Proceedings of the 13th International Conference of Students of Systematic Musicology (SysMus20) 15 - 17 September 2020 - York, United Kingdom - Kayser, D. (Editor) DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/KAS63 Empathic Listeners Identify Musically Expressed More Accurately in Improvised Jazz

Omer Leshem,M* ichael F. Schober The New School, New York City, United States Of America

Keywords: audience, cognition, collective cognition, , expressed emotion, felt emotion, improvisation, live performance, recognized emotion

tudies conducted in lab settings us- possible how audience members who regu- ing pre-selected musical recordings have larly attend live jazz performances react to live Sshown that listeners’ empathy predicts improvised music. Audience members were their ability to identify expressed charged admission and informed that anyone (Saarikallio et al, 2014; Wöllner, 2012). who chose to participate in the study would be fully reimbursed. The performer was in- Aims structed mid concert to “perform a 3-5-minute improvised piece with the intention of convey- This paper introduces a new method for as- ing .” Then, audience members (N=23) sessing how audience members and perform- chose a perceived expressed emotion from a list ers feel and think during a live concert, and of five basic emotions and reported their felt whether past findings generalize into other emotions on the Differential Emotions Scale listening settings and with improvised music. (DES; Izard, 1997). Empathy was assessed Study 1, conducted in a live jazz performance, using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; tested whether (1) audience members’ cogni- Davis, 1980). Participants in Study 2 (N=159) tive empathy – perspective taking ability – pre- listened to an audio recording of this live im- dicts their accuracy identifying an emotion ex- provised piece and answered the same ques- pressed by a jazz improviser, and if (2) audi- tionnaires. ence members’ affective empathy – empathic concern tendencies – predicts their likelihood Results of the same emotions as the performer due to copresence and richness of visual and In both studies, audience members with auditory cues. Study 2 examined whether non- greater cognitive empathy were more likely copresent participants hearing the recording to accurately identify the expressed emotion. online would show the same pattern of results. Surprisingly, listeners with greater affective em- pathy felt more like the performer only in the Method online condition.

A full-length solo concert by a Grammy nom- inated pianist at a leading NYC jazz venue was staged to measure as non-intrusively as

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55 Proceedings of the 13th International Conference of Students of Systematic Musicology (SysMus20) 15 - 17 September 2020 - York, United Kingdom - Kayser, D. (Editor) DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/KAS63

Conclusions tions scale: A method of measuring the subjective experience of discrete emotions. Results replicate findings from solo lab studies Unpublished manuscript, Vanderbilt Uni- in two other listening settings and demonstrate versity, Nashville, TN the viability of exploring empathy and collec- Saarikallio, S., Vuoskoski, J., & Luck, G. (2014). tive cognition in different genres. Adolescents’ expression and perception of emotion in music reflects their broader References abilities of emotional communication. Psy- chology of Well-Being, 4(1), 21. Davis, M. H. (1983). The effects of dispositional Wöllner, C. (2012). Is empathy related to the empathy on emotional reactions and help- perception of in mu- ing: A multidimensional approach. Journal sic? A multimodal time-series analysis. of personality, 51(2), 167-184. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Izard, C. E., Dougherty, F. E., Bloxom, B. M., & Arts, 6(3), 214. Kotsch, W. E. (1974). The differential emo-

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