CREATIVITY RESEARCH JOURNAL, 21(1), 134–137, 2009

Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 1040-0419 print=1532-6934 online
DOI: 10.1080/10400410802633822

RESEARCH NOTE

Trait Anger and Music Perception

Mark C. Gridley
Cleveland State University

The Spielberger Trait Anger test was administered to 287 undergraduate college stu-
dents enrolled in courses in jazz appreciation. The recording of a jazz saxophone impro-
visation was played for the students, and they were asked to rate its emotion. The mean
trait anger score for listeners who rated the music as angry was significantly higher than
the mean trait anger score of those who rated it as friendly. A small but significant cor-
relation was found between perceptions of anger in the music and listener scores on the
trait anger test. Results suggest that personality may influence perception of emotion in
music and that jazz improvisation may not be reliable for communicating emotions
because of wide individual differences in how its emotional content is perceived.

Noticing perceptions of anger in published reviews of
a few jazz saxophone performances,1 particularly John
Coltrane’s, Gridley and Hoff (2006) speculated that the
activity of mirror neurons in the premotor cortex might
be leading the minds of the reviewers to equate the
sounds of vigorous saxophone improvising with the
anger that would cause reviewers to make similar sounds
themselves. Previously, jazz performing experience and
Correspondence should be sent to Mark C. Gridley, Cleveland
State University, Department of Psychology, Cleveland, OH 44115.
E-mail: mgridley@heidelberg.edu
1 saxophone performances, and (c) technical expertise
In his Down Beat magazine review of the 1958 Newport Jazz Fes-
tival performance by jazz tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, Don Gold
(1958) termed the musician an ‘‘angry young tenor’’ (p. 16). In a
Seattle newspaper account of another performance, Ed Baker (1965)
stated that Coltrane’s music ‘‘could be described as angry’’ (p. 48).
In summarizing Coltrane’s style for his book Jazz Masters of the
Fifties, Joe Goldberg (1965) referred to ‘‘the rage in his playing’’
(p. 209). In a retrospective of Albert Ayler’s impact, Derek Van Pelt
(1978) noted perceptions of anger attributed by listeners (p. 43). In
an article about Peter Brotzmann’s music, David Sowd (1994) wrote
that ‘‘rage is the primary emotion’’ (p. 14).
Note that Goldberg (1965) based his ‘‘the rage in his playing’’
remark on Coltrane’s pre-1963 music, having last listened to the 1962
Coltrane album (Impulse AS-21, commonly known as ‘‘the blue album’’
because of its cover color) before composing the Coltrane passage in
his Jazz Masters of the Fifties book (J. Goldberg, personal communica-
tion, July 14, 2006). This music occurred long before anyone heard
Coltrane’s turbulent, high-density collective improvisations that are
documented by such albums as Ascension, Meditations, and Live in
Seattle, and are easier to perceive as angry-sounding. Goldberg said
that he still detects anger in recordings of the saxophonist’s pre-1963
technical sophistication had been considered factors that
might distinguish those who perceived anger from those
who did not (Gridley, 1984, 1986). The results of nine
surveys (Gridley, 2009), however, revealed that only
about 13% to 22% of listeners perceived anger in the
playing of Coltrane, and neither student musicians,
veteran jazz critics, nor professional jazz musicians were
much less likely than nonmusicians to perceive anger in
Coltrane’s playing. Therefore, because (a) everyone has
mirror neurons in the premotor cortex of their brains,
(b) yet only a few listeners perceived anger in these
had not made a huge difference in degree of anger
perceived, this study was conducted to determine
whether personality trait anger in the listener played a
role in perception of anger in jazz improvisations.
Trait anger can be distinguished from state anger by
its enduring, rather than temporary, character. An
angry temperament is the general tendency to be
aroused to anger and to get angry frequently. Angry
personalities tend to perceive a wide range of situations
as anger provoking. They also experience more intense
playing and that he does not agree with other journalists who believe
that the anger that they detect in Coltrane’s playing reflects Coltrane’s
protesting treatment of African Americans during the civil rights
movement of the 1960s. Goldberg did say, however, that he had met
Coltrane several times, gotten to know him, and not found him to be
an angry person. He said that he perceived the anger only in Coltrane’s
music.

