Main Factors Affecting Musical Aesthetic Psychology

As an universal phenomenon in the aesthetic field, empathy has been the general concern of the modern Western aestheticians. At that time, Theodor Lipps created "Empathy" and Zhu Guangqian created "Concentrate attentions." Which were on behalf of the doctrine of modern empathy theory. However, in the music aesthetic field empathy widespread, music aesthetic transference apparently did not get the attention they should be deserved. So, this article attempts to recognize this phenomenon, the dominant factor influencing the music aesthetic empathy to make a preliminary study.With the method of literature, comparative analysis, experimental investigation, I get to start the study. First of all, know about the general meaning of empathy: Empathy is a theory of explaining aesthetic process. Empathy is a subjective and objective dialectical unity, the premise is establishing aesthetic relationship. Empathy theory in the West is the same as it in China on the appearance, but different for real, Chinese empathy focus on the relationship between emotion and circumstance, on the other hand, the west empathy focus on its process and mechanism behind phenomenon. Western empathy that can be traced to Aristotle’s metaphor, the transference of the concept firstly appeared in Robert Seoul’s "visual sense of the form", Lipps make the empathy theory systematical. The most famous theory of empathy are "empathy", which is established by Lipps, and "inner imitation", which is established by Karl Groos, both of the two theory made a big affection on empathy in Western aestheticians. However, both of them still have their own shortages. In ancient China, empathy theory can be traced back to "interaction between heaven and mankind". By the times of Spring and Autumn Period, musicians Chen Lian made empathy become a musical aesthetic ways and methods. At this point, the empathy theory of ancient China even more rampant, from "Peter" to "Environment", from "moved to the wonderful" to "mind and matter are relative to the sense", from the "put yourself in other’s position" to "Selfless", the transference phenomenon in the ancient writers craftsman’s pen constantly accumulated, formed the classical aesthetic theory. Then, from a psychological perspective, the article recognized the concept of empathy, important doctrines, the psychological mechanism and its application profiles, a brief comparison had been made between psychological empathy and aesthetic empathy.On the basis of knowing about empathy phenomenon, the article tries to know further about musical aesthetic empathy from concept and general process. We believe that:music aesthetic empathy is the aesthetic subject moved his feelings or emotions about biological life, survival, social life and emotional experience of nature into the aesthetic object (such as objective images of the nature, figures or the phenomenon of social life, or some images or minds appeared in the musical works, etc.), and make more strong "emotional" or "humane" feeling of the aesthetic values. The general psychological process of Musical aesthetic empathy, follow the "perception-associate-state of mind (feeling and setting happily blended)" three-stage model. Starting from the basic psychological processes, we can found that the dominant factor eventually lies in mental arousal and mental preferences. Then, the article carry out two tests to find out how mental arousal correlated musical aesthetic empathy and how mental preferences correlated musical aesthetic empathy. The results of the two tests show: correlation is significant high between mental arousal and musical aesthetic empathy, and so does mental preferences. Meanwhile, the two tests also show:both mental arousal and mental preferences are the two dominant factors of musical aesthetic empathy.In the past, empathy study usually focus on the way of psychology and physiology, nowadays, this article try to combine the view of aesthetic to discuss about musical empathy phenomenon, which is one of the innovation. Meanwhile, when talk about the factors affects musical aesthetic empathy, this article introduces mental arousal into the discussion instead of following the old ruts, and also, try to establish a musical mental arousal scale to test the level of musical mental arousal, and this is the other innovation of this article. However, you know, in order to make sure about what are the dominant factors in musical aesthetic empathy deep, we have to know more about source & course, concept & connotation, mental mechanism, the actual appearances of empathy in process of musical aesthetic and related questions, etc. So, this is a hard and complicated research subject. Depend on myself, I can’t make this subject, so I just want to attract more attentions on this question, and do something helpful to develop Music Aesthetic psychology.