoming and outgoing assessment according to the developed criteria and indicators showed significant growth of the students’ readiness for academic mobility, which allows us concluding that the designed technology of developing academic mobility based on the cross-cultural approach is effective in building mobility competence of intending teachers."


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