The threat of synthetic harmony: The effects of AI vs. human origin beliefs on listeners' cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses to music

Abstract

People generally evaluate music less favourably if they believe it is created by artificial intelligence (AI) rather than humans. But the psychological mechanisms underlying this tendency remain unclear. Prior research has relied entirely on self-reports that are vulnerable to bias. This leaves open the question as to whether negative reactions are a reflection of motivated reasoning – a controlled, cognitive process in which people justify their scepticism about AI's creative capacity – or whether they stem from deeper, embodied feelings of threat to human creative uniqueness manifested physiologically. We address this question across two lab-in-field studies, measuring participants' self-reported and physiological responses to the same piece of music framed either as having AI or human origins. Study 1 (N = 50) revealed that individuals in the AI condition appreciated music less, reported less intense emotions, and experienced decreased parasympathetic nervous system activity as compared to those in the human condition. Study 2 (N = 372) showed that these effects were more pronounced among individuals who more strongly endorsed the belief that creativity is uniquely human, and that this could largely be explained by the perceived threat posed by AI. Together, these findings suggest that unfavourable responses to AI-generated music are not driven solely by controlled cognitive justifications but also by automatic, embodied threat reactions in response to creative AI. They suggest that strategies addressing perceived threats posed by AI may be key to fostering more harmonious human-AI collaboration and acceptance.