The thin line between easy on the ear and simplistic: An experimental study of the effects of musical repetition on aesthetic ratings and of their mediators

Past research showed that musical pieces exposed repeatedly are processed more fluently, which increases their liking, at least up to a certain number of repetitions. The present experiment focused on within-stimuli repetitions, that is, repeating musical units within songs, and examined the effects of five types of such repetitions on listeners’ aesthetic reactions. We also investigated processing fluency and perceived stimulus complexity as potentially opposing routes of these influences. Furthermore, we examined the differences between subjective and objective complexity in predicting aesthetic responses, and the relationships between individual musical expertise, preferences, and motivations and participants’ enjoyment of repetition in music. Musical stimuli, varying in repetition and objective complexity, were created using fifty motifs which were standardized and combined into larger stimuli across five repetition types, before being randomly presented in experimental blocks to avoid overexposure to any particular motif. Every stimulus was rated for liking, beauty, and interest, as well as processing fluency and subjective complexity. The main findings indicate significant variations in aesthetic ratings, processing fluency and perceived complexity between repetition types. Three of these repeating patterns increased processing fluency while decreasing perceived complexity, with opposite effects on aesthetic reactions and with perceived complexity having a stronger impact on aesthetic ratings than processing fluency. This suggests that the different types of repetition within songs generate different degrees of confirmation or violations of the expectations that listeners develop, and that variations in subjective complexity, associated with the disconfirmation of these expectations, weigh more than those in fluency for aesthetic appraisals.