Study: Some People Have No Emotional Response to Music

Posted by freedomforall 10 years, 3 months ago to Science
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Note: This study probably didn't cost US taxpayers anything (unless Spain used US aid to pay for it.)
Psychologists at the University of Barcelona stumbled upon this while they were screening participants for a study by using responses to music to gauge emotion. They were surprised to find that music wasn't important at all to about 5 percent of the people — they said they didn't bob up and down to tunes they liked, didn't get weepy, didn't get chills. It was like they couldn't feel the music at all.

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  • Posted by $ CBJ 10 years, 3 months ago
    I'd be interested to know what percentage of listeners have a positive response to modern atonal music. It seems to have a following, even though most people dislike it.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 10 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Oh, H2, you and I could easily spend a few hours listening to the great big band music that is almost lost today. And by mentioning those three, you bring to mind all the others like Tommy Dorsey, and other kings of swing.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 10 years, 3 months ago
    One can only treat this as a disability like autism. My sympathies go out to those poor individuals who have no response to music. They are unable to grasp one of the human race's great achievements in art.
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  • Posted by johnpe1 10 years, 3 months ago
    does this mean that these 5 percent are a-musing? -- j

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  • Posted by $ allosaur 10 years, 3 months ago
    That 5% are just shape-shifting space alien lizards from outer space. I've surfed four sites on the subject. Obama is one but his blame Bush is one also.
    So it is just an invasion of cold-blooded unfeeling thus unmusical creatures instead it being a political or a philosophical anything to worry about. And they all have jobs.
    Believe you me, we have a lot more Hispanic illegal aliens to worry about than insidious shape-shifting imposter people.
    Trusssssst your old dino in the Gulch, there issssss nothing to worry about. Hissss-have a niccccce day.

    http://mujca.com/deathlizards.htm
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  • Posted by H2ungar123 10 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Treat them to Glen Miller's "Moonlight
    Serenade" or Harry James' "You Made Me
    Love You" or Artie Shaw's "Stardust" - each
    one a modern-day killer thriller!!
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 10 years, 3 months ago
    This is interesting. I mean, some people are aphasic (cannot read) and too many suffer from innumeracy (inability to think with numbers). But those are not "natural." Sure, misreading a lion paw for a deer print is consequential, but nothing is natural about differentiating p q b d - R P B - M W - O Q.

    But music is probably deeper and older than language. For birds music is language. So, it would be expectable that in a state of nature people could tell music - birds, coyotes, wind in the trees …

    Asperger's (a pseudo-label, but handy) posits individuals who cannot read the emotional states of others from their facial expressions. That seems "unnatural" yet, there it is. Was Gilgamesh an Aspie? (Even if so, he apparently used music - chants - to get his city walls built.)
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