The perception of tension in harmonic intervals across Indian and Western listeners: The roles of psychoacoustics and musical expertise

A fundamental task for research on music cognition is to pinpoint the exact roles of nature and nurture in the perception of consonance/dissonance, i.e., the relative agreeableness and stability versus disagreeableness and instability of concurrent pitch combinations. In this experiment listeners (N = 133) from two cultural groups (Indian and Western) with two levels of musical expertise (musicians and non-musicians) rated perceived tension across all 12 harmonic intervals ranging from the minor second to the perfect octave, played with just intonation on the harmonium timbre. The results show that the psychoacoustic phenomena of roughness and harmonicity predict perceived tension in intervals best for Western musicians, followed by somewhat smaller explanatory rates for Indian musicians and Western non-musicians. Psychoacoustics was a weaker predictor of tension ratings for non-musicians compared to musicians across both cultural groups, but especially in the case of Indian listeners. The obtained results are discussed in the light of previous consonance/dissonance research.