Emotional valence perception in music and subjective arousal: Experimental validation of stimuli

Musical stimuli are widely used in emotion research and intervention studies. However, reviews have repeatedly noted that a lack of pre-evaluated musical stimuli is stalling progress in our understanding of specific effects of varying music. Musical stimuli vary along a plethora of dimensions. Of particular interest are emotional valence and tempo. Thus, we aimed to evaluate the emotional valence of a set of slow and fast musical stimuli. N = 102 (mean age: 39.95, SD: 13.60, 61% female) participants rated the perceived emotional valence in 20 fast (>110 beats per minute [bmp]) and 20 slow (<90 bpm) stimuli. Moreover, we collected reports on subjective arousal for each stimulus to explore arousal's association with tempo and valence. Finally, participants completed questionnaires on demographics, mood (profile of mood states), personality (10-item personality index), musical sophistication (Gold-music sophistication index), and sound preferences and hearing habits (sound preference and hearing habits questionnaire). Using mixed-effect model estimates, we identified 19 stimuli that participants rated to have positive valence and 16 stimuli that they rated to have negative valence. Higher age predicted more positive valence ratings across stimuli. Higher tempo and more extreme valence ratings were each associated with higher arousal. Higher educational attainment was also associated with higher arousal reports. Pre-evaluated stimuli can be used in future musical research.