Relaxed and connected: Insights into the emotional–motivational constituents of musical pleasure

Abstract

Music is a source of daily pleasure, and positive emotional experiences and rewarding functions of music have been actively studied. Yet, knowledge about the interrelatedness of emotional and motivational constituents of musical pleasure is sparse. This study explored the characteristic emotional contents of music-induced pleasure, their relation to motivations for music and whether the underlying dimensionality of these aspects was specific to music (in comparison to the visual domain). Data were collected through an online questionnaire (N = 464), measuring evoked emotions and motivational pleasure types that the respondents related to a musical piece or a visual object inducing pleasure in their daily life. Exploratory factor analyses indicated six-factor models for evoked emotions and three-factor models for pleasure types and regression analyses about their interrelatedness suggested an underlying two-dimensional conceptualization: On one hand, musical pleasure stems from music-induced sensations of relaxation, power, and passion. On the other hand, musical pleasure centers on the feeling of kinship relating to social values and mental contemplation. Minor domain-specificity of this constitution of pleasure in comparison to the visual domain was observed. Overall, the study provides novel perspectives for understanding the complex emotional–motivational features directing individuals’ daily engagement with music listening.

Keywords

emotions engagement music pleasure visuality

Background: The differing pleasures of engaging with music

The ubiquity of music in everyday life and contemporary culture is characterized by induced pleasure, entertainment, and positive emotions. While music-induced emotions (Juslin & Laukka, 2004; Zentner & Scherer, 2008) and the everyday musical rewards (Mas-Herrero, Marco-Pallares, Lorenzo-Seva, Zatorre, & Rodriguez-Fornells, 2013) and functions (Laiho, 2004; Schäfer, Sedlmeier, Städtler, & Huron, 2013) have been actively researched, the interrelatedness of these facets is yet to be elaborated. To comprehensively understand how musical pleasure is constituted in people’s experiences of daily life we need to understand both the related emotions and the underlying motivations. The current study therefore addresses the interrelatedness of the emotional–motivational constituents of musical pleasure,

Prior research shows that the experience of music engagement is dominated by a variety of pleasurable emotions such as happiness, elation, relaxation, calmness, tenderness, and contentment (Juslin & Laukka, 2004; Juslin, Liljeström, Västfjäll, Barradas, & Silva, 2008; Maksimainen & Saarikallio, 2015), further including aesthetically-nuanced experiences such as beauty (Istók et al., 2009), and more refined experiences such as amazement, longing, sensuality, power, or transcendence (Zentner & Scherer, 2008). Yet, while pleasurable affect has been identified as an intrinsic feature of music engagement, is it is still not clear how musical pleasure is constructed in people’s minds, which particular emotional concepts it typically consists of, and how the emotions are connected to the underlying motivational factors.

Pleasure is grounded in fundamental psycho–physiological mechanisms of reward and motivation. Rewarding stimuli, such as food, sex, or drugs evoke pleasurable emotions and thus activate the neural systems related to motivation/reward, emotional, and arousal processes (e.g., Breiter et al., 1997; Gendolla & Krüsken, 2001; Lane, Reiman, Ahern, Schwartz, & Davidson, 1997; Rolls, Hornak, Wade, & McGrath, 1994; Wheeler, Davidson, & Tomarken, 1993; Zald & Pardo, 1997). Berridge & Kringelbach (2008) separated different types of pleasure into the basic (sensory and social), and higher-order pleasures (monetary, artistic, altruistic, musical, and transcendent), generally considering music and other arts as a source of the latter. Meanwhile, music researchers have postulated that affective experiences of music intrinsically involve immediate sensory processes together with cognitive and evaluative processes (Brattico & Pearce, 2013; Juslin, 2013; Juslin & Västfjäll, 2008). Music broadly activates the reward/motivation circuitry, including the ventral striatum, dorsomedial midbrain, amygdala, hippocampus, nucleus accumbens, hypothalamus, insula, cingulate cortex, and orbitofrontal cortex (Blood & Zatorre, 2001; Koelsch, 2014; Koelsch & Skouras, 2014). Furthermore, increased levels of dopamine release from striatum while listening to pleasurable music are observed to interact with the cortical mechanisms involved in the perception and valuation of musical stimuli (Zatorre, 2015). Overall, previous studies indicate that brain mechanisms related to higher abstract pleasures, including aesthetic enjoyment, largely overlap with those related to more basic sensory pleasures (DiDio & Gallese, 2009).

These observations—self-reports suggesting that music engagement induces pleasurable emotions from relaxation to transcendence, and neurophysiological evidence indicating mutual presence of basic and higher-order processes—coincide with a shift in the contextual focus in art research. While emotional responses to music, and also other arts, have traditionally been researched in the context of canonized art, recent approaches have emphasized the relevance of daily contexts (Sloboda, Lamont, & Greasley, 2009), and subjective–contextual factors (Roseman & Evdokas, 2004; Roseman & Smith, 2001) involved in the responses. Music and other arts are actively integrated into everyday life, and music in particular is actively used for everyday affect-regulatory goals (Baltazar & Saarikallio, 2016; Chin & Rickard, 2013; Randall, Rickard, & Vella-Brodrick, 2014; Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007; Van Goethem & Sloboda, 2011; Van den Tol & Edwards, 2014). Contemporary understanding of emotional experience of music thus requires integration of everyday motivational elements to its conceptualization.

