Cardiac synchrony is a crucial component of shared experiences, considered as an objective measure of emotional processes accompanying empathic interactions. No study has investigated whether cardiac synchrony among people engaged in collective situations links to the individual emotional evaluation of the shared experience. We investigated theatrical live performances as collective experiences evoking strong emotional engagement in the audience. Cross Recurrence Quantification Analysis was applied to obtain the cardiac synchrony of twelve spectators' quartets attending to two live acting performances. This physiological measure was then correlated with spectators' emotional intensity ratings. Results showed an expected increment in synchrony among people belonging to the same quartet during both performances attendance and rest periods. Furthermore, participants' cardiac synchrony was found to be correlated with audience's convergence in the explicit emotional evaluation of the performances they attended to. These findings demonstrate that the mere co-presence of other people sharing a common experience is enough for cardiac synchrony to occur spontaneously and that it increases in function of a shared and coherent explicit emotional experience.

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Audience spontaneous entrainment during the collective enjoyment of live performances: physiological and behavioral measurements

BACKGROUND Although music interventions on postoperative pain (POP) have positive effects, limited research has focused on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of its efficacy for orthopedic patients. This systematic review aimed to examine the effects of music therapy on pain after orthopedic surgery. METHOD The Cochrane Library, PubMed, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Nursing Reference Center (NRC), Airiti Library, and National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations in Taiwan were searched up to August 2019. The risk of bias from the Cochrane Handbook for Randomized Controlled Trials of Interventions was used. A standard mean difference (SMD) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) was applied as a summary effect on postoperative pain and anxiety using RevMan version 5.3. A meta-analysis was also carried out using subgroup analysis. RESULTS Nine randomized controlled trials were selected. (1) Music can relieve pain significantly for both music medicine (MM; SMD = -0.41, 95% CI [-0.75, -0.07], P = 0.02) and music therapy (MT; SMD = -0.31, 95% CI [-0.57, 0.04], P = 0.02). (2) Music chosen by the subjects showed significant differences for both MM (P = 0.002) and MT (P = 0.02). (3) Anxiety improved significantly among patients using MT (SMD = 0.44, 95% CI [-0.75, -0.13], P = 0.005). However, the results for the physiologic parameters, opioid requirement, and length of stay showed subtle distinctions. CONCLUSION Music can significantly relieve POP, specifically music chosen by the participants.

Effect of Music Therapy on Pain After Orthopedic Surgery—A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

With the emergence of personality computing as a new research field related to artificial intelligence and personality psychology, we have witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of personality-aware recommendation systems. Unlike conventional recommendation systems, these new systems solve traditional problems such as the cold start and data sparsity problems. This survey aims to study and systematically classify personality-aware recommendation systems. To the best of our knowledge, this survey is the first that focuses on personality-aware recommendation systems. We explore the different design choices of personality-aware recommendation systems, by comparing their personality modeling methods, as well as their recommendation techniques. Furthermore, we present the commonly used datasets and point out some of the challenges of personality-aware recommendation systems.

A survey on personality-aware recommendation systems

Music listening is an inherently cultural behavior, which may be shaped by users' backgrounds and contextual characteristics. Due to geographical, socio-economic, linguistic, and cultural factors as well as friendship networks, users in different countries may have different music preferences. Investigating cultural-socio-economic factors that might be associated with between-country differences in music preferences can facilitate music information retrieval, contribute to the prediction of users' music preferences, and improve music recommendation in cross-country contexts. However, previous literature provides limited empirical evidence of the relationships between possible cross-country differences on a wide range of socio-economic aspects and those in music preferences. To bridge this research gap, and drawing on a large-scale dataset, LFM-1b, this study examines the possible relationship between cross-country differences in artist, album, and genre listening frequencies as well as the cross-country distance in geographical, socio-economic, linguistic, cultural, and friendship connections using the Quadratic Assignment Procedure. Results indicate: (1) there is no significant relationship between geographical and economic distance on album, artist, and genre preferences' distance at the country-level; (2) the cross-country distance of three cultural dimensions (masculinity, long-term orientation, and indulgence) is positively associated with both the album and artist preferences distances; (3) the between-country distance in main languages has a positive relationship with the album, artist, and genre preferences distances across countries; (4) the density of friendship connections among countries negatively correlates to the cross-country preference distances in terms of artist and genre. Findings from this study not only expand knowledge of factors related to music preferences at the country level, but also can be integrated into real-world music recommendation systems that consider country-level music preferences.

