Observations explained by the Hypothesis that Music is a Super-Stimulus for the Perception of Psychological Distance in Proto-Music
The Hypothesis
The ancestor of music was proto-music.
Proto-music was a system of communicating shared emotions about something of immediate concern to members of a group.
The speaker of a proto-musical utterance was in effect asserting: “There is something which is important to all of us, and the emotion we should be feeling about this is such-and-such”. The “something” was the referent. In its original form proto-music did not specify what the referent was - it was implicitly whatever was of most immediate concern to those in the group.
Originally proto-music referred only to things in the here-and-now.
Over time proto-music evolved the ability to refer to things beyond the here-and-now.
As proto-music evolved the ability to refer to things beyond the immediate here-and-now, it included an expression of psychological distance, ie how far removed from the here-and-now the referent was.
This expression of psychological distance was perceived by the listeners, in effect telling them how far from the here-and-now the intended referent was.
Words evolved originally as an enhancement of proto-music, to help specify the referent.
Word-based language evolved to become more sophisticated.
Eventually word-based language became much more efficient and much more expressive than proto-music. Proto-music was limited to expressing shared emotions, whereas word-based language could express almost anything, whether it involved shared emotion or not. Proto-music was inefficient because the unit of meaning was the whole melody (albeit proto-musical “melodies” might have been shorter than modern musical melodies), compared to the unit of meaning in word-based language, which is usually just one word, and typically only one or two syllables long. Because of the limitation and the inefficiency, proto-music ceased to be useful as a component of our ancestors’ communication systems.
However, proto-music “pivoted” to an alternative function as music.
Music consisted of a super-stimulus for the perception of psychological distance. That is, music consisted of proto-music which expressed to the maximum extent possible the degree of psychological distance.
Music motivated listeners to think about things far removed from the here-and-now. Music was no longer a form of communication - it was now a mind alterant.
The final phase in the evolution of music is that even this function of mind alteration has become less important. This is because, as modern humans, we now live in large organised societies, and there is less need for individuals to think of ideas and concepts far removed from the mundane here-and-now. In most cases someone else has already thought of those ideas, and word-based language allows any such idea to easily and quickly spread across large societies, and to spread to all other societies that are even loosely connected to the society where the idea originated.
Observations about Music which are explained by the hypothesis
Observation: Music is loosely associated with its referent.
Music expresses emotion about something, but the music itself doesn’t tell us what the something is. The “something” could be:
The lyrics of the song
Thoughts in the mind of the listener listening to the music
A scene in a movie where the music is the score
According to the hypothesis, proto-music was originally a system for communicating shared emotion about a situation that was of immediate concern to both the speaker and the listeners. It was not necessary for the proto-music to specify what the referent was, because the referent was obvious to all concerned, and therefore it didn’t need to be specified.
In its modern form, music is a mind alterant which acts for the benefit of the listener, and if no additional clues are given, then it is entirely up to the listener to decide what, if anything, the music is “about”.
Observation: Music feels like it’s a form of communication, even though pragmatically it isn’t.
Music feels like a form of communication because it is descended from proto-music which was a form of communication.
This feeling is sufficiently strong that many people will insist that music is a form of communication, even though it is evident from the way music is produced, performed and consumed that music is not a form of communication in the pragmatic sense of “Person A has some information that they need to provide to Person B, and Person B wants to know what that information is”.
Proto-music ceased to be a form of communication because it was completely replaced by word-based language which was both more efficient and capable of expressing a larger range of possible meanings.
Music, as a super-stimulus form of proto-music, served (and still serves) a function of mind-alteration, and unlike the original proto-music, it is not necessary for all listeners to agree with each other (or the speaker) about what the referent is. For example the referent can be something within the private thoughts of each listener.
Observation: Musical melodies are constructed from scales and rhythms based on regular beats.
Music has features of melodies constructed from pitch values from a scale, and rhythms based on underlying regular beats.
