Charles Snowdon, Hilldale Professor of Psychology and Director of the L&S Honors Program, recently collaborated with composer David Teie of the University of Maryland School of Music.
Their study showed that cotton-top tamarin monkeys were generally indifferent to human-based music, but showed emotional reactions to music that was composed in the frequency range and tempo of the tamarins' natural vocalizations.
However, the same features of music that calm humans — long pure notes with clear harmonic structure — also calmed monkeys and features that arouse humans (short staccato notes with noisy, discordant notes) also aroused tamarins.
Emotional features of human music may have a long evolutionary history.
The study was one of 45 recently included in the New York Times Magazine Annual Ideas issue.