The extent to which emotional responses to musical elements are influenced by their past associations with specific emotional responses is largely unknown. To assess this possibility, the present study tested whether pairing positive, negative, or neutral chords from an unfamiliar musical system (a microtonal Bohlen–Pierce tuning) with positively or negatively valenced pictures would have an effect on subsequent liking ratings. The microtonal chords used in this experiment had been previously rated, independent of any other affective input, in an earlier experiment; this allows us to class each chord as intrinsically positive, negative, or neutral. It was found that exposure with an image increases liking ratings independent of the valence of the images, compared with no exposure which supports a mere exposure effect; but, interestingly, we did not find substantial evidence for evaluative conditioning. Results are discussed in light of theoretical accounts of evaluative conditioning and musical implications.

对音乐元素的情感反应受其过去与特定情感反应的关联影响的程度在很大程度上尚不清楚。为了评估这种可能性，本研究测试了将不熟悉的音乐系统的正弦，负弦或中性和弦（微调的Bohlen–Pierce调弦）与正价或负价的图片配对是否会影响随后的喜好等级。该实验中使用的微调和弦先前已在较早的实验中进行了评级，与任何其他情感输入无关。这使我们可以将每个和弦归类为固有的正，负或中性。发现与没有曝光仅支持曝光效果的曝光相比，与图像的曝光无关，用图像曝光会增加喜好等级。但是，有趣的是，我们没有找到评估条件的大量证据。根据评估条件和音乐含义的理论解释讨论了结果。