Moral echoes: do morality and humanness affect emotional and aesthetic responses to music?
6 affiliations
- 1Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion, Oslo, Norway.
- 2Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.
- 3Institute of Psychology, University of Silesia in Katowice, Katowice, Silesian Voivodeship, Poland.
- 4Department of Psychology, University College of Professional Education, Wrocław, Poland.
- 5Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies, Finnish Centre of Excellence in Music, Mind, Body and Brain, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland.
- 6Department of Musicology & Psychology, University of Oslo, RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion, Oslo, Norway.
Abstract
When listening to novel music, extra-musical information about the musician may influence a listener's evaluations of the music. Here, we studied the extent to which information about the musicians’ Humanness, Morality and Sex, conveyed by their vocal timbre and tessitura, affected listeners’ emotional and aesthetic responses to their music. This online, pre-registered experiment followed a 2 (Humanness: Human vs. AI model) × 2 (Vocalist Sex: Male vs. Female) × 3 (Morality: Moral, Immoral, Neutral) mixed factorial design. Participants (n = 400) were randomly assigned to one of four groups, differing in Humanness and Vocalist Sex. Participants read three descriptions depicting a Moral, Immoral and Neutral behaviour and listened to three unfamiliar songs pseudorandomly paired with a description. Emotional and aesthetic responses to each song were measured using validated measures (GEMS-9 scale) and additional items assessing feelings of being Moved, Connected, perceived Beauty, Liking and perceived Creativity. As predicted, linear mixed-effects models revealed significant main effects of Morality for all dependent variables, with Immoral descriptions consistently yielding more negative ratings. Contrary to predictions, we observed no differences in responses to songs based on Humanness, no significant interaction between Morality and Humanness and no effect of Vocalist Sex on responses.
Related
- Emotional arousal predicts pupil responses following a single attention shift between bright and dark moving stimuli
- Emotional responses (intensity/valence) fulfill RDoC criteria but remain excluded from diagnostic classifications of mood disorders
- Associations Between Neural Responses to Social Fairness and Financial Exploitation Vulnerability Vary With Age and Emotional Intelligence
- Shared Neural Responses and Individualised Emotional Experience: An fMRI Study of Music Listening and Anhedonia
- Emotional responses to art in situ and on screen: a test of the circumplex model and the genuineness effect.
BibTeX
@article{fleckenstein2026moral,
title = {{Moral echoes: do morality and humanness affect emotional and aesthetic responses to music?}},
author = {Abbigail M Fleckenstein and Mariola Paruzel-Czachura and Katarzyna Pypno-Blajda and Henna-Riikka Peltola and Jonna K Vuoskoski},
journal = {Royal Society Open Science},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1098/rsos.252167},
url = {https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article/13/10/252167/483800/Moral-echoes-do-morality-and-humanness-affect},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Moral echoes: do morality and humanness affect emotional and aesthetic responses to music?
AU - Abbigail M Fleckenstein
AU - Mariola Paruzel-Czachura
AU - Katarzyna Pypno-Blajda
AU - Henna-Riikka Peltola
AU - Jonna K Vuoskoski
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/21
JO - Royal Society Open Science
DO - 10.1098/rsos.252167
UR - https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article/13/10/252167/483800/Moral-echoes-do-morality-and-humanness-affect
AB - When listening to novel music, extra-musical information about the musician may influence a listener's evaluations of the music. Here, we studied the extent to which information about the musicians’ Humanness, Morality and Sex, conveyed by their vocal timbre and tessitura, affected listeners’ emotional and aesthetic responses to their music. This online, pre-registered experiment followed a 2 (Humanness: Human vs. AI model) × 2 (Vocalist Sex: Male vs. Female) × 3 (Morality: Moral, Immoral, Neutral) mixed factorial design. Participants (n = 400) were randomly assigned to one of four groups, differing in Humanness and Vocalist Sex. Participants read three descriptions depicting a Moral, Immoral and Neutral behaviour and listened to three unfamiliar songs pseudorandomly paired with a description. Emotional and aesthetic responses to each song were measured using validated measures (GEMS-9 scale) and additional items assessing feelings of being Moved, Connected, perceived Beauty, Liking and perceived Creativity. As predicted, linear mixed-effects models revealed significant main effects of Morality for all dependent variables, with Immoral descriptions consistently yielding more negative ratings. Contrary to predictions, we observed no differences in responses to songs based on Humanness, no significant interaction between Morality and Humanness and no effect of Vocalist Sex on responses.
SN - 2054-5703
ER -