The Previously-Used Musical Stimuli (PUMS) Database
A number of methodological questions are likely to arise for any researcher interested in conducting emotion-related research. In particular, various questions include how to find the most suitable musical stimuli, how long the passage should be, whether an excerpt is suitable for the study or whether the full musical work is needed, whether participants should be unfamiliar or familiar with the musical samples, and which style (or genre) of music is most appropriate. Researchers may also be interested in whether these characteristics of emotional music passages differ in studies about perceived emotion or experienced emotion. The PUMS database addresses these, and other, methodological considerations. Perhaps most importantly, the PUMS corpus clearly identifies the names, composers, performers, and specific measure numbers for thousands of musical passages used in emotion-related studies.
My hope is that future researchers will use the PUMS database to
Listen to the musical stimuli that other researchers have used
Replicate hundreds of studies with the exact musical passages
Easily identify stimuli for their own future studies.
22,417
Musical Stimuli
306
Studies of Music+Emotion
Examples of some basic findings
Stimulus Selection
Most stimuli are chosen by an expert (usually the experimenter) or because other researchers have used the stimuli in the past.
Emotion Categories
Music research focuses on only 9 emotions. These 9 terms are the only ones that appear more than 1% of the time in the database.
Perceived or Induced
Most studies examine how listeners perceive emotion in music, rather than how music induces emotions in the listeners.
Durations
Most musical stimuli are less than one minute in length.