IDEA lectures with David Hargreaves
Musical likes and dislikes

David Hargreaves is professor of Education at the University of Roehampton and Froebel Research Fellow. He is author of several books on education, for example The Social Psychology of Music

Abstract: It is now widely accepted that there are three main determinants of musical likes and dislikes. The first of these is the characteristics of the listener: what effect do factors such as age and musical training have on preferences, for example? The second is the situation in which listening occurs: Adrian North and I have investigated responses to music in shops, restaurants, and many other everyday situations, for example. The third determinant is the characteristics of the music itself, and these have been investigated in the field of experimental aesthetics. The reciprocal-feedback model, which my colleagues and I have gradually refined in our work, shows how these three areas can influence one another, and this leads to some fascinating theoretical problems such as the effects of the social environment on arousal-based as compared with neural network explanations of likes and dislikes, why people like to listen to sad and unhappy music, and the relationship between musical preferences, emotions, and evaluations.

The IDEA Lectures (Interdisciplinary Debates on the Empirical Aesthetics of Music) aim at bringing together internationally well-known researchers who discuss questions that relate to the production and reception of music from various perspectives.
Musicologists from all branches of their discipline take part as do musicians, psychologists, cognitive scientists, sociologists, philosophers and ethnologists.

This talk will be held in English.

External guests are welcome. Please call for registration 069 8300 479-201.