Universality, domain-specificity and development of psychological responses to music

Humans can find music happy, sad, fearful or spiritual. They can be soothed by it or urged to dance. Whether these psychological responses reflect cognitive adaptations that evolved expressly for responding to music is an ongoing topic of study. In this Review, we examine three features of music-related psychological responses that help to elucidate whether the underlying cognitive systems are specialized adaptations: universality, domain-specificity and early expression. Focusing on emotional and behavioural responses, we find evidence that the relevant psychological mechanisms are universal and arise early in development. However, the existing evidence cannot establish that these mechanisms are domain-specific. To the contrary, many findings suggest that universal psychological responses to music reflect more general properties of emotion, auditory perception and other human cognitive capacities that evolved for non-musical purposes. Cultural evolution, driven by the tinkering of musical performers, evidently crafts music to compellingly appeal to shared psychological mechanisms, resulting in both universal patterns (such as form–function associations) and culturally idiosyncratic styles. Whether music-related psychological responses evolved as specialized cognitive adaptations is unknown. In this Review, Singh and Mehr find evidence for universality and early expression of emotional and behavioural responses but not domain-specificity, suggesting that music-related responses draw on more general psychological mechanisms.