How Film Scores Shape Emotion: A Listener’s Guide

Mute the soundtrack of almost any film and something important disappears. A walk down a corridor that felt lonely becomes just a walk; a kiss that felt inevitable becomes awkward. Understanding how film scores shape emotion means asking two questions: what does the music make us feel, and how does it change what we think we are seeing? This guide pulls together what researchers have found and turns it into a practical way to listen.

The same scene, different music

The clearest way to see a score's power is to change it and keep the pictures the same. That is exactly what researchers do.

In a 2020 study published in Frontiers in Psychology, Alessandro Ansani and colleagues showed participants a roughly two-minute scene of a man walking through a lonely building. One group heard a melancholic jazz piano piece, a second heard an anxious orchestral piece, and a control group heard only ambient sound. With the melancholic music, viewers reported more empathy for the character and saw the setting as cosier. The anxious music produced an almost opposite pattern, and it made viewers more alert: in a second experiment with eye tracking, they spent more time looking at a hidden figure in the scene (Ansani et al., 2020).

The authors are careful about limits. Music did not significantly change the emotion viewers attributed to the character, and because the two pieces differed in genre and instrumentation, the effects cannot be put down to emotional content alone. Even so, the study fits a long line of earlier work it reviews:

• Boltz (2001) played ambiguous clips with positive music, negative music or none. Positive music led to positive interpretations and negative music to negative ones; the same main character seemed "caring, loving, and playful" with one soundtrack and "deranged, manipulative, and mysterious" with the other.
• Bullerjahn and Güldenring (1994) found that music influences what viewers expect to happen next in a plot.
• Hoeckner and colleagues (2011) found that thriller music made characters less likeable and viewers less certain about their thoughts, compared with melodramatic music.
• Cohen described background music as a second source of emotion alongside the film itself, and proposed a model in which viewers expect music to fit what is shown on screen.

All four are summarised in the literature review of Ansani et al. (2020).

A score does not only tell you how to feel about a scene. It quietly tells you what the scene is about.

Why music moves us at all

Psychologists Patrik Juslin and Daniel Västfjäll argued in a 2008 paper in Behavioral and Brain Sciences that research had neglected how music produces emotion. They proposed six mechanisms in addition to conscious appraisal, and concluded that music evokes emotion through mechanisms that are not unique to music (Juslin and Västfjäll, 2008). Each one maps neatly onto something composers do.

The third column is an interpretation for listeners, not part of the original paper. It is a useful way to start naming what you hear.

The "chills" effect

Some music produces a physical response, the shiver or goosebumps people call "chills". In a 2001 study in PNAS, Anne Blood and Robert Zatorre scanned the brains of ten participants while they listened to self-chosen music that gave them chills. Chills came with increases in heart rate, muscle activity and breathing, and stronger chills were linked to activity in brain regions involved in reward and emotion, which the authors compared with those engaged by food, sex and drugs (Blood and Zatorre, 2001). It was a small study of trained musicians, so treat it as a clue rather than a final answer, but it helps explain why a well-timed swell in the score can feel almost physical.

The composer's toolkit: what to listen for

Themes and leitmotifs

A leitmotif is a short musical idea attached to a character, place or idea, a technique associated with Richard Wagner's operas and widely used in film. When the theme returns, it brings its associations with it, which is evaluative conditioning in action. Listen for how a theme changes: the same melody played slowly in a minor key, or on a single instrument, can turn triumph into loss.

Underscore and source music

Film scholars distinguish between non-diegetic music, the score that only the audience hears, and diegetic or source music, which exists in the story's world, such as a radio playing or a character singing. Moving between the two is a powerful device: a song that starts on a car stereo and swells into the full score can carry a scene from the character's world into ours.

Counterpoint and contrast

Music that seems to "match" a scene follows the expectation Cohen described. Music that deliberately does not match, such as a gentle melody over violence, creates unease or irony precisely because it breaks that expectation.

Silence

The absence of music is a choice too. After a film has trained you to expect a score, removing it can make a scene feel exposed and real. Notice when the music stops and what happens next.

Tempo, rhythm and texture

Notice whether the rhythm speeds up or slows down as a scene builds, and whether the texture is dense or sparse. Ask what each change does to your own sense of tension. Pay attention to the instruments, too. A solo voice, a single flute or a full orchestra each sets a different distance between you and the characters.

