A good experiment to test this would be to play various kinds of music to a primitive tribe from,say, the Amazon rainforest, and judge the effects. They would be completely free from any associations with either genres or artists, and their reactions would be totally natural. I do believe that decibels have a lot to do with reaction, and also tempo. It's a very complex subject, because music has associations, either patriotic, tragic, dance-based, stirring to battle etc etc. It's hard to disassociate it objectively from these connotations.