Preparing Empirical Methodologies to Examine Enactive Subjects Experiencing Musical Emotions

Recently, there has been a considerable expansion of psychological research that attempts to study the impact of music on experienced or felt emotion. Since this research area is relatively young, the field is fractured with many competing theories on the best methods to measure emotional responses in listeners. Many of these theories search for universal emotional essences and cause-and-effect relationships that often result in erasing the body from these experiences. Still, after reducing these emotional responses to discrete categories or localized brain functions, these theories have not been very successful in finding universal emotional essence in response to music. In this paper, I argue that we need to bring the body back into this research, to allow for listener variability, and include multiple levels of focus to help find meaningful relationships of emotional responses. I also appeal to interdisciplinary research, to further develop these empirical research questions.