Can the level of pleasure derived from music be measured?

As it happens, there is a field of psychology called psychometrics that deals specifically with measuring subjective experience. It turns out that brain waves are rather crude for discerning small changes in one's experience. Better are rating scales targeting specific dimensions of perceptual experience. There are four dimensions: a) Valence (good vs bad), b) Potency (strong vs delicate), c) Arousal (relaxing vs stimulating), and d) Novelty (familiar vs. unfamiliar). All of our perceptions are really just a composite of these four factors much like all perceived colors are just a composite of red, green and blue (with a brightness factor thrown in).

I have used psychometrics professionally to measure all manner of perceptual experience including sound quality. Here it is important to note that there is a difference between the physical qualities of sound and the emotional qualities of sound. I always aim to correlate the two to reveal which physical qualities are most predictive of desired perceptions. Not all physical qualities are equally relevant, perceptually. Knowing the differences is what is important.

terry9 wrote:

"Unfortunately, that process is amongst the most intellectually difficult enterprises known to man. The trouble is, everyone thinks he can do it.

Speaking crudely, there are four levels of measurement: nominal (in which different numbers represent different names), ordinal (in which bigger numbers represent relatively bigger effects), interval (in which the ordinal property holds and the difference between 1 and 2 is the same as the difference between 101 and 102), and ratio (in which the interval property holds and zero represents none of the property)."

My Reply:

I didn't want to burden the conversation with too much technical detail, but the psychometric techniques I mention above are based upon Semantic Differentials. As you may well know, Semantic Differential rating scales are bipolar and have an inherent "zero point" in the middle. With properly chosen verbal anchors for the rating points (as per Charles Osgood and his colleague) Semantic Differentials provide ratio level measurement. I typically use Factor Analysis to analyze such data to provide a subset of psychological dependent measures. When correlated with acoustic metrics using Multiple Regression all of this provides a predictive model indicating which acoustic metrics are most strongly associated with each psychological metric. You can literally choose a desired level of perceptual experience and determine what physical metrics are associated with it.

I will often begin a research study by asking participants to imagine their "ideal" experience and rate it using the rating scales. This assumes that participants have some sense of what "ideal" is, which is not usually a problem with experienced participants. With such data you have an "ideal" target against which to compare actual listening data. It should be noted that listeners' "ideal" might not sound realistic. 

The Semantic concept of Valence measures the positive versus negative connotation of a perceptual experience. Assuming a valid and reliable measurement tool for that concept, you can measure separately for two or more different people experiencing the same music and see if the scores differ. But, the question is, how large would the difference have to be to make a difference? There's always a margin of error involved.