Song, Kowalewski, and Friedman studied human beings’ preference for musical harmony. They determined that they “examined the association between PfH [preference for harmony] and two behavioral measures of the preference for familiarity, one based on individual differences in the strength of the mere-exposure effect and the other based on preferences for musical chords that appear more versus less frequently within Western musical corpora. Our results showed modest but reliable positive correlations between PfH and both measures. . . . PfH . . .at least partially reflects a predilection for stimuli that are more familiar, not just structurally simpler, more regular, and/or more harmonious.”
Sijia Song, Douglas Kowalewski, and Ronald Friedman. “Preference for Harmony: A Preference for Structural Simplicity, Familiarity, or Both?” Empirical Studies of the Arts, in press, https://doi.org/10.1177/02762374231216033