Perception of basic emotions in clinical improvisations : an experimental study

Recently the Finnish music therapy research has focused on therapy of clients with depression. In music psychology the global interest in felt and perceived emotions in music has been a clear trend for two to three decades. This experimental study shares the interests of both fields by examining perceived emotions in improvised music from music therapy sessions. In the experiment, participants (n=29), who were professional music therapists (n=14) and music therapy students (n=15), were asked to listen to 21 short excerpts from seven improvisations that clients with depression have played in their therapy. Meanwhile or after each excerpt, participants were asked to rate the strength of each basic emotion (joy, sorrow, anger, fear, tenderness) they heard in the excerpts. Some studies suggest perception of most basic emotions being possible in any (non-clinical) music, so it was assumed to be possible to identify basic emotions also in the clinical improvisations. Another hypothesis was that professionals may rate higher the emotions they heard in the excerpts, due to their longer experience in clinical work. The data was analysed mainly quantitatively using IBM SPSS Statistics –software. The results partly supported the set hypotheses: anger appeared to be the easiest emotion to recognize from the improvisations, whereas fear was the most difficult one. Fear was mistakenly rated to be tenderness, joy and sorrow. Also differences between students and professionals occurred, although they were not statistically significant