The Relationship Between Musical Complexity and Liking in Jazz and Bluegrass

Berlyne (1971) and others have proposed that liking of music is an inverted-U shaped function of its complexity. Past research has been inconclusive concerning the generality of the inverted-U relationship. The present studies tested the generality of this relationship across related but distinct musical styles. Our experimental participants judged the complexity and liking of short pieces of music created by professional musicians who where instructed to improvise at different levels of complexity. Experiment 1 tested whether the inverted-U relationship was present between perceived complexity and liking for jazz and bluegrass when each style was presented separately. Experiment 2 replicated the findings from Experiment 1 under interleaved presentation conditions. The results support the inverted-U shaped relationship between perceived complexity and liking for bluegrass but not for jazz. It is possible that the relationship between liking and perceived musical complexity varies across musical styles.