Using skin conductance to evaluate the effect of music silence to relieve and intensify arousal

Abstract

Music and sound affect human emotion. There are many previous studies into the effect of music and sound on humans, but no work has yet studied the effect of silence. However, during silent performances such as John Cages 4'33", audiences are often observed to be aroused during the performance and relieved afterwards. In this paper we investigated the power of silence. Our hypothesis is that silence can change the physiological arousal, depending on the nature and perception of silence. We measured arousal by heart rate, respiration rate and skin conductance. We found that skin conductance was the most effective biofeedback to measure arousal induced by silence. The experimental results suggested that there were two kinds of silence. Intensifying silence increased the physiological arousal, and Relieving silence reduced physiological arousal. The experimental outcome can be potentially useful for music therapy and in stress relieving exercises.