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View submission: Ask Anything Wednesday - Biology, Chemistry, Neuroscience, Medicine, Psychology
I have zero expertise on the matter, but I can recommend a book that touches upon this sort of thing and is a brief, straightforward read: *How Musical is Man?* by John Blacking. Cultural appreciations of certain musical conventions are explored, eg. what western ears typically consider to be sad or mournful musical keys or motifs are not necessarily recognised as such in non-western cultures. So a lot of the kind of effect you describe in your question seems to come down to cultural/societal conditioning.
A book which covers similar ground in a slightly more technical — but still fairly accessible — manner, is Sloboda’s *The Musical Mind: The Cognitive Psychology of Music*. It’s been a very long time since I’ve read either book so I’ll let you have a look for yourself rather than try and elaborate any further.
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