MUSIC PREFERENCE AND EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE: REVISITING THE ROLES OF FAMILIARITY, PERSONAL MEANING, AND CONTEXT
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24191/jca.v3i2.11129Keywords:
music preference, emotional experience, familiarity, autobiographical memory, listening contextAbstract
This conceptual narrative review examines how music preference relates to emotional experience through familiarity, personal meaning, and listening context. Rather than treating preference as a direct predictor of positive affect, it synthesizes research on musical liking, repeated exposure, autobiographical memory, and everyday music use. The review distinguishes relatively enduring preferences from momentary liking, and separates perceived musical emotion from emotion actually felt by listeners. Across the literature, familiarity can facilitate recognition and autobiographical recall, but its apparent emotional effects may overlap with liking; personal associations can evoke positive, negative, or mixed feelings; and listening goals and social settings can change the value of the same piece of music. An integrative conceptual framework is proposed in which these factors condition the relationship between selection or preference and emotional experience. The principal contribution is a clearer account of why highly preferred music need not produce uniformly pleasant emotions and a set of implications for future context-sensitive research.
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