elevations of anger whenever annoying conditions are
encountered. To further clarify the difference between
state anger and trait anger, consider the types of
questions typically included on self-report inventories
measuring it. For example, the statement ‘‘I am furious’’
may appear on a measure of state anger whereas the
statement ‘‘I am generally hot-tempered’’ may appear
on a measure of trait anger.
Gridley and Hoff (2007) recruited 205 highly creative
high school students and played a John Coltrane saxo-
phone solo for them. Students’ perceptions of emotion
in the music were then obtained via a ‘‘Perception of
Emotion Survey’’ (e.g., ‘‘Circle the number that best
indicates your perception of emotion in the saxophone
solo you heard on the recording: friendly 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
angry’’), after which trait anger was assessed via the
Multidimensional Anger Inventory (Siegel, 1985). A
marginally significant relation (p < .056) between trait
anger and emotion perception was found.2 These find-
ings provided encouragement to conduct another study
but with college students, instead of high school
students, and to recruit participants who had not been
selected for their creativity, obtain their perceptions of
emotion in the same music, and then assess trait anger
from the students’ scores on a shorter, more widely used
2
At least five aspects should be taken into consideration when
puzzling motives and associations underlying Gold’s (1958) ‘‘angry
young tenor’’ (p. 16) characterization of Coltrane’s motivation. Each
of them helps us rule out alternative explanations for his ‘‘angry young
tenor’’ remark and leaves us with accepting that Gold genuinely
perceived anger in Coltrane’s playing. (a) Gold was writing before the
time that civil rights struggles in the United States and Black National-
ism were receiving their widest media attention and motivating a few
musicians to link politics with their jazz. (Even when such politics
reached their peak, Coltrane and Ayler pointedly disavowed civil rights
anger as motivating their music.) (b) In his review of the Miles Davis
Sextet performance, Gold also expressed displeasure with Cannonball
Adderley’s playing style and linked it to what he disliked about
Coltrane’s, yet he did not term Adderley as ‘‘angry’’ or ascribe any
other emotion in that semantic space to Adderley. In other words,
although he identified similar stylistic aspects in both saxophonists
and disliked those aspects, he did not attribute such sounds from
Adderley to anger in Adderley. This leads us to believe that Gold distin-
guished style from emotion. (c) Gold did not question the technical
competence of either saxophonist, as other well-publicized journalists
later did. So this review does not represent a dismissal of Coltrane’s
work on technical grounds, combining an emotion perception with a
faulting of Coltrane’s competence, as other journalists later did. (d)
That Gold misperceived vigor for anger is unlikely because in Gold’s
record reviews of the time he occasionally mentioned vigor but he never
attributed any other musician’s work to anger. This leads us to suspect
that he could distinguish vigor from anger and was not prone to per-
ceive anger in the musicians he reviewed, even though he was usually
quite critical, not withholding negative remarks. (e) Gold (personal
communication, October 26, 2006) said that he stood by his ‘‘angry
young tenor’’ remark from 1958. Additionally, he reported that he
had perceived Coltrane as ‘‘a difficult child’’ in the jazz world. This also
suggests that his published words were reliable indications of what Gold
perceived in the music and not likely to be a reflection of state anger.
TRAIT ANGER AND MUSIC PERCEPTION 135
instrument. Perceptions of anger in Coltrane’s playing
were expected to relate to levels of trait anger in the
listeners.
METHOD
Participants
The entire enrollments of three jazz appreciation classes
at two Midwestern universities were employed in this
study. The sample included 287 undergraduate students,
161 men and 126 women, with a mean age of 20.11 years
(SD ¼ 2.58). Questionnaire responses indicated that 41%
had played a musical instrument and 35% had some
familiarity with jazz. Louis Armstrong, Kenny G, and
Miles Davis were the names most frequently mentioned
by students who indicated having familiarity with jazz.
Only 12 students (4%) mentioned John Coltrane among
the musicians they recalled having heard before enrol-
ling for this course.
Procedure
During the first week of class, in an auditorium class-
room, the instructors played the 2 min 42 sec recording
of Coltrane’s solo on ‘‘Two Bass Hit’’ from the 1958
Newport Jazz Festival performance of the Miles Davis
Sextet (Davis, 1958). This was the longest solo available
from the performance that had evoked reporter Don
Gold’s (1958) characterization of its player as an ‘‘angry
young tenor’’ (p. 16). Neither the instructors nor their
students knew the hypotheses of the researcher or what
they were hearing. Each student then completed a rating
of Coltrane’s emotion by indicating a position on a
seven-point ‘‘Perception of Emotion Survey’’ in which
‘‘friendly’’ was position ‘‘1’’ and ‘‘angry’’ was position
‘‘7.’’ (‘‘Circle the number that best indicates your percep-
tion of emotion in the saxophone solo you heard on the
recording: friendly 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 angry’’) Each student then
completed the 10-item version of the trait anger scale
from the State-Trait Anger Scale (Spielberger, 1999).3
3
The State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory-Professional Manual
(Spielberger, 1999) reports that inter-item consistency, as measured
by item remainder correlations, ranged from .45 to .74 for women
and from .59 to .78 for men. Alpha coefficients were .88 for
women 16–19 years of age, .89 for men 16–19 years of age, .85 for
women 20 to 29 years of age and .82 for men 20 to 29 years of age.
The manual reports construct validity, as determined by correlations
with other measures of trait anger, of .71 with the Buss-Durkee Hosti-
lity Inventory and .59 with the MMPI Hostility Scale. Deffenbacher et
al. (1996) reported favorably on eight studies that validated the utility
of Spielberger’s trait anger scale. Jacobs, Latham, and Brown (1988)