One example of a recent measure for assessing everyday musical rewards is the Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire (BMRQ), which consists of five aspects relevant for music engagement: Musical Seeking, Emotion Evocation, Mood Regulation, Social Reward, and Sensory-Motor (Mas-Herrero et al., 2013). Other conceptualizations about the psychological motivations underlying music engagement list factors such as Arousal and Mood Regulation, Self-awareness, and Social Relatedness (Schäfer et al., 2013) or Interpersonal relationships, Identity, Agency, and Emotions (Laiho, 2004). A core problem of many of these accounts is that they typically separate emotional aspects into a factor of their own, while, in fact, emotions are likely to be an intrinsic component of all motivational factors. Outside music research, the concept of reward or the motivational basis of pleasure has been, for instance, discussed in Lionel Tiger’s Four Pleasure Model (Tiger, 1992). Tiger’s model approaches pleasure from an anthropological stance, through its role in evolution and survival, distinguishing between Socio-, Psycho-, Ideo-, and Physio-pleasure. Socio-pleasure derives from social belonging and social self-identification. Psycho-pleasure deals with cognition and knowledge that derives from satisfying the intellect, discovery, and understanding. Ideo-pleasure is linked to ideological, cultural, religious, aesthetic, or other ideals that determine the pleasure an object brings. Finally, Physio-pleasure is constituted of sensations of touching, seeing, hearing, smelling, or tasting an object. The Four Pleasure Model has been criticized for not being a concrete theory of pleasure (e.g., Jordan, 2003), but it captures many of the core elements of both sensory and higher-order pleasures discussed by other researchers (e.g., Berridge & Kringelbach, 2008). Additionally, and in contrast to many music-specific models, it does not separate emotions as a motivation of their own. Tiger’s conceptualization thus provides a conceptually coherent framework for exploring the motivational structure of art-induced pleasure in terms of connecting such motivations to evoked emotions.

Overall, research shows that music evokes strongly pleasurable experiences, the underlying rewards of which range from cognitive–aesthetic appreciation to sensory embodiment and social reward. The most widely known framework of musical emotion induction, the BRECVEMA (Juslin, 2013; Juslin & Västfjäll, 2008) notes that musical emotions are evoked by mechanisms that range from sensory-embodied processes (brain stem reflexes, rhythmic entrainment) to higher-order evaluations (memories, aesthetic appreciation). Thus, there is an emerging meta-level consensus that musical emotions and rewards are being grounded in a wide set of mechanisms. Yet, there is a lack of detailed understanding of how musical pleasure specifically constitutes particular emotions and motivations. There also is little knowledge of whether the emotional–motivational constitution of pleasure is specific just for music, or profoundly shared with other forms of art.

Objective

The current study focused on the concept of musical pleasure (e.g., instead of emotion) and the overall objective was to advance knowledge on its emotional–motivational constitution. The empirical work was based on participants’ self-selected stimuli (music or visual) that they considered pleasure inducing and personally significant. The study contained three research questions, which are listed below with related hypotheses.

What are the characteristic emotions pleasure is constituted of? Here, we expected musical pleasure to contain similar emotions to those identified as typical for music engagement in general (e.g., happiness, relaxation, tenderness—Juslin & Laukka, 2004; Zentner & Scherer, 2008). Due to the focus on pleasure, the presence of negative emotions was expected to be notably low. Further, due to the focus on pleasure, we expected prominent occurrence of emotions reflective of reward experiences (e.g., feeling of empathy—social reward; Mas-Herrero, et al., 2013).

How does emotional content relate to motivational content? As our second research question we wanted to understand how the particular emotional content of pleasure relates to the underlying motivational aspects, and thus explored connections between the observed emotions and the pleasure types proposed by Tiger (1992). We expected that emotions evoked by music would reflect the underlying motivations, i.e., feelings of empathy would relate to socio-pleasure, but due to the lack of prior research the investigation was kept mostly exploratory in nature.

Does the emotional–motivational constitution of musical pleasure have a similarity with visual pleasure? Finally, the specificity of this constitution to music was explored through comparison with the visual domain, This part of the study was kept purely exploratory in nature, because there is little prior research comparing the pleasure and reward experiences in musical and visual domains (Tiihonen, Brattico, Maksimainen, Wikgren, & Saarikallio, 2017).

Method

Participants

A sample of 464 participants was used for the current study, with ages ranging from 18 to 82 years (M = 39.9 years, SD = 13.8). The sample was predominantly female (78.9%; 19.2% male; 1.9% Other) and highly educated, with a majority of participants reporting a university graduate degree as their highest level of education (14.4% high school examination; 8.6% polytechnic; 10.8% bachelor’s degree; 39.9% master’s degree; 19.6% PhD or doctorate). The overall sample was divided into two groups, which were self-selected on the basis of reporting either musical (n = 228; 49.1%) or visual (n = 236; 50.9%) pleasure-inducing stimuli. There were no major differences in demographic features between the groups, except for those who selected to report musical stimuli being slightly younger (M = 36.5 years, SD = 12.7) and more likely to be male (56; 24.6%) than those who selected visual stimuli (M = 43.1 years, SD = 14.1; 33 males; 14.0%). Less than a quarter of each group had received art-related training: within the music group, 16.7% had received musical training (6.8% in the visual group), and 24.2% of the visual group had received training in visual culture or art (11.0% in the music group). Thus, the sample was representative of young adults who were generally relatively highly educated but laymen regarding music and art education. Participants were recruited though Finnish Universities’ mailing lists and social media. Participation was voluntary and participants were not given any incentives.

