Basic emotions expressed in music: factor analyses on intensity ratings by non-musical professional Chinese university students

BACKGROUND: Previous studies of musical emotion largely depended on the lexical approach which suffered from overlaps between emotions. METHODS: In the present study, we explored emotional domains through a dimensional approach based on the intensity ratings on the emotion perceived in music. Altogether, 488 university students were invited to listen to 60 musical excerpts (most of them classical), to rate the intensity of emotion perceived without naming the emotion. Later, we conducted the exploratory factor analysis on the intensity ratings to look for the latent structures of musical emotion and then applied the confirmatory factor analysis to verify the validity of the proposed model of emotional structure. RESULTS: After first- and second-order factor analyses, seven emotional factors (domains, with 38 musical excerpts) were identified: Happiness, Tenderness, Sadness, Passion, Anger, Anxiousness, and Depression, which formed a satisfactory model. No gender difference was found regarding the perceived intensity of musical emotion. CONCLUSION: Our study has offered evidence to delineate basic musical emotions into seven domains.