Commentary on "The Influence of Pitch Height on the Perception of Submissiveness and Threat in Musical Passages" by David Huron, Daryl Kinney, and Kristin Precoda

Abstract

Increasingly, the Arts and Humanities and Science fields are finding common ground, as illustrated in Huron et al.’s fine paper. My commentary discusses the origin of the idea that pitch and motivation have an evolved relationship. Their finding that loudness and aggression are related has been little studied in animals and I suggest an explanation from the biological literature.

Keywords

• expressive size symbolism
• motivation-structural rules
• pitch
• loudness