Favorite music expresses socially engaging emotions: The role of self-construal across cultures

Emotion is a fundamental aspect of human experience. Studies have shown cultural differences in emotional experiences in everyday contexts, but little research has explored how these differences manifest in musical encounters. This article reports two studies investigating how culture influences the perception of emotions in music, incorporating cultural factors (self-construal) and interpersonal and intrapersonal models of emotions (socially engaging vs. socially disengaging). Study 1 used an online questionnaire, where participants from various cultural backgrounds reflected on the emotions they perceived their favorite music to be expressing. This study found that interdependent self-construal was positively associated with the intensity of positive socially engaging emotions perceived in favorite music, while independent self-construal was positively associated with the frequency of negative socially disengaging and negative general emotions, alongside the intensity of positive general emotions. Study 2 employed a listening experiment, where participants from Singapore, China, and the United Kingdom listened to their favorite music and reported the emotions they perceived their music to express. This study found that interdependent self-construal directly influenced the frequency of positive socially engaging emotions perceived in favorite music and mediated between-country differences in these emotions. However, independent self-construal directly influenced the frequency and intensity of aesthetic emotions. Overall, our results show that the emotions individuals perceive in their favorite music are a product of their self-construal. Furthermore, these findings underscore the importance of integrating specific cultural variables and embracing culturally informed emotion models in cross-cultural research on music and emotions.