Social Bonding and Implicit Learning May Mediate the Prediction-Related Hedonic Response to Music

The relationship between musical complexity and enjoyment is often characterized as an inverted U-shaped curve, with maximum hedonic value achieved at intermediate levels of musical complexity. However, the precise psychological processes underpinning this curve remain unclear. In this study, the previously proposed link between rhythmic entrainment and musical hedonia was revisited, to further characterize the processes involved in musical enjoyment related to predictability (inverse of complexity, inherent to entrainment). Building on extensive behavioral literature together with our imaging studies of the neural architecture of rhythmic entrainment and predictive processing, we hypothesized that social bonding and implicit learning may contribute to the relationship between musical complexity and pleasure. Fifty-one healthy participants completed questionnaires and tasks for the assessment of rhythmic entrainment (sensorimotor synchronization task), social bonding (empathy questionnaires), implicit learning (serial reaction time task), and musical pleasure (a, music reward questionnaire and b, pleasure ratings of musical excerpts at varying complexity levels, to asses musical pleasure related to prediction violation). The results showed that the association between rhythmic entrainment (independent variable) and musical pleasure (dependent variable) was significantly mediated by either affective empathy or implicit learning, depending on the musical pleasure metric employed (a or b, respectively). These findings are discussed in view of the active inference thesis and a model is proposed for the psychological forces possibly underlying the inverted U-shaped curve. Beyond supporting the role of music in fostering social bonding and implicit learning, these results speak to a broader adaptive function of music.