These features do not relate in any obvious way to significant perceived features of anything else that is not music. (Speech does have certain aspects of “melody” and “rhythm”, but those aspects are not particularly musical.)
It is possible to find mathematical functions such that the values of those functions are maximised by music constructed from scales and regular beats - this is consistent with the hypothesis that music is a super-stimulus for the perception of something.
To give a very simple example of what such a function would be, in the case of scales, we could compute a cumulative frequency distribution of pitch value, which in the musical case would have peaks where the pitch values of scale notes are and troughs in between those values, and then apply a second function to calculate the amount of contrast between peaks and nearby troughs. For non-musical “melodies”, the cumulative distribution would be smoother, without any strong peaks and troughs, so the computed contrasts would have much lower values. Something similar can be specified for rhythms based on regular beats, where the initial cumulative distribution of beat period would be based on a fourier-style transform applied to amplitude as a function of time.
Observation: Speech can be a component of music, but, speech itself cannot be “musicalized”.
If music is a super-stimulus for something, what is the non-super-stimulus form of that something?
Speech seems like a possible candidate, because it has “melody” and “rhythm”.
However one problem with this possibility is that there is no continuum, ie partly musicalized speech is not a thing. Indeed, even though song lyrics count as a form of spoken language contained within music, there is a clear separation between speech, which is pragmatic communication, and music, which is not. That is, no one ever starts singing when they are in a conversation. (OK, there are exceptions, but they are either because the conversation is about singing, or, the singing is deliberately contrived, eg the person doing the singing is making some kind of joke.)
According to the hypothesis, music is not a super-stimulus for the perception of an aspect of speech, rather it is a super-stimulus for an aspect of the perception of proto-music.
Music is not a super-stimulus for any aspect of the perception of speech, therefore there is no motivation for anyone to ever musicalize speech when speaking.
Observation: In many horror movies, the emotion of fear is represented by unmusical music.
Music supposedly expresses emotion, and fear is an emotion.
One place we commonly see music used to represent emotion is in movies.
But in movies where the audience is intended to experience fear as an emotion, the creator of the movie often chooses to use unmusical music, for example out-of-tune violin melodies.
What is it about fear as an emotion that unmusical music is preferred over normal musical music?
According to the hypothesis, music is a super-stimulus for the perception of psychological distance.
Fear is an emotion which implies an immediate and urgent requirement to respond to the current situation. The response required might be fight or flight, or in some cases simply to keep very still and do nothing. But whatever the required response is, it has to be decided upon and executed immediately.
It follows that psychological distance effectively converts fear into some other emotion, because psychological distance is the very opposite of immediacy.
If the fearful situation is in the past, then our main emotion would be relief that we escaped the situation. If it is in the future or at some distance far away, then we might feel some anxiety, but the urgency is removed.
(One exception in the case of past situations is when a person experiences post-traumatic stress. However, in that case a person typically remembers the situation as if it is happening now. That is, the mind has a system for processing past traumas which involves removing the effect of psychological distance, so that the brain can properly re-process the original fear in order to formulate strategies for better dealing with or preventing those traumas in the future. In other words, the brain has to temporarily remove the effect of psychological distance, if it needs to re-process past trauma, precisely because psychological distance neutralises fear.)
It follows that music and fear are not compatible, and so, to truly represent fear as an emotion using music, it is necessary to use music that is not musical.
One additional implication of this explanation is that the unmusical music used in horror film scores may actually be a close simulation of the original form of proto-music. That is, originally all proto-music was unmusical, and these days, as modern humans, for most emotions expressed, we only listen to fully musical music, but in the case of fear we are still listening to something similar to the original non-musical form of proto-music.
Observation: We choose to listen to speakers based on their relationship with us, but we choose to listen to musicians based on how good they are at performing music.
For speech, it is enough for a speaker to be “good enough”. Professional speakers are a thing, but you don’t have to be a professional quality speaker to have other people listen to you. What matters most of the time is whether the listener is interested in the content of what you have to say, and much of the time this is based on the relationship between the speaker and the listener (whether it be a long-term or short-term relationship).
