Journal of Biomusical Engineering
Open Access

Opinion Article

"Music Causes Emotion": A Reasoned Critique

Vladimir J. Konečni^*

Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, USA.

Corresponding Author:

Vladimir J. Konečni
Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, USA
E-mail: vkonecni@ucsd.edu

Received Date: September 29, 2015 Accepted Date: October 05, 2015 Published Date: October 07, 2015

Citation: Konečni VJ (2015) “Music Causes Emotion”: A Reasoned Critique. J Biomusic Eng 3:108. doi:10.4172/2090-2719.1000108

Copyright: © 2015 Konečni VJ. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

The Opinion Article critically comments on the ubiquitous contemporary notion that music causes emotion, which is often expressed, both in scientific articles and in pop culture, with few, if any, qualifications or provisos. This view typically tends to rely on studies executed with less than rigorous methodology and ignores contrary research findings, and the opinions of past and contemporary skeptics among musicians, musicologists, and music psychologists. The prevalence of the notion appears to be related to the unsurpassed commercial dissemination of music (very broadly defined), and to emotivism, a quasi-culturological stance that insists on the insertion of emotion, feeling, and “sensitivity” – often at the expense of reason and narrative evidence – into every segment of human behavior, especially in the arts and the media.