Procedure

Measures were presented through a semi-structured online questionnaire, accessed and responded to by participants using their personal computing devices. Participants selected one object they considered to induce pleasure and hold personal significance in their daily life. The object could be either musical (a specific song) or visual (a specific object or wider visual environment). Only one object was chosen to facilitate participant recruitment through the study’s shortness and focus on personally preferred content. The musical material consisted typically of music pieces within the genres pop (19%, n = 43), classical music (18%, n = 41), rock (15%, n = 33), and alternative/indie (11%, n = 25), with the rest of selections spread into small percentiles across a variety of genres. The most commonly chosen option within visual material was natural environment (27%, n = 66), followed by artwork/art object (21%, n = 52), built environment (19%, n = 45), and picture (15%, n = 36).

Measures

The measures assessed the emotional–motivational content of pleasure evoked by the chosen object. Measures were presented in the native language of the respondents (Finnish), and for reporting the results terms were translated from Finnish to English using back-translation.

The first set of measures concerned emotions evoked by the object. Ratings for 66 different emotion terms were provided on a seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = Not at all to 7 = Extremely, for assessing the strength of experiencing each emotion. The selection of emotion terms was influenced by a variety of research traditions and approaches in music and art-related emotion research (e.g., Juslin & Laukka, 2004; Russell, 1994; Silvia, 2005; Zentner & Scherer, 2008), including the content of pertinent models, yet without being restricted to any particular pre-identified model. The complete list of the 66 emotion terms is presented in Appendix 1 (see the online supplement). The selection of emotion terms was purposefully kept broad in scope, due to the limited amount of prior research conducted simultaneously on musical and visual modalities: items that were considered even potentially relevant for one or the other modality were included in the preliminary list. However, prior to any statistical analyses, all items with a score of less than 2 on the seven-point scale were removed, separately for musical and visual objects. This was done to withdraw the redundant items that were clearly not illustrative of the emotional content of pleasure in a given modality. Additionally, their low scores would have likely resulted in them grouping into a factor in subsequent factor analyses simply due to the similarly skewed scores, regardless of conceptual similarity or difference. This resulted in the removal of 7 of the 66 items for musical objects, and 14 of the 66 items for visual objects. The retained items for each modality are marked in Appendix 1.

The second set of measures concerned the motivational constitution of pleasure, and assessment was conducted through items that were formulated using Tiger’s Four Pleasure model as a framework (Tiger, 1992). For each of the four pleasure types, consisting of Socio-, Psycho-, Ideo-, and Physio-pleasure, three items were formulated in order to capture the essence of the pleasure type, with a particular consideration that the item would apply to both music and visual objects. The items were developed as an iterative process of item formulation, critical discussion, and reflective, theory-guided evaluation conducted mutually by the first and second author. Disambiguation, theory-correspondence, and cross-modal applicability were used as the guiding principles for the item construction and selection procedure. For example, a statement measuring Socio-pleasure would be: “The object is socially important,” a statement for Psycho-pleasure would be: “It is intellectually fascinating,” a statement for Ideo-pleasure would be “It represents values or an ideology I consider important,” and a statement for Physio-pleasure would be: “I consider its physical features (e.g., shapes, materials, color, melody, rhythm) pleasant.” The complete list of items is presented in Appendix 2 (see online supplement). Agreement regarding each claim was rated on a seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = Not true at all to 7 = Holds true completely.

Statistical analyses

Analyses were conducted to explore the structural constitution of emotional and motivational components, and relationships between these. All analyses were performed using Mplus software, v. 7.4 (Muthén & Muthén, 2015). In order to reduce the dimensionality of the data, both the evoked emotion terms and the pleasure type items were first subjected to exploratory factor analyses (EFAs), separately for musical and visual data sets. All EFAs were performed using maximum likelihood parameter estimates, and Geomin oblique rotation (Browne, 2001; Yates, 1987). Parallel analyses with 50 random data sets were employed to determine the optimum number of factors for each EFA. To further determine how the evoked emotions were related to the pleasure types, a linear regression analysis was performed between the factors of each, using maximum likelihood estimation.

Results

Emotional contents of musical pleasure

In order to focus on terms genuinely reflective of the pleasure experience, the extremely low scoring emotions (mean score below 2 on a scale from 1 to 7) were removed. In music, the list of the removed emotions consisted of aggression, anger, cynicism, hatred, rage, toughness, and trepidation, demonstrating that aggression generally was not considered as a constituent of musical pleasure. All other emotions were retained for further analyses, and subjected to EFA for dimensionality reduction.