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The relation of culture, socio-economics, and friendship to music preferences: A large-scale, cross-country study

Performing and listening to music occurs in specific situations, requiring specific media. Empirical research on music listening and appreciation, however, tends to overlook the effects these situations and media may have on the listening experience. This article uses the sociological concept of the frame to develop a theory of an aesthetic experience with music as the result of encountering sound/music in the context of a specific situation. By presenting a transdisciplinary sub-field of empirical (concert) studies, we unfold this theory for one such frame: the classical concert. After sketching out the underlying theoretical framework, a selective literature review is conducted to look for evidence on the general plausibility of the single elements of this emerging theory and to identify desiderata. We refer to common criticisms of the standard classical concert, and how new concert formats try to overcome alleged shortcomings and detrimental effects. Finally, an empirical research program is proposed, in which frames and frame components are experimentally manipulated and compared to establish their respective affordances and effects on the musical experience. Such a research program will provide empirical evidence to tackle a question that is still open to debate, i.e., whether the diversified world of modern-day music listening formats also holds a place for the classical concert – and if so, for what kind of classical concert.

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Music listening in classical concerts: Theory, literature review, and research program

A live music concert is a pleasurable social event that is among the most visceral and memorable forms of musical engagement. But what inspires listeners to attend concerts, sometimes at great expense, when they could listen to recordings at home? An iconic aspect of popular concerts is engaging with other audience members through moving to the music. Head movements, in particular, reflect emotion and have social consequences when experienced with others. Previous studies have explored the affiliative social engagement experienced among people moving together to music. But live concerts have other features that might also be important, such as that during a live performance the music unfolds in a unique and not predetermined way, potentially increasing anticipation and feelings of involvement for the audience. Being in the same space as the musicians might also be exciting. Here we controlled for simply being in an audience to examine whether factors inherent to live performance contribute to the concert experience. We used motion capture to compare head movement responses at a live album release concert featuring Canadian rock star Ian Fletcher Thornley, and at a concert without the performers where the same songs were played from the recorded album. We also examined effects of a prior connection with the performers by comparing fans and neutral-listeners, while controlling for familiarity with the songs, as the album had not yet been released. Head movements were faster during the live concert than the album-playback concert. Self-reported fans moved faster and exhibited greater levels of rhythmic entrainment than neutral-listeners. These results indicate that live music engages listeners to a greater extent than pre-recorded music and that a pre-existing admiration for the performers also leads to higher engagement.

How Live Music Moves Us: Head Movement Differences in Audiences to Live Versus Recorded Music.

Based on a large behavioral dataset of music downloads, two analyses investigate whether the acoustic features of listeners’ preferred musical genres influence their choice of tracks within non-preferred, secondary musical styles. Analysis 1 identifies feature distributions for pairs of genre-defined subgroups that are distinct. Using correlation analysis, these distributions are used to test the degree of similarity between subgroups’ main genres and the other music within their download collections. Analysis 2 explores the issue of main-to-secondary genre influence through the production of ten feature-influence matrices, one per acoustic feature, in which cell values indicate the percentage change in features for genres and subgroups compared to overall population averages. In total, ten acoustic features and ten genre-defined subgroups are explored within the two analyses. Results strongly indicate that the acoustic features of people’s main musical genres influence the other styles they download. The nature of this influence and its possible actuating mechanisms are discussed with respect to research on personality, mood, musical preference, and statistical learning.

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Acoustic Features Influence Musical Choices Across Multiple Genres.

Studies reveal a strong relationship between personality and preferred musical genre. Our study explored this relationship using a new methodology: genre dispersion among people’s mobile-phone music collections. By analyzing the download behaviours of genre-defined user subgroups, we investigated the following questions: (1) do genre-preferring subgroups show distinct patterns of genre consumption and genre exclusivity; (2) does genre exclusivity relate to Big Five personality factors? We hypothesized that genre-preferring subgroups would vary in genre exclusivity, and that their degree of exclusivity would be linearly associated with the openness personality factor (if people have open personalities, they should be “open” to different musical styles). Consistent with our hypothesis, results showed that greater genre inclusivity, i.e. many genres in people’s music collections, positively associated with openness and (unexpectedly) agreeableness, suggesting that individuals with high openness and agreeableness have wider musical tastes than those with low openness and agreeableness. Our study corroborated previous research linking genre preference and personality, and revealed, in a novel way, the predictive power of personality on musicconsumption.

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Predictive Power of Personality on Music-Genre Exclusivity.

Studies reveal consistent relationships between personality and preferred musical genre. This article explores these relationships using a novel methodology: genre dispersion among people’s mobile-...

Jotthi Bansal

Papers

How Live Music Moves Us: Head Movement Differences in Audiences to Live Versus Recorded Music.

Acoustic Features Influence Musical Choices Across Multiple Genres.

Predictive Power of Personality on Music-Genre Exclusivity.

Influence of personality on music-genre exclusivity:

Work, rest and (press) play: Music consumption as an indicator of human economic development