If you see a horror scene without a creepy music it will not scare you as much as the scene with creepy music does. Also in YouTube you can find some relaxing videos where they play a tune at certain frequency and it actually calms down people. Another example, Hearing a national anthem often stirs feelings of pride, unity, and patriotism. How does this work? How does our brain know what hormones to release to a particular sound?
In: Biology
Sound is processed in our brains in the same place we process emotions. Some emotions become attached to certain frequencies so that when they’re played back to us it triggers that emotion.
How does what you see influence your emotions? How does what you taste influence them? How does somebody touching you influence your emotions?
The answer to all of these is the same. All of your senses provide useful information to your brain, which creates a narrative that we call consciousness out of all of your sensory input. Emotions are a mechanism that your body uses to guide your/its actions. At a really basic level, why do you like hearing the national anthem? Because you’ve been trained that it is important to you. You’ve heard it many times growing up, usually at “special events”, whether that’s a baseball game or the 4th of July or a President’s speech or something. You’ve been both told verbally and primed behaviorally to respond to the national anthem in a positive way, so you do. That’s it.
Just like you’d be scared in most circumstances if someone were pointing a gun at you, just based on seeing them. Why would a simple visual impression of somebody pointing a gun at you make you scared? Because you recognize what a gun is, you know what it can do, and you know that the hole in the end of it is where a killing projectile might come from. But you know that only because you’ve been trained to know it by your life experiences. If somebody just happened to be holding a magic box in their hand that could instantly kill you, and that box just looked like a random cardboard box, you wouldn’t be scared because cardboard boxes aren’t something you’ve been trained to be scared of.
Scary music is scary because you’ve been scared by something while hearing it, or similar sounding music. Happy music makes you feel happy because you’ve been made happy by something while hearing it or similar sounding music.
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