Parallel analysis with random data indicated a six-factor model as having the most appropriate fit. This model produced an estimated root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) of .075, and a standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) of .042. The six observed evoked emotion factors were labelled: Joy, Relaxation, Kinship, Suffering, Power, and Passion. Items with high loadings (above .50) on their respective factor were retained and used for calculating mean factor scores. The mean factor scores for each factor and the Geomin rotated loadings for the six-factor model of musical evoked emotions can be seen in Table 1. Also shown in the table are the factor determinacies, which indicate how well the factor was measured (from 0 to 1, with 1 being the best value). The highest scoring factor was Relaxation, which received high loadings from easygoingness, relaxation, tranquility, enjoyment, calmness, and agreeableness. The second highest scoring factor was Power, which received high loadings from self-determination, independence, daring, freedom, strength, empowerment, rebelliousness, and unconstrained feeling. The third highest scoring factor was Joy, which received high loadings from elation, hilarity, joy, enthusiasm, cheerfulness, energetic, exuberance, and positivity. The fourth highest scoring factor was Kinship, which received high loadings from feeling of kinship, empathy, security, humbleness, comforting, communality, tenderness, fondness, and love. Two of the lower scoring factors were Passion and Suffering. Passion received high loadings form eroticism, sexiness, romanticism, and passion. Suffering was reflective of gloominess, suffering, sorrow, dejection, anxiety, and agony.

Table 1.

Geomin rotated loadings for musically evoked emotions.

Evoked emotion	Factor 1	Factor 2	Factor 3	Factor 4	Factor 5	Factor 6
Evoked emotion	Joy	Relaxation	Kinship	Suffering	Power	Passion
Elation	.735				.154	.183
Hilarity	.734					.127
Joy	.722		.182
Enthusiasm	.676	.180			.150
Cheerfulness	.642	.319		−.182
Energetic	.608				.403
Exuberance	.596				.328
Positivity	.528	.196	.224	−.292
Easygoingness		.826
Relaxation		.785
Tranquility		.614	.320
Enjoyment		.588			.183	.214
Calmness		.570	.394
Agreeableness	.243	.534	.180
Feeling of kinship	.392	−.327	.690
Empathy			.661			−.137
Security			.630	−.245
Humbleness			.617
Comforting	−.206		.595		.138
Communality	.429	−.274	.583
Tenderness			.574		−.181	.408
Fondness			.546			.310
Love			.528	−.267		.394
Gloominess			−.150	.803
Suffering		−.154		.764
Sorrow				.732	−.246
Dejection	−.324			.618
Anxiety		−.253		.617	−.125
Agony	−.182	−.215		.578
Self-determination					.893
Independence					.845
Daring		−.164	.161		.717
Freedom		.175		−.186	.651
Strength					.638
Empowerment			.222	−.149	.629
Rebelliousness		−.270			.626
Unconstrained feeling		.204			.594
Eroticism						.811
Sexiness	.213		−.220			.754
Romanticism		.271			−.340	.662
Passion					.355	.582
Factor score (M)	4.403	4.855	4.252	2.322	4.621	2.935
Determinacy	.973	.958	.957	.958	.965	.947

Connections of emotional contents to motivational contents

The structure of the motivational contents of musical pleasure was first investigated through an EFA for the pleasure types. Parallel analysis with random data indicated a three-factor model as having the most appropriate fit. This model produced an RMSEA estimate of .085, and an SRMR of .036. The three-factor structure was somewhat reflective of the original Tiger model (Tiger, 1992), with two of the four pleasure types loading onto a single factor. The three emergent factors were renamed to better reflect their observed contents: Contemplation, Social values, and Object sensations. Geomin rotated loadings for the three-factor model of musical pleasure types can be seen in Table 2.

Table 2.

Geomin rotated loadings for musical pleasure types.

Pleasure type	Factor 1	Factor 2	Factor 3
	Contemplation	Socialvalues	Objectsensations
Contemplation	0.488
Intellect	0.463
Social		0.773
Group		0.710
Values/ideology		0.613
Worldview		0.535
Brand/genre		0.444
Physical sensations			0.765
Physical features			0.722
Aesthetic			0.536
Factor score (M)	4.842	3.955	5.724
Determinacy	.808	.900	.882

The factor with the highest factor score, Object sensations (M = 5.72, SD = 1.03) consisted of three items designed for physio-pleasure, reflecting pleasant physical sensations in the body, and the appreciation of the physical properties of the object. The second highest scoring factor was Contemplation (M = 4.84, SD = 1.09), which consisted of two items, originally measuring psycho-pleasure, involving conceptual contemplation and intellectual interest. The third factor, Social values (M = 3.96, SD = 1.37) consisted of items originally designed for Socio- or Ideo-pleasure, being reflective of social relevance, group attachment, values/ideology, worldview, and brand/genre preference.

Regression analysis was then executed to determine the relations between the six emotion factors (Table 1) and three pleasure type factors (Table 2). This regression produced an RMSEA estimate of .113 and an SRMR of .217. All estimates, standard errors and p-values are reported in Table 3. Object sensations (R² = .413) was significantly predicted by Relaxation (β = .137, p = .011), Power (β = .238, p = .003), and Passion (β = .108, p = .036). Contemplation (R² = .330) was negatively predicted by Relaxation (β = -.169, p = .005), and positively by Kinship (β = .380, p < .001). Social values (R² = .525) was similarly negatively predicted by Relaxation (β = -.310, p < .001), and positively by Kinship (β = .766, p < .001).

Table 3.

Musical pleasure types predicted by evoked emotions.

