The aim of this chapter is to provide a psychological explanation for the link between musical activity and emotional states. To the extent that aesthetic evaluations are motivated by and intertwined with emotional systems, our discussion contributes to a psychological account of musical aesthetics. However, we take for granted that aesthetic evaluations are based on more than gut feelings. The complex decision- making processes that lead people to assign value to phenomena reflect multiple considerations that extend beyond their emotional attributes and the emotional states they induce. For example, humans may be genetically predisposed to value images or sounds depicting or derived from adaptive contexts, such as healthy mates, safe environments, and food sources (Davies 2009). Artistic phenomena may also acquire value by virtue of “making special” the social patterns, conventions, and experiences that allow life to prosper (Dissanayake 2000). Nonetheless, behavioral and neuroscientific evidence indicates that emotional systems are always implicated in such preferences and appraisals of value (Damasio 1994; Lehrer 2009). As such, understanding the capacity of music to communicate and induce emotional states is an essential step in developing a psychological model of musical aesthetics.