Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Akst writes that MIT researchers have found that our musical tastes are culturally instilled. The researchers played consonant and dissonant chords from members of a remote Amazonian tribe and found that “they had no preference for one sound over the other—unlike the large majority of North Americans and Europeans, who prefer consonance.”
Taste in music is based on culture and not biology according to a new study by Prof. Josh McDermott, writes Emily Reynolds for Wired UK. The Tsimane' tribe the researchers surveyed plays music one line at a time, not simultaneously like Western countries, and they had no preference for dissonant and consonant sounds.
A new study co-authored by Prof. Josh McDermott finds that musical preference may stem from cultural origins, writes Vivian Wang for The Boston Globe. “It raises the possibility that things vary a lot more from culture to culture than people might have wanted to accept,” says McDermott.
A paper co-authored by Prof. Josh McDermott examines the musical preferences of a society with minimal exposure to Western culture, writes Chelsea Leu for Wired. “Maybe an innate bias for consonance exists, but that doesn’t mean every culture develops it,” Leu writes regarding the society’s lack of preference for consonant or dissonant sounds.
By studying how people from different cultures respond to consonant and dissonant chords, MIT researchers have found that musical tastes may be rooted in cultural origins, not biology, writes Sarah Kaplan for The Washington Post. The results “underscore the degree of variation that exists across cultures in terms of how people hear and evaluate music," explains Prof. Josh McDermott.
Atlantic reporter Ed Young writes about a study by MIT researchers that finds musical preferences may be cultural in origin. The researchers examined the musical preferences of remote Amazonian village and found they “don’t care about consonance or dissonance. They can tell the difference between the two kinds of sounds, but they rate both as being equally pleasant.”
A new study by MIT researchers finds that culture and not biology may be responsible for our musical tastes, writes Amina Khan for The Los Angeles Times. The researchers found that “people who haven’t been exposed to Western music don’t find certain ‘discordant’ sounds unpleasant at all,” suggesting that musical preferences are not innate.
A new study co-authored by MIT Prof. Susan Silbey examines why female students leave the field of engineering. When the researchers analyzed "more than 40 engineering students’ twice-monthly diaries, they found that female students often felt marginalized during group activities,” Inside Higher Ed reports.
Gill Plimmer of The Financial Times interviews Professor Graham Jones about how social media has influenced how people gossip. “English speakers are increasingly talking not just about what other people say and do, but about the thoughts and feelings behind their words,” writes Plimmer.