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Enjoyment of Negative Emotions in Music: An Associative Network Explanation

School of Music and Music Education, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052 Australia.

It is paradoxical that people should like music that evokes negative emotions. In this article an associative network, incorporating principles of connectionism and semantic networks, is presented to explain this incongruity. Negative and positive emotion nodes are appropriately connected to pleasure and displeasure centres. Activation of any nodes, apart from those in the "displeasure centre", results in the sensation of pleasure. An aesthetic context activates a node which inhibits this displeasure centre. Therefore, in an aesthetic context, such as listening to music, any activation is pleasurable. Negative emotion nodes representing anger, sadness or fear can become activated and at the same time be enjoyed. Changing nodal activation thresholds explains why musical preferences do not remain constant. It is proposed that such networks may be useful in providing a mechanistic explanation of other aesthetic experiences in response to music.

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