Pleasure type(outcome)	Evoked emotion(predictor)	β	SE	β/SE	p
Object sensations	Relaxation	.260	.096	2.717	.007*
	Independence	.336	.099	3.393	.001*
	Joy	.094	.129	0.730	.465
	Kinship	.083	.092	0.910	.363
	Passion	.188	.085	2.220	.026*
	Suffering	.061	.103	0.595	.552
Contemplation	Relaxation	−.347	.100	−3.455	.001*
	Independence	.144	.139	1.037	.300
	Joy	−.092	.137	−0.670	.503
	Kinship	.562	.090	6.250	<.001*
	Passion	.035	.088	0.400	.689
	Suffering	.138	.112	1.230	.219
Social values	Relaxation	−.419	.084	−4.965	<.001*
	Independence	.167	.088	1.891	.059
	Joy	.088	.113	0.782	.434
	Kinship	.748	.069	10.788	<.001*
	Passion	.042	.073	0.576	.564
	Suffering	.055	.091	0.603	.547

Note: β is the standardized parameter estimate; SE is standard error; β/SE is the t-value associated with the parameter estimate; p is the two-tailed p-value (only < .05 shown).

Figure 1 presents the six observed emotion factors and the three observed motivation/pleasure type factors and their interrelations as a graphical illustration. The area of each component is reflective of the factor scores (as approximation): higher scoring factors emerge larger than lower scoring ones in the figure. The directions of the connections between emotions and pleasure types are marked with pluses and minuses. The figure summarizes the core findings by showing that, on the one hand, music evokes pleasure that stems from object sensations, characterized by relaxation, power, and passion. On the other hand, pleasure evoked by music, when centered on the feeling of kinship, is characteristically non-relaxed (possibly active, tense), and is linked to social values or mental contemplation.

Figure 1.

Illustration of the emotional–motivational contents of musical pleasure.

Emotional–motivational constitution of visual pleasure

For visual pleasure, the list of extremely low scoring and thus removed emotions consisted of the same aggression-related emotions as for music (aggression, anger, cynicism, hatred, rage, toughness, trepidation) and, additionally, of agony, anxiety, dejection, gloominess, sexiness, sorrow, and suffering, i.e., many of the emotions in the musical Suffering factor. Other emotions were retained for further analyses and subjected to dimension reduction through EFA. Parallel analysis with random data indicated a six-factor model as having the most appropriate fit. This model produced an RMSEA estimate of .072, and an SRMR of .042. The six observed evoked emotion factors were labelled: Joy, Melancholy, Fondness, Strength, Relaxation, and Passion. In general, the factors reflected highly similar content than their “equivalents” in the musical domain, but with slight nuance differences. For instance, Relaxation received its highest loadings from easygoingness and relaxation in music, but from tranquility and calmness in the visual domain. Also, the negative emotion factor Melancholy contained much milder affective states than the musical factor Suffering. Items with high loadings (above .50) on their respective factor were retained and used for calculating mean factor scores. The mean factor scores, factor determinacies, and Geomin rotated loadings for the six-factor model of visual evoked emotions can be seen in Table 4, with the highest factor scores for Relaxation and Joy.

Table 4.

Geomin rotated loadings for visually evoked emotions.

Evoked emotion	Factor 1	Factor 2	Factor 3	Factor 4	Factor 5	Factor 6
	Joy	Melancholy	Fondness	Strength	Relaxation	Passion
Cheerfulness	.821
Joy	.783
Positivity	.671	−.117			.180
Enthusiasm	.639			.266	−.239
Elation	.612		.169	.373	−.184
Hilarity	.594		.210		−.204
Happiness	.588		.216		.299
Exuberance	.555		.145	.316
Feeling blue		.926
Yearning		.843
Melancholy	−.337	.624
Tenderness		.183	.803	−.184
Love			.763
Feeling of kinship			.649
Empathy			.613	.188
Warmth	.335		.584	−.266	.131
Acceptability		−.244	.561
Fondness	.156	.191	.549
Strength				.656
Daring				.627		.149
Independence			−.178	.626	.192
Self-determination			−.147	.570
Sublime				.568
Empowerment	.220			.555	.181
Spirituality	−.252		.253	.547	.248
Energetic	.420	−.112		.545
Unconstrained feeling	.270			.513	.296
Freedom	.279			.509	.180
Calmness			.269		.769
Tranquility			.253		.753
Relaxation	.362				.676
Easygoingness				−.181	.571
Eroticism			.323			.738
Passion			.255	.304		.621
Romanticism			.372		.153	.565
Factor score (M)	5.028	3.106	4.418	4.500	5.482	2.808
Determinacy	.962	.960	.954	.956	.950	.899

As for the visual pleasure types, parallel analysis with random data indicated a three-factor model as having the most appropriate fit. This model produced an RMSEA estimate of .113, and an SRMR of .047. As with musical pleasure types, the four aspects of the Tiger model (Tiger, 1992) were represented across the three observed factors, with two of those loading onto a single factor. The factors were named Intellect, Object values, and Social relatedness. Geomin rotated loadings for the three-factor model of visual pleasure types can be seen in Table 5.

Table 5.

Factor loadings for visual pleasure types EFA.

Pleasure type	Factor 1	Factor 2	Factor 3
	Intellect	Objectvalues	Socialrelatedness
Intellect	1.046
Contemplation	0.669
Imagination	0.620
Brand/genre	0.485
Values/ideology		0.726
Worldview		0.592
Physical features		0.537
Physical sensations		0.501
Aesthetic		0.403
Social			0.742
Group			0.715
Factor score (M)	4.40	4.99	3.73
Determinacy	.943	.898	.865

The highest scoring factor was Object values (M = 4.99, SD = 1.52), which consisted of a combination of items originally from ideo- and physio pleasure, measuring values/ideology, worldview, physical features, and aesthetic quality of the object, and physical sensations. The second highest scoring factor was Intellect (M = 4.40, SD = 1.36), containing items measuring intellectual interest, conceptual contemplation, stimulation of imagination, and brand/genre preference. The lowest scoring factor was Social relatedness (M = 3.73, SD = 1.02), composed of two items, measuring social relevance and group attachment.