reported favorably on the test–retest reliability of Spielberger’s
inventory. Cullari (1994) found relatively high reliability for trait anger
scores on a one-year retest of psychiatric patients.
136 GRIDLEY
Four levels of anger are indicated for each question on
the inventory, providing a total score range of 10 to 40.
RESULTS
The mean trait anger score for the total sample was
18.99 (SD ¼ 4.85). In response to the music, the mean
perception of emotion score for the total sample was
3.49 (SD ¼ 1.79), which is very close to the scale’s
midpoint of 4. Omitting scores for listeners who
endorsed the midpoint of the Perception of Emotion
Survey, the mean trait anger score (20.57; SD ¼ 6.16)
for listeners who rated the music as angry (above the
midpoint) was significantly higher (t ¼ 3.31, p < .001,
df ¼ 221, d ¼ .44) than the mean trait anger score
(18.23; SD ¼ 4.06) for listeners who rated the music as
friendly (below the midpoint). A small but significant
correlation (r ¼ .185, p < .05; df ¼ 285, d ¼ .41) for the
total sample of listeners was also found between listener
perceptions of anger in the saxophone solo and listener
scores on the trait anger inventory.
DISCUSSION
Although only small differences were found between
trait anger scores for listeners who perceived anger in
the music and those who did not, statistical analysis
showed that they were not likely to be purely the result
of chance. Moreover, the direction of the differences is
consistent with the expectation that the listeners most
likely to perceive anger in John Coltrane’s playing are
themselves angry. Although not entirely conclusive,
the results of this study and those that led up to it have
certainly made further investigations promising. More
than 700 listeners had been polled, and an assortment
of recordings from a 6-year period in Coltrane’s output
had provided the stimuli. Similar percentages of listeners
perceived anger, and the trend among the 493 who
also completed measures of trait anger was that angry
individuals tended to perceive anger in the music.
The findings suggest a contributing factor for a few
journalists’ perceptions of anger in the playing of jazz
saxophonists whose music was not perceived as angry
by most other listeners.4 This is important because the
4 figures. The reasons that only one example of music had
Future studies might investigate these questions that were
stimulated by our findings: Did the non-angry listeners filter out signs
of anger in Coltrane’s music because that is how their personalities
handle unpleasantness? Might listeners have imputed their own friend-
liness onto music that was intrinsically angry? Why was anger in
Coltrane’s playing not perceived by the listeners who scored above
the mean for their own trait anger who did not perceive anger in
Coltrane? How are they different from the listeners who perceived
anger in Coltrane’s playing and scored above the mean for their own
trait anger?
anger perception of those few journalists came to be
regarded by some readers as a fact about Coltrane’s
inspiration, not as just a projection of anger in the
journalists. If Coltrane were not angry, these remarks
misrepresented him. Such remarks about anger have
continued to appear in accounts of Coltrane’s playing
(Blumenthal, 2001), and they could bias the perceptions
of listeners who have not already formed their own
opinions of the saxophonist or his music. Another
implication of these findings is that the wide individual
differences in how the music’s emotional content is
perceived demonstrate jazz improvisation’s lack of
universality for communicating emotions.
The data in this study are consistent with the direc-
tion that trait anger affected perception in several
studies that did not use music as stimulus. For
instance, Guyll (1998) found that participants who
were high in trait hostility judged social interactions
with more negative emotion. Alfred and Smith (1991)
engaged high trait anger and low trait anger partici-
pants in a discussion task with a confederate who acted
in either a hostile or ambiguous manner and later
engaged them in reading about a person who behaved
in a manner ambiguous with respect to hostility. By
comparison with low hostile participants, high hostile
participants rated both the confederate and the
hypothetical stimulus person more negatively. This sug-
gested that hostile participants encoded the same infor-
mation in a biased manner. Similarly, Parrott (2005)
found that individuals who reported high levels of trait
anger displayed facilitative biases in the processing of
semantic anger-related stimuli. In social interaction sce-
narios, Hazebroek, Howells, and Day (2001) found
that, by comparison with low trait anger participants,
high trait anger participants blamed the antagonist
more, responded more angrily to the same events,
and more readily identified another person as an
antagonist.
A stronger case could be made for the influence of
personality on perception of emotion in music if more
examples of music were played and more personality
traits were assessed for the listeners. A predisposition
to anger had been chosen as the personality trait to be
investigated for the three Gridley studies because anger
was the emotion perceived by a few journalists, affecting
public opinion about one of America’s greatest musical
been used in the two most recent studies were that a
recording had been available for the same performance
perceived as angry by one journalist and that, because
the recording was not widely known, it provided a sti-
mulus that minimized previous exposure and past asso-
ciations for listeners, thereby overcoming a serious
methodological challenge. Three recordings other than
the ‘‘Two Bass Hit’’ had been used in previous studies

by Gridley on jazz-naive listeners, but no measures of
trait anger had been obtained on those listeners.
To further investigate the effects of personality on
perception of emotion in music, similarly unfamiliar per-
formances could be played for listeners who complete
measures of agreeableness. The least angry ratings of
the performances should be found for listeners scoring
highest on agreeableness, for instance. Similarly, melan-
cholic personalities would be expected to rate the piece’s
emotion as sadder than sanguine personalities would
rate the music.
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