In joining Higgins’ music and emotion conversation I broaden the scope to consider the music–emotion nexus as a more dynamic, complex, contextual system of interactional experience. The music itself cannot be interpreted for what it does alone. We need to consider how musical experiences—understood holistically—may compel people to emotional experience, emotional work which is interwoven with context, aesthetic materials, and participating individuals.

Cross-cultural studies of music and emotion are needed to assess the generalizability of results and also have important implications for theory development. However, progress requires that the domain is broken down into smaller constituents based on key distinctions. For example, a multilevel theory of emotion-causation implies that the relative contributions made by culture and biology differ depending on the underlying mechanism involved, which precludes general conclusions. Such an account of emotions to music might be cross-culturally valid at the level of (...) mechanisms even if there is cross-cultural diversity in musical surface features and aroused emotions. An analysis in terms of psychological mechanisms can provide the necessary bridge between biological and social-constructionist perspectives on musical emotions. (shrink)

It is easy to envision marked progress in biological and physiological approaches to emotion, due to technological advances in imaging and other recording techniques. The future of social-constructionism appears more hazy: Progress will likely depend as much on new ideas as on new empirical discoveries. The most fruitful breeding ground for new ideas is where disciplines meet. Hence, the contributors to this special section represent diverse disciplines: biology, computer science, and the arts, as well as areas more traditionally associated with (...) the social construction of emotion, for example, interpersonal relations, cultural influence, and individual development. (shrink)