Cross-cultural Similarities and Differences in Music Mood Perception

Prior research suggests that listeners from different cultural backgrounds appreciate music differently. Although music mood/emotion is an important part of music seeking and appreciation, few cross-cultural music information retrieval (MIR) studies focus on music mood. Moreover, existing studies on cross-cultural music perception often only compare listeners from two cultures, in most cases, Western vs. Non-western cultures. In order to fill these gaps, this study compares music mood perceptions of listeners from three distinct cultures: American, Korean, and Chinese. Our findings reveal that the perceptions of the three cultural groups are generally different, but in many aspects, Korean listeners are situated in between listeners from the two other cultures. This paper describes the comparison of the three cultural groups from the perspectives of mood perceptions, musical (stimuli) characteristics, and listeners' (subjects) characteristics. The findings of this study have implications for the design of cross-cultural and global MIR systems.