Regression analysis was then utilized to determine how the six visual evoked emotion factors (Table 4) were related to the three visual pleasure type factors (Table 5). This regression produced an RMSEA estimate of .113 and an SRMR of .232. All estimates, standard errors and p-values are reported in Table 6. Object values (R² = .525) was positively predicted by Relaxation (β = .211, p = .011), Strength (β = .402, p < .001), and Fondness (β = .141, p = .026), and negatively by Joy (β = -.197, p = .044). Intellect (R² = .461) was positively predicted by Strength (β = .872, p <.001) and Passion (β = .179, p = .042), while Social relatedness (R² = .288) was negatively predicted by Relaxation (β = -.440, p = .021), and positively by Fondness (β = .720, p < .001).

Table 6.

Visual pleasure types predicted by evoked emotions.

Pleasure type(outcome)	Evoked emotion(predictor)	β	SE	β/SE	p
Object values	Relaxation	.222	.077	2.887	.004*
	Joy	−.197	.098	−2.013	.044*
	Strength	.628	.099	6.344	<.001*
	Fondness	.226	.097	2.330	.020*
	Melancholy	−.055	.075	−0.738	.461
	Passion	−.031	.090	−0.346	.730
Intellect	Relaxation	−.132	.079	−1.686	.092
	Joy	−.090	.101	−0.885	.376
	Strength	.653	.101	6.452	<.001*
	Fondness	.007	.102	0.072	.943
	Melancholy	−.041	.076	−0.535	.592
	Passion	.190	.092	2.069	.039*
Social relatedness	Relaxation	−.216	.089	−2.444	.015*
	Joy	−.004	.114	−0.034	.973
	Strength	.153	.121	1.264	.206
	Fondness	.543	.111	4.890	<.001*
	Melancholy	−.014	.087	−0.157	.875
	Passion	−.016	.107	−0.147	.883

Note: β is the standardized parameter estimate; SE is standard error; β/SE is the t-value associated with the parameter estimate; p is the two-tailed p-value (only < .05 shown).

Discussion

This study explored the emotional–motivational constitution of pleasure drawn from music, particularly in terms of how the evoked emotions and the underlying motivational contents interrelate to create a pleasurable musical experience. In addition, the music specificity of this constitution was considered through comparative data from the visual domain. In the following the results for each research question are summarized and discussed.

Emotional constitution of musical pleasure

The first objective was to investigate the characteristic emotional content of musical pleasure. The most prevalent emotion factors were Relaxation, Power, Joy, and Kinship. All these factors received high factor scores, showing that musical pleasure essentially contains a variety of aspects from arousal-regulation to feelings of connectedness. The highest scoring factor was Relaxation, the prevalence of which is not surprising, considering that calmness/contentment (Juslin & Laukka, 2004; Juslin, et.al, 2008) and tranquility (Zentner & Scherer, 2008) are among the most common emotions evoked by music listening. Relaxation (van Goethem & Sloboda, 2011) and revival (Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007) are prevalent in musical affect regulation, and music is an effective means for stress reduction (Knight & Rickard, 2001; Thoma et al., 2013). What is perhaps a novel observation is the notably high factor loading of easygoingness for this factor, evidently illustrating a typical emotional character of musical relaxation.

In contrast to relaxation, the second highest scoring factor, Power, has received much less attention in prior music research. Adolescents’ music engagement has been considered as youth rebellion, but mostly as a potential correlate of problem behavior (e.g., Mulder, ter Bogt, Raaijmakers & Vollebergh, 2007), while emotions related to Power in the current study—self-determination, strength, empowerment—rather reflect a health-beneficial experience. These contents approach the concept of sense of agency—the subjective awareness of being the one who initiates, executes, and controls for one’s own actions, bodily movement, and thoughts (Jeannerod, 2003). This kind of perceived ownership of one’s behavior is closely linked to concepts such as internal locus of control (Rotter, 1966) and self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997), which both are highly relevant for health and wellbeing (Roddenberry & Renk, 2010), also relating to experiences of self-esteem (Judge, Erez, Bono, & Thoresen, 2002). Some prior studies have pointed towards the relevance of self-determination and empowerment in musical experiences: self-chosen music as a personalization of daily chores (Sloboda & O’Neill, 2001), self-control as the mechanism that allows music to help managing pain (Mitchell, McDonald, & Knussen, 2007), music as personal empowerment for the long-term ill (Batt-Rawden, DeNora, & Ruud, 2005), and music as a promoter of agency in healthy psychosocial development (Laiho, 2004; Gold, Saarikallio, & McFerran, 2011) and in quality of life (Ruud, 1997).

The third highest scoring factor, Joy, again is an expected aspect of musical pleasure. Positive emotions, joy and happiness, are among the most typical emotions experienced to music (Juslin & Laukka, 2004; Zentner & Scherer, 2008) and entertainment is integral to musical mood regulation (Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007). The particular contents of Joy observed in present study (e.g., elation, hilarity, enthusiasm, energetic) are highly similar to the vitality “superfactor,” consisting of energy and joyful activation, as described in the GEMS model (Zentner & Scherer, 2008).

