Mixed affective responses to music with conflicting cues

We examined whether listening to music induces simultaneously happy and sad affective responding. The stimuli were instrumental excerpts from musical recordings that included a broad range of genres. The excerpts varied in tempo (fast or slow) and mode (major or minor), such that they had consistent happy (fast/major), consistent sad (slow/minor), or inconsistent (fast/minor or slow/major) affective cues. Listeners rated how each excerpt made them feel using separate scales for happiness and sadness. When tempo and mode cues conflicted, "mixed" happy and sad feelings were evoked. Mixed ratings on control measures (pleasantness and unpleasantness) did not show the same pattern.