With us in the West, party music blasts out of the speakers in a major key and a minor melody puts us in a melancholic mood. You may think that the type of music itself puts you in a certain mood, but other cultures don’t necessarily experience those emotions that way.

There is still no consensus in science about how the key of a melody influences mood and to what extent this is universal or culturally determined. In order to contribute to this debate, researcher Eline Smit of the Australian Institute, among others, Western Sydney University research on isolated cultures in the rainforest of Papua New Guinea. The communities all listened to the same type of traditional music, but their exposure to Western music differed. In the end 170 participants were told scales and melodies in minor and major. They had to choose which one they felt was happier. The experiment was repeated with sixty ordinary Australians and another nineteen Australian musicians.

The results are surprising: in all groups there was strong evidence that the scales in major were more cheerful than those in minor. Except for one group: the participants who had minimal exposure to Western music in their lifetime. For the melodies, the evidence was even stronger: participants from only one of the three isolated groups reported that the major music made them happier. The control groups in Australia did find the major chords sound more cheerful. So it seems that it is culturally determined that major chords evoke more positive emotions than minor music.

Minor vs Major

Whether you speak of a minor melody or a major key depends on the distance between the first and third notes of a scale. In minor there are only three semitones between them and in major four semitones. That is why one also speaks of a piece of music in, for example, C major or D minor.

Three explanations

How can major music make us happier? There are various explanations for this, says researcher Eline Smit Scientias.nl. “It may have to do with the acoustics of the music itself. Take, for example, a major chord, which consists of certain sound waves. There may be something intrinsic in those sound waves that elicits a positive emotional response in us. If so, it would be separate from our (cultural) experiences with this accord and the reaction would be purely natural.”

However, Smit’s research seems to indicate otherwise. After all, the isolated inhabitants of Papua New Guinea did not necessarily regard the major notes as more cheerful. It is possible that the so-called familiarity effect† “We know from psychology that we tend to experience things we are familiar with as more positively. In Western classical and pop music, major is generally more common than minor. It may be that in the course of history, there has been a general familiarity effect was created for major chords and we simply experience them as more positive than minor chords, because they occur more often,” says Smit.

Associative Learning

The researcher also comes up with a third explanation: associative learning could play a role. “Associative learning means that a certain stimulus (which would initially be neutral) is often combined with another stimulus where we already experience an emotion. We often listen to music in a certain context, such as during a wedding or a funeral. A wedding is of course a cheerful affair, often accompanied by music. The music played there does not necessarily have to convey a certain emotion, but our emotions are enhanced by the cheerful context. If such combinations are made often enough, we paste the emotion of the context onto that of the music, as it were. If you listen to the same music outside that specific context, there is a good chance that you will experience the same emotion.”

It may also be a combination of these statements. To gain insight into that, you have to let people listen to music who don’t know our music. “That is why the scarce opportunities available to experiment with this in non-Western societies are very valuable.”

Music also plays a major role on special occasions among the isolated societies in Papua New Guinea. Photo: Caroline Podd of Getty Images (via Canva.com)

Cultural exposure

Music plays an important role among the isolated peoples of Papua New Guinea, just as it does with us. “We know from the traditional music in the area where we were, that it is often played at important events, such as a successful hunt, or is sung when someone has died. We asked what kind of music they listen to themselves and they mainly mentioned religious music or local musicians.”

But they did not recognize major chords as happy and minor music as sad. “Our main result is that cultural exposure plays a huge role in the relationship between major chords and merriment. We have overwhelming evidence that this is the case for the participants in Sydney and the association is diminishing as cultural exposure to this type of music diminishes.”

In other words, the more remote the society, the less people perceived music in major as positive. “It is important to add that we cannot rule out the possibility that they do not have that association. We need to do further research before drawing any firm conclusions.”

open can

But Smit is very satisfied with the results. “We went into it with a fairly open mind. We had strong expectations for the people in Sydney, based on our previous research, but for the people in Papua New Guinea it could in principle go either way. The expectations for the Sydney group have also been fulfilled and for Papua New Guinea the results have certainly become very interesting.”

She was also impressed by the hospitality of the participants in Papua New Guinea. “We were welcomed with open arms in the village of Towet and we felt very much at home. We are very grateful that people have opened their lives to us.”