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What
Mozart Effect?:
The Mozart Effect and Preference
Kevin A. Harris
Indiana University Kokomo
2 May 2000
Abstract
The “Mozart Effect” describes an increase in performance on a test of spatial ability when that test is preceded by presentation of a short piece by Mozart. Some researchers have proposed that when the “Mozart Effect” is found, it is actually a manifestation of preference for Mozart. This study tested the theory that musical preference, rather than anything unique to Mozart’s music, influences performance on a spatial-temporal task. Participants’ preference for a Mozart sonata versus 1980’s Heavy Metal was assessed, and then participants’ performance on a spatial-temporal Paper Folding and Cutting task was measured after exposure to seven minutes of Mozart, Heavy Metal, or silence. This was done to test the hypothesis that those who are exposed to the musical condition they prefer will do significantly better on the Paper Folding and Cutting task than those whose musical exposure does not match their musical preference.
What Mozart Effect?: The Mozart Effect and Preference
The “Mozart Effect” describes an increase in performance on a test of spatial ability when that test is preceded by the presentation of a short piece by Mozart. It was first presented in a 1993 study by Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky in which listening to Mozart’s “Sonata for Two Pianos in D-Major” increased participants’ scores on the abstract-visