It apparently depends on what and how your brain hears things.
Musical Expectation Bias
Is it likely that such biases also extend not to just geographically separated cultures but also to "cultures" specifically dedicated to different musical stylistic categories. ie rock, classical, jazz etc?
And how might these biases color our discussions of things like "tube holography" and similar subjects?
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I will trust more someone educated with non amplified musical instrument with classical music recording than with just electrical amplified popular music for advice on gear and acoustics... Sorry if i hurt some... We learn how to listen and our acquired biases exist and will impact on soundfield acoustic evaluation ... Think just about decibels listenings levels among many other factors 😁... it influence not just our rythm interpretation but all other acoustics and musical factors evaluation as timbre experience and immersiveness acoustic conditions... A recording of piano in a church is not an electrical guitar rock band show recording.. The recording studio works is not done for the same crowd... Dynamic impressions which are asked for are not the same and for not the same goal... Musical education biases matter even for gear choices and evaluation ... The same for acoustic expertise biases which ask for musical education...
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Giraffes called studies about cheese flavors chemistry useless because it is supposed to interest primary the mice taste only... But we humans called interesting in his own way any studies about cheese tastes chemistry and cultural choices or acoustics biases because we are interested in psychoacoustics cultural studies as well ... 😊 |
@mahgister you really MUST understand the reputation of MIT being an elite university for technologies and engineering. That particular study on how certain nationals get used to their native harmonies and rhythms maybe fine for universities with liberal arts orientation, but not really engineering and/or technologies!! |
Speaking as someone with multiple MIT degrees, you really MUST understand that while MIT’s research and education focus primarily centers around technology and engineering, it in fact is much more diverse. MIT has departments of Media Arts and Sciences, Management, Anthropology, Economics, Linguistics, Philosophy, ... MIT graduates have won Nobel prizes in areas ranging from the expected physics, chemistry, and economics, all the way to medicine and even the Nobel Peace Prize. And you must understand that perception and cognition is real science, not just "being so useless" junk relegated to "liberal arts". For example, Artificial Intelligence research has now merged computer science with cognitive science, as both are key to progress in this area. The referenced study was performed in part by MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (https://bcs.mit.edu/), often abbreviated "BCS", and deals with issues in "music perception and cognition" and in how humans use music to transmit information. This is consistent with BCS’s stated objective "to reverse engineer the brain in order to understand the mind." Not sure why you seem to believe that if they were studying how the brain, for example, uses math or makes tools, it would be OK, but if they study why and how the brain uses music, it’s somehow just dumb liberal arts stuff.
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You are a good guy and i cannot thank you enough for the Joey De Francesco recommendation..I collected all i could of him and he became my favorite on Hammond...😊 But psychoacoustics study cultural sound habits and stylistic perception and acoustic perception biases and habits in all cultures... It is a meaningful study in psychoacoustics field which is not part of liberal arts science but more pertaining to general physiological and cultural related acoustics studies..
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@sfgak + 1 |
Absolutely love Joey DeFrancesco! His live performances were even more breathtaking than listening to his recordings (I saw him when he sat in with Chris Botti in San Francisco). An amazing talent gone before his time 😢 |
This is getting into "This is Your Brain on Music" territory. A very well written book, but I lost the enthusiasm (the point) about halfway through. Maybe I'm missing the point, but personally, I'm happy that I have an open mind, and I am not pigeon-holed into one or two genres. Again, maybe this is off-topic, but one of our favorite albums is the Buena Vista Social Club. We don't speak any Spanish. Conversely, we had a house guest that clearly did not like the record because she could not understand the words.
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Expectation bias generally relates to experimental design flaws, not (in this example) to subjects’ perceptions in a study. If expectation bias were involved in that study, it would likely be a fundamental issue rendering the investigators’ discussion misleading, as they’d be premised on spurious results. This is an example of why it can be hard to discuss such topics in audiophilia - there’s a “minimum height requirement” in background knowledge for stuff like this to make sense among back-n-forth discussion (i.e. > 1 person). 😉 I know that looks reeediculously pretentious in print (Eew!) - I’m sorry, and I mean no offense. It just is what it is. |
I tend to look at the brain as a "component" with the same issues concerning "wiring," "voltage," "interference" etc. Just because the brain is neurologically wired and runs "wetware" instead of software doesn't mean it is exempt from the same type of calculus we apply to "electronics." As is evident in the MIT study, the brain has its own set of built-in biases which naturally accrue in systems that have been constrained and guided by evolutionary pressures over millions of years. Practically speaking I thought the article's most salient implication was that we as human animals should always be aware of the biases that can accumulate inside our heads as we are conditioned by advertising expectations, peer pressure expectations, mantra conditioning, tribal conditioning and all the other exogenous "pressures" that become endogenous. Seasoned audiophiles already understand this and are constantly cross-examining their motives and second guessing their decisions. Something that became noticeable and sort of unexpected to me as I started out on this journey was how much impact factors like time of day, mood, fatigue and musical preferences can alter what we think of as "right" stereo system decisions and assessments. That these assessments can maddeningly vary from one hour to the next, one day to the next, and one week to the next doesn't mean that we should castigate ourselves for being fickle. We are fickle - even when we think we are being strictly logical and unbiased - and we need to get over it. |
You are right about the expression " expectation bias"... It is used In a scientific test conditions environment... But in ordinary life our "expectation biases" pertaining to our own gear can be dependant and vary in function of our hearing history and culture... The japanese audiophile dont favor exactly the same speakers design colors than some other cultures. Then before conducting a scientific test we must sample the subjects used to understand also who they are ... Or we can use very varied large samples in some studies etc ...
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