News Psychology

Feelings, universal musical feelings

African farmers who shun Western culture demonstrate widespread recognition of three basic emotions in music

By Bruce Bower

- More than 2 years ago

Hear audio samples that were used in this study.

Cameroon’s Mafa farmers don’t know U2 from YouTube, and that’s how they like it. So it comes as a scientific revelation that, according to a new study, these Africans who are cocooned from Western culture recognize expressions of happiness, sadness and fear in the same musical passages that Westerners do.