{
  "id": 10929496,
  "title": "Psychologists identify the musical triggers of beauty and the sublime",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/30/psychologists-identify-the-musical-triggers-of-beauty-and-the-sublime",
  "topic": "health",
  "section": "Health & Medicine",
  "published": "2026-09-30T11:00:14.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "PsyPost",
    "slug": "psypost",
    "url": "https://www.psypost.org/how-music-and-images-shape-our-sense-of-the-beautiful-and-the-sublime/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "A recent study from University College London has identified distinct musical triggers for the feelings of beauty and the sublime. The findings, published in the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, suggest that minor musical keys evoke a sense of the sublime, while major keys are more closely associated with beauty. When music and images are experienced together, visual elements tend to dominate the overall aesthetic response. Philosophers have long differentiated between beauty, which is linked to harmony, order, and pleasure, and sublimity, which represents astonishment, grandeur, and sometimes fear or ambiguity. Historically, the sublime was associated with feelings of awe and terror, while beauty stemmed from feelings of love and affection. However, research on these experiences has primarily focused on visual art and photographs, with less attention paid to music. In this study, researchers Young-Jin Hur, Radvile Medeisyte, and I. Chris McManus aimed to test how auditory experiences align with these aesthetic categories. The research team found that specific musical features trigger feelings of beauty versus the sublime. Musicologists often use the terms sublime and beautiful to describe different compositions, with sublime music characterized by dissonance, rapid transitions, and emotional ambiguity, and beautiful music described as flowing, elegant, and harmonious. In the experiment, 39 university students rated 18 photographs and 36 classical piano excerpts on a grid measuring sublimity and beauty. The photographs ranged from peaceful scenes to chaotic ones, while the piano pieces were chosen to represent three stylistic periods and were categorized by key, tempo, and atonality. The study revealed that the musical key was the primary factor influencing participants' reactions. Major keys were rated as highly beautiful, while minor keys were strongly associated with sublime feelings. Tempo had a lesser impact on beauty ratings but increased sublimity slightly. Atonal pieces scored low on both aesthetic dimensions, possibly requiring specialized knowledge for appreciation. When audio and visual media were combined, visual elements overwhelmingly influenced the overall aesthetic response. The study found that the sublimity of a photograph had more than twice the influence on the final sublimity rating than the accompanying music, and the beauty of a photograph had almost three times the impact on the final beauty rating compared to the music. The researchers noted that while beauty and sublimity are related aesthetic experiences, they appear to be processed independently by the brain when multiple senses are engaged.",
  "summary": "A new psychology study reveals that minor musical keys evoke the sublime, major keys predict beauty, and visual elements heavily dominate our overall aesthetic responses when we experience audio and visual media simultaneously.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}