Recently completed research indicates consistent responses to music in multiple cultures. Putkinen, Zhou, Gan, Yang, Becker, Sams, and Nummenmas found that “emotional music evokes similar bodily sensations across cultures. . . . The emotions and bodily sensations evoked by music were similar across Western and Asian listeners. . . . The study was conducted in collaboration with Aalto University from Finland and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC) as an online questionnaire survey. Altogether 1,500 Western and Asian participants rated the emotions and bodily sensations evoked by Western and Asian songs.” This study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Music Causes Similar Emotions and Bodily Sensations Across Cultures.” 2024. Press release, University of Turku, https://www.utu.fi/en/news/press-release/music-causes-similar-emotions-and-bodily-sensations-across-cultures