Perceiving emotion in melody: Interactive effects of pitch and rhythm

We examined effects of pitch and rhythm on the perceived emotional content of short melodies. We initially developed exemplars of melodies that were j udged consistently to convey a single emotional category: happy, sad, or sc ary. We subsequently manipulated the pitch and rhythm parameters to derive three altered versions of each exemplar: a pitch-only version (pitch differ ences intact but all tones of equal duration), a rhythm-only version (durat ional differences intact but all tones of equal pitch), and a baseline vers ion (all tones of equal duration and pitch). Listeners rated how well each exemplar and altered version conveyed its corresponding emotion. Effects of pitch and rhythm varied across melodies. In all cases, ratings were influe nced more by differences in pitch than by differences in rhythm. Whenever r hythm affected ratings, it interacted with pitch.