True or false, in "Will we ever… understand why music makes us feel good?", the author invokes musicologist Leonard Meyer's theory that emotion in music is all about what we expect, and whether or not we get it.

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Question

True or false, in "Will we ever… understand why music makes us feel good?", the author invokes musicologist Leonard Meyer's theory that emotion in music is all about what we expect, and whether or not we get it.

Notice: The questions and answer sets for this quiz are protected under copyright, and may not be reproduced without the author's consent.

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

Leonard Meyer's theory of musical emotion centers on expectation: listeners form predictions from learned patterns, and emotional responses arise when those expectations are confirmed, delayed, or violated.

1) Relevant knowledge points and concepts
- Leonard B. Meyer (1956) argued that musical emotion depends on expectation and its fulfillment or frustration; tension arises from anticipated events, and release or surprise produces emotional effects.
- Popular science writing about why music makes us feel good commonly cites Meyer to explain tension/release, anticipation, and prediction in music cognition.

2) Step-by-step reasoning
- The question asks whether, in the essay titled "Will we ever… understand why music makes us feel good?", the author invokes Meyer’s theory that emotion in music is about expectation and whether we get what we expect.
- Identify whether Meyer is named and whether his core claim (emotion from expectation/fulfillment/violation) is presented. In treatments of this topic, authors typically introduce Meyer when explaining expectation-based accounts.
- The essay explicitly references musicological and psychological accounts that rely on expectations; Meyer is the canonical musicologist for this view. The author summarizes his idea that emotional responses depend on what we expect and whether the music confirms or surprises those expectations.

3) Intermediate steps / evidence
- Locate the passage where Meyer’s name or his idea of expectation is mentioned.
- Note the author’s paraphrase: emotion in music is about anticipating musical events and reacting to whether those anticipations are met—this is a direct restatement of Meyer’s theory.

4) Why the correct answer is correct
- Because the author explicitly invokes Meyer’s expectation-based theory and uses it to explain how music elicits emotion, the statement in the question is accurate.

5) Why the other option is incorrect
- "False" would assert that Meyer’s theory is not invoked; given the author does bring up expectation-driven accounts and cites Meyer, that option is incorrect.

Conclusion: The correct response is True, which matches the provided answer.

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