The fourth factor that also received a relatively high score in current data was Kinship. The prevalence of this factor—including feelings of empathy, humbleness, consolation—was somewhat in accordance with our expectation that some core rewards like social reward would be reflected in the emotional constitution of musical pleasure. The relevance of togetherness and empathy are supported by research on music as social–emotional communication. Early interaction is fundamentally “musical” in its structure (e.g., Malloch, 1999; Trainor & Cirelli, 2015) and the social-communicative power of music has been considered as the evolutionary reason for the very existence of music (Clayton, 2009; Cross 2014). Empathy (Clarke, DeNora, & Vuoskoski, 2015), consolation (ter Bogt, Vieno, Doornwaard, Pastore, van den Eijnden, 2017), and social wellbeing (Packer & Ballantyne, 2011) have become topical concepts in current music research, and recent findings show that music is connected to subjective wellbeing particularly when music engagement involves social behaviors like dancing and attending events (Weinberg & Dawn, 2017).

The data were also generally supportive of our hypothesis about the low presence of negative emotions as constituents of pleasure. Emotion terms reflective of anger and aggression received extremely low scores and were omitted from the factor analysis. However, feelings such as gloominess, sorrow, and suffering were retained and formed a factor, but remained the lowest scoring factor of the six. Another low scoring, yet emergent factor was passion, including erotic and sexual nuances. The presence of eroticism as part of musical pleasure is also perhaps not that surprising, considering the prevalence of sexual references in popular music. In terms of situating musical pleasure within the framework of basic and higher order pleasures (Berridge & Kringelback, 2008), the passion factor can perhaps be seen here as one indication of musical pleasure being strongly composed of the sensory and embodied aspects.

Connections between emotional and motivational components

The second objective was to explore how the emotional characteristics would interrelate with the motivational attributes of pleasure. The observed relations suggest an existence of at least two major emotional–motivational content dimensions of musical pleasure. As summarized in Figure 1, the pleasure evoked by music was broadly composed of: (a) relaxed, easygoing, and power-inducing enjoyment of musical material and (b) non-relaxed mental contemplation and social connection, fueled by the feelings of kinship and empathy.

The first of these dimensions involves the motivation factor Object sensations, pleasure drawn from the physical properties of music, combined with physiological sensations in the body. This factor was positively predicted by relaxation, power, and passion. Pleasure drawn from music’s physical properties and the related physical sensations thus essentially involved feelings of being relaxed, free, and empowered, combined with eroticism and passion.

The second emotional–motivational dimension involved two pleasure types: Contemplation, pleasure from cognitive processing and understanding, and Social values, the social and ideological aspects of pleasure. These pleasure types were positively related to kinship and negatively to relaxation, referring to pleasure that involves social and contemplative gratifications that that are not relaxing but filled with feelings of kinship, empathy, consolation, tenderness, and relatedness. This type of processing has some links to emotional self-regulation involving consolation and contemplative emotional work of personally relevant experiences (Chin & Rickard, 2013; Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007; Van den Tol & Edwards, 2014).

Such a dichotomization is naturally a generalization of the findings, yet it provides an insight into what fundamentally constitutes musical pleasure. The current results are surprisingly closely in line with the findings of Schäfer et al (2013), who reported that the two most prevalent functions of music listening are to regulate arousal and mood and to achieve self-awareness, and that social relatedness serves as the third but less prevalent dimension. The observed two-dimensionality also resonates well with recent work of Baltazar and Saarikallio (2017), who observed that affective self-regulation through music consists of two major dimensions: music feature-based embodied revival, distraction, and entertainment, and emotional-cognitive processing of affect through personally meaningful music. Based on current results new hypotheses for future studies can be formulated, for instance, about how particular musical elements or emotion induction mechanisms (e.g., Juslin, 2013) link to the two types of pleasure: musical features and mechanisms like contagion might serve the former, while personally meaningful associations and memories would serve the latter.

Several emotional attributes of musical pleasure (relaxation, power, kinship, passion) emerged as significant predictors for the pleasure types. However, the emotion factor Joy, which received a high factor score, did not relate to any of the pleasure types. It may be that even if joy plays a significant role as a constituent of musical pleasure, the survival value of “entertainment” has not been identified as a component in evolutionarily motivated theories. While Tiger’s model (1992) provides a conceptual framework for exploration of the motivational foundation of pleasure generally, seemingly it cannot cover comprehensively the core motivation features of musical pleasure. There might be room for a specifically music-specific model. Based on our findings regarding Joy, integration with theories in positive psychology and the relevance of positive emotions to human behavior (e.g., Fredrickson, 2001), for instance, could provide theoretically relevant basis for the construction of such a model.

Music specificity vs. comparability to visual domain

The last objective of the study was to explore how domain dependent the observed emotional-motivational constitution of pleasure was for music, when compared to visual objects. EFAs in both domains resulted in six-factor models for emotions and three-factor models for pleasure types with relatively similar factor content, yet with some domain specificity.