Scores that are often cited, and why

If you want to practise, start with scores that critics and institutions keep returning to. The American Film Institute's 100 Years of Film Scores list ranks John Williams's Star Wars (1977) first, followed by Max Steiner's Gone with the Wind (1939), Maurice Jarre's Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Bernard Herrmann's Psycho (1960) and Nino Rota's The Godfather (1972). Williams's score for Jaws (1975) is sixth on the list and won the Academy Award for original score (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences).

For Indian listeners, A.R. Rahman is the obvious reference point in international recognition: he won the Academy Award for original score for Slumdog Millionaire, and "Jai Ho", with lyrics by Gulzar, won original song at the same ceremony (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences). Indian cinema's use of songs alongside background score also makes it an especially rich place to study the line between diegetic and non-diegetic music.

Lists and awards are a starting point, not a verdict. Some of the most interesting scores are in smaller films; our guide to Indian independent cinema worth seeking out includes The Disciple, a film built around Indian classical music.

A practical listening exercise

1. Pick a scene of two to five minutes from a film you already know.
2. Watch it once for the story. Note how you feel at the start, middle and end.
3. Watch it again with your eyes half closed or looking away, and listen only. When does music enter and leave? Is there a recurring theme? Is it underscore or source music?
4. Watch it with the sound muted, using subtitles if needed. What feels different? Which moments lose their weight?
5. Write three sentences on what the music is telling you that the pictures alone do not.
6. Compare with criticism. Find a review or video essay on the film and see whether it notices the same things. Our piece on why video essays became the internet's film school explains how to watch analysis critically.

What research cannot yet tell us

Most experiments use short clips, small groups and laboratory or online settings rather than a full film in a cinema or at home. The literature review in Ansani et al. notes that few studies are ecologically valid in this sense, and the mechanisms Juslin and Västfjäll describe often operate together, which makes them hard to separate. Cultural background matters too: what sounds melancholic or menacing depends partly on the musical traditions you grew up with, so treat findings from one group of listeners as a guide rather than a universal rule.

For more close readings of the films that reward attention to sound, our list of hidden gem psychological thrillers is a good place to practise.

The bottom line

Film scores shape emotion in two ways: they make us feel, and they change what we think we are seeing. Experiments show that the same images can suggest empathy or threat, warmth or danger, depending on the music. Psychologists describe several routes for this, from reflex reactions to expectation and memory, and brain studies link the most intense musical moments to reward circuits. To hear it for yourself, watch a scene twice, once for story and once for sound, and listen for themes, contrast and silence.

Frequently asked questions

Does film music really change how we see a scene?

Experiments suggest it does. Studies reviewed by Ansani and colleagues found that changing the music over the same clip changed how viewers interpreted characters, settings and what might happen next.

What is the difference between a score and a soundtrack?

The score is the original music composed for a film, usually heard only by the audience. "Soundtrack" is often used more broadly for all the music in a film, including songs, and sometimes for the album release.

What is a leitmotif in film music?

A leitmotif is a short recurring musical idea linked to a character, place or idea. Each time it returns it carries its earlier associations, which lets a composer signal connections without words.

Why does some film music give me chills?

Research by Blood and Zatorre found that music causing chills was linked to increased heart rate and breathing and to activity in brain regions involved in reward and emotion. Build-ups and resolutions that play on your expectations are a common trigger.

Sources

1. How Soundtracks Shape What We See: Analyzing the Influence of Music on Visual Scenes Through Self-Assessment, Eye Tracking, and Pupillometry, Alessandro Ansani, Marco Marini, Francesca D'Errico and Isabella Poggi, Frontiers in Psychology, 2020.
2. Emotional responses to music: The need to consider underlying mechanisms, Patrik N. Juslin and Daniel Västfjäll, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2008.
3. Intensely pleasurable responses to music correlate with activity in brain regions implicated in reward and emotion, Anne J. Blood and Robert J. Zatorre, PNAS, 2001.
4. AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores, American Film Institute, accessed 2026.
5. The 48th Academy Awards (1976), Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, accessed 2026.
6. The 81st Academy Awards (2009), Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, accessed 2026.