A common approach to study emotional reactions to music is to attempt to obtain direct linksbetween musical surface features such as tempo and a listener’s response. However, such an analysisultimately fails to explain why emotions are aroused in the listener. In this article, we propose analternative approach, which seeks to explain musical emotions in terms of a set of underlyingmechanisms that are activated by different types of information in musical events. We illustrate thisapproach by reporting a listening experiment, which manipulated a piece of music to activate fourmechanisms: brain stem reflex; emotional contagion; episodic memory; and musical expectancy. Themusical excerpts were played to 20 listeners, who were asked to rate their felt emotions on 12 scales.Pulse rate, skin conductance, and facial expressions were also measured. Results indicated thattarget mechanisms were activated and aroused emotions largely as predicted by a multi-mechanismframework.

Keywords: affect, expectancy, listening, psychophysiology, theory