In terms of emotions, Power and Suffering were more prevalent constituents of musical than visual pleasure. The highest scoring emotion factors were Relaxation and Power for music, and Relaxation and Joy for the visual domain: music seemed to facilitate easygoing self-determination, while visual pleasure rather constituted positive tranquility. Negative emotions were more prevalent in music: the music factor Suffering contained emotions such as gloominess, suffering, sorrow, dejection, and anxiety. In the visual domain, such strong negative emotions all received such low scores that they were omitted from analyses. The comparative factor in the visual domain consisted only of emotions that are not unambiguously negative (e.g., feeling blue, yearning, and melancholy). This relatively high intensity of negative emotions particularly in the context of music is reflective of the recent findings on the paradoxical combination of pleasure with sadness, sorrow, and grief as part of musical experience (Peltola & Eerola, 2016; Sachs, Damasio, & Habibi, 2015).

For the motivational basis of pleasure, the highest scoring factor in both domains referred to object-based pleasure, the second to mental contemplation, and the third to the social aspects of pleasure. The clearest difference between the domains was that in music the object-based pleasure only consisted of items about the object’s physical properties and bodily sensations, while object-based pleasure in the visual domain additionally consisted of values and ideological aspects. Musical objects are perhaps perceived more straightforwardly as physical stimulation (basic pleasures, see e.g., Berridge & Kringelbach, 2008), while visual objects are enjoyed more as higher-order pleasures (containing evaluative aspects). This is in line with a recent review that showed that music research has studied pleasure particularly through reward and emotion, while visual research has approached pleasure through cognitive processing and as part of aesthetic appreciation (Tiihonen,et al., 2017).

The emotional content was related to the motivational content in a relatively similar manner across the domains. The clearest difference was that the emotional content of contemplative pleasure (contemplation in music, intellect in visual) was related to kinship in music and strength in visual objects. In visual objects the emotional profile of mental contemplation was closer to that of object values than that of social relatedness as observed in music. The results indicate a potentially different underlying dimensionality for visual objects, in which contemplative pleasure does not concern social issues but rather aesthetic-ideological contents of the object. The observed difference warrants further investigation with a design particularly targeted at modality comparison.

Limitations and directions for future research

Some limitations of the study should be pointed out. First, the sample was biased in terms of gender, age, and education level, thus limiting the generalizability of the findings. Second, research in different cultural environments might achieve different results in terms of how the emotions evoked by music and visual objects are perceived, conceptualized, and linked to pleasure. Third, the use of Tiger’s (1992) approach as the conceptual starting point for exploring the motivational contents could be seen as a limitation, because the model is not originally intended to measure pleasure in the context of music and visual material. The factor structure did not strictly follow the original classification, which may either indicate that the questions (Appendix 2—see supplementary material) failed to capture the essence of each pleasure type or that the model indeed is not fully applicable to musical and visual domains. Values, worldviews, and ideologies (ideo-pleasure) do not seem to function as a motivation of their own for the art-induced pleasure, but rather as an element supporting the other motivations. Despite this, Tiger’s approach can be considered an acceptable compromise to cover the general conceptualization of pleasure, its basic and higher-order aspects, and potential art-domain specificity. Finally, when interpreting the results, it must be taken into account that the participants specifically selected objects inducing pleasure and therefore responses were specific to that single object, rather than everyday musical (and visual) stimuli in general.

The current study focused first and foremost on music, while future research could take a fundamentally comparative approach. Such research could elucidate what aspects of the current findings apply to pleasure experiences drawn from other arts, dance, or even beyond arts to everyday objects and activities like sports and gaming. Also inside music research, the pleasure drawn from music listening could be compared with the pleasure drawn from activities such as singing, playing, or composing.

Conclusions and implications

The current study elaborated on the distinct characteristics of the emotional–motivational constitution of musical pleasure, deepening our understanding of the types of emotional engagements that serve as fundamental components of daily pleasure experiences. Components reflective of higher-order pleasures (e.g., psycho-pleasure) and basic pleasures (socio-pleasure) emerged as mutual constituents of musical pleasure, with overlapping emotional profiles. The findings relate to the broader discussion of whether pleasure should be defined and understood in terms of related emotions, or the connection of pleasure to adaptive behavior and survival. As a general observation, the findings indicate that these aspects are inherently linked, and particular emotional profiles and pleasure types can be seen as reflective of the broader components of the pleasure experience, like social connections, self-referential understanding, and the sensory perception and enjoyment of objects.

The findings support the idea that musical emotions should not be studied as a function on their own but also as an intrinsic component of other musical rewards and motivations. While the current study particularly focused on pleasure, the observed underlying emotional–motivational dimensionality shows close correspondence to dimensionalities observed in music engagement models not restricted to pleasure. This may simply reflect the fact that pleasure itself is a core motivation for and a defining affective content of music engagement. Pleasure unquestionably is relevant for music engagement and the current results provide knowledge of how the musical pleasure is constituted. In terms of practical implications, the findings can be used to guide the use of music in a range of practices, from educational settings to health-promotion and marketing purposes. Practices can be developed to optimally support the core constituting dimensions of musical pleasure: the relaxing, power-inducing and passionate musical sensations as well as the social-contemplative kinship induction.

Supplemental Material

POM_778768_Suppl_mat_ – Supplemental material for Relaxed and connected: Insights into the emotional–motivational constituents of musical pleasure

Supplemental material, POM_778768_Suppl_mat_ for Relaxed and connected: Insights into the emotional–motivational constituents of musical pleasure by Suvi H. Saarikallio, Johanna P. Maksimainen and William. M. Randall in Psychology of Music

Footnotes

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: a grant from the Kone Foundation.

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