Does fantasy empathy predict the attribution of virtual agency to music?

Abstract

Social emotions have figured prominently in recent research pertaining to music-related emotions. If music is indeed able to evoke social emotions in listeners, the implication is that music may be perceived in some way as akin to a human agent. Yet music, especially instrumental music, is not obviously an agent capable of feeling. Following up on past research linking liking sad music to the fantasy facet of trait empathy, the results of three studies are reported. The first two were online surveys involving 112 and 137 participants, respectively, who rated sets of words in terms of their implied agency, synonymousness, or applicability for describing music. The third involved a listening task in which 299 participants listened to 24 short excerpts of instrumental music, and selected up to 3 words, from a list of 16, that best described each excerpt. The list of 16 words was compiled based on the results of the first two studies and comprised 8 pairs of words that differed in terms of their level of implied agency but were matched in terms of their meaning and applicability to music. Participants also completed the Fantasy subscale of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. The results did not support the hypothesis that high-fantasy listeners would be more likely to impute (virtual) agency to music. Instead, the attribution of agency was significantly associated with enjoyment and musical arousal.