A Study Suggests That People Can Hear Universal Traits in Music

Imagine that you’re a researcher who has unlimited time and resources, and a time machine that can travel anywhere in the world. You use these wondrous gifts to get a recording of every song that has ever been sung, whether by people in big cities or those in small hunter-gatherer groups. You play these recordings to random volunteers, and ask them to guess the behaviors that were associated with each tune. Was the song used for dancing? For soothing a baby? For healing illness? Could people guess what songs are for by their sound alone, without any knowledge about their cultural context?

When and posed this scenario to 302 cognitive psychologists, who study how people think, around 73 percent predicted that the listeners would make accurate guesses. But when the duo surveyed 206 ethnomusicologists, who study the music of different cultures,have certain universal features that allow even untrained ears to predict its function.