The Impact of Emotional Intelligence and Culture on Emotion Recognition in Music

Abstract

Do culture and emotional intelligence have an impact on emotion-recognition abilities in music? I hypothesized that people from one culture would more accurately recognize the emotions in instrumental music from their culture compared to instrumental music from a significantly different culture. I also hypothesized that people with higher emotional intelligence would more accurately recognize the emotions in instrumental music. University undergraduates (n=72) were asked to rate the perceived and felt emotions in music from two different cultures: Western Baroque music and non-Western Hindustani ragas. Each musical stimulus in each genre conveyed one of five emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and calm. Participants also completed a battery of tests to assess their trait and ability emotional intelligence, their personality, and their current mood. They also completed a demographics questionnaire, which identified their age, gender, ethnicity, musical training, cultural background, and exposure to music. A series of paired samples t-tests and correlations were conducted to assess their accuracy. Unlike emotional intelligence, culture had a significant impact on emotion-recognition accuracy. In some instances emotional intelligence appeared to have a negative effect on emotion recognition in culturally unfamiliar music