For music, at least in the modern world, most listeners have a very strong preference to only listen to music performed (or recorded) by the best possible performers. And it does not matter at all whether the performer and listener have any relationship outside of the performer-audience relationship.
This is consistent with the hypothesis that music is definitely not a form of communication.
It is also consistent with the hypothesis that music is a super-stimulus, because the whole point of a super-stimulus is that those perceiving it want it to be the most “super” super-stimulus that can possibly be generated, and the best way to achieve that is to have the music be performed by the best possible performers.
Observation: People are motivated to listen to music when they experience a large, sudden and permanent change in life situation for the better or worse.
Examples of large, sudden and permanent changes include:
Death of someone close to the person
The opposite to the previous item, where a person you thought was dead or permanently missing suddenly turns up alive
A break-up
A war is won and peace breaks out
My own best personal example is actually none of the above. When I was young I failed my first practical driving test. Then I went for a second test, not at all confident that I would pass the second time, and I was inclined to give up if my second attempt failed. Nevertheless I did pass the second time. My response was that I got home and I put some of my favourite music on the record player and I played it very loudly. Passing my driving test determined a large, sudden and more-or-less permanent change in my life situation, because:
There is a large difference between being allowed to drive a car and not being allowed to drive a car.
It’s a sudden change, because the time interval between not knowing if you have passed and knowing you have passed is only a few seconds (ie as long as it takes for the tester to say “you have passed”).
It’s more-or-less permanent, that is, once you have a driving licence, you have a driving licence. (Various things can happen that cause you to lose a licence, but most of those things involve either very bad luck or very bad decision-making on your part.)
But how do these situations relate to the hypothesis stated here?
We can understand these kinds of transitions as being a change from an “old normal” to a “new normal”, and we can consider the difference between the old and the new as being a special kind of psychological distance.
There are potentially two cases of thought process involved.
In the first case, the change is so sudden that certain parts of your brain take time to fully absorb the change. So the “here-and-now” is still, to some extent, the old normal, and thoughts about the new normal are the thing that has psychological distance from the here-and-now.
This case will apply to both positive and negative changes, because it is a matter of all parts of your brain coming to the realisation that things have changed.
In the second case, the “here-and-now” is the new normal, and the thing you are thinking about is the old normal, which, given the permanent and irreversible nature of the change, is now far removed from that here-and-now.
For example, having been definitely dumped by a long-time partner, you might still think about the possibility that your ex-partner could change their mind, or you could just think about what it was like when you were together.
Similarly, if someone close has died, you might be inclined to think about them as if they were still somehow alive.
The second case will normally only apply to negative changes, and does not normally apply to positive changes. That is, if things have suddenly and permanently got better, you are not inclined to dwell on the possibility that they might go back to how they were.
Observation: Maladaptive Daydreaming
One of the unusual and very specific aspects of music is that some people are strongly addicted to a combination of listening to music and daydreaming for extended periods of time, and they may spend a significant portion of every day engaged in this activity, often to the extent that they struggle to get anything else done.
In this situation we can identify the psychological distance as being a function of the difference between the mundane reality of the daydreamer’s life and the fantasy world of their daydreams.
With maladaptive daydreaming, the “distance” is not usually spatial or temporal.
One common aspect of maladaptive daydreams is that of status. In the fantasy world the social status of the daydreamer is much different from their normal status - usually much higher (think king, queen, or some kind of hero), but sometimes much lower (eg someone accused of serious crimes).
This would suggest that the psychological distance for these types of daydreams corresponds to this difference in status level between fantasy and real life.
(A possibly related observation is that, compared to melodic song lyrics, rap lyrics are often very “boastful”, ie the rapper is making assertions about their own status. There may be some connection between this feature of rap lyrics and the occurrence of status-related maladaptive daydreaming.)