The sounds of music in human religious experience

Context and relevance. Religion is a significant sociocultural component of society, which can manifest itself in different ways in individual people's experiences. This article discusses issues of psychological research into the perception of musical sounds in the context of human religious life. Objective: to explore the potential of the perceived quality paradigm in studying the individual experiences of people united by their affiliation with three Christian denominations: Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism; to examine the specifics of these three denominations as they relate to people's perception of sounds within the context of their religious life. Results. An interpretation of the processes under study is proposed in accordance with ideas about the Soundscape and using the concepts of “acoustic community”, “sound marker”, and “sound identity”. A brief overview of research on sound perception in the context of people's religious life is provided. A selection of sound fragments playing a similar functional role in the religious life of people of different religious denominations was carried out. An experimental design was developed for the comparison and verbalization of selected sounds in different samples of participants: people with religious experience (representatives of each of the three religious denominations) and people with no religious experience. The possibility of using the paradigm of perceived quality to identify the components of individual religious experience and its socio-cultural specificity is demonstrated.

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