Effect of Consonant and Dissonant Intervals on Categorization of Emotionally Valenced Words

Date of Graduation

Fall 2006

Degree

Master of Science in Psychology

Department

Psychology

Committee Chair

Frank Ragozzine

Abstract

The purpose of the present experiment was to compare the effect of consonant intervals and dissonant intervals on categorization of emotionally valenced words. Forty college participants (14 men and 26 women) listened to both consonant musical intervals (characterized as emotionally positive) and dissonant musical intervals (characterized as emotionally negative) through headphones. This interval was immediately followed by an emotionally positive word of an emotionally negative word presented on a computer screen. Participants were instructed to push a button on a response box to indicate whether they considered the word to be either emotionally positive or emotionally negative. The response latency and the number of errors were measured. Strong linear correlations with the measurements used helped to support the reliability of the test. Furthermore, participants in the word condition had significantly faster reaction times in the positive word condition than in the negative word condition. This result supports one of the hypotheses and supports previous research. There was no significant effect of interval type, nor was there an interaction between word valence and interval type. Additionally, secondary analyses using several variables as covariates did not result in statistical significance.

Keywords

consonant, dissonant, emotion, word valence, reaction time

Subject Categories

Psychology

Copyright

© Billy Jack II Myers

Citation-only

Open Access

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