You might have heard The Axis of Awesome’s infamous four-chord medley of popular songs, which made one thing clear about the music we like to listen to: we’ve heard it all before. A new study suggests that the songs we enjoy are fun because they’re familiar, not because they make us want to dance.
Researchers from the department of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behaviour at McMaster University looked at whether a song’s familiarity has a greater influence on our excitement than a song’s groove (the aspect of music that makes people want to dance).
Excitement causes many physiological changes, such as increases in heart rate, breathing rate, and brain activity.
Prior research suggests that groovier songs are not necessarily more exciting; they actually produce fewer physiological changes associated with excitement than low-groove songs. This unexpected finding led psychologists at McMaster University to the idea that something other than groove influences our excitement when listening to music: familiarity.
Lead author Dana Swarbrick says that “familiarity may have [bigger] effects on physiological arousal than a song’s groove” because “people tend to like familiar things”.
For the study, researchers measured the heart rate, breathing rate, and brain activity of 16 undergraduate students as they listened to 8 songs. The songs were divided into two groups: high- and low-groove, both of which contained songs that were more or less familiar to the participants.
The researchers used changes in heart rate to estimate the activity of the sympathetic nervous system—the part of our body responsible for the rush of adrenaline we get in exciting situations.
The study found that the sympathetic nervous system is more active when listening to familiar songs than when listening to unfamiliar songs. No such difference was found between high- and low-groove songs, suggesting that people get excited when listening to more familiar songs, but not when listening to groovier songs.
The authors acknowledge that unusual breathing patterns may have driven the observed changes in heart rate, given the ability for respiration to change heart rate. Future research will take this into account, and investigate which specific features of songs contribute to their familiarity.
For now, the authors contend that “musicians should find a balance between innovation and repetition”, because even though people like familiar music, they may not appreciate a
20-song compilation of what sounds like the same track on repeat.