The Relationship between Emotional Competence and Recognizing Emotions in Music

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between recognition of emotion in music and emotional competence. The study included 329 students who first filled out the Emotional Competence Questionnaire (Takšić, 2002), and then the Assessment of Musical Excerpts Questionnaire (six instrumental musical excerpts of classical music of different emotional context). The participant’s task was to quote a dominant emotion which was recognized in the musical excerpt and mark whether they know that excerpt from earlier. The results showed that the familiarity of musical excerpts did not affect recognition of emotion in music, and the participants identified most accurately the emotions of happiness and sadness, while with the lowest accuracy the emotion of fear. The main hypothesis about the relationship between the recognition of emotions in music and the results on the Emotional Competence Questionnaire was confirmed. It was also established that the participants who demonstrated greater accuracy in recognizing emotions in music achieved higher scores on the Emotional Competence Questionnaire, particularly on the subscale of understanding and perception of emotion, where a significant difference for the recognition of three basic emotions was observed. Significant correlations were obtained between the results in all subscales of the Emotional Competence Questionnaire and ability of recognition of emotions in music except for the correlation between the ability of management and regulation of emotions and the ability to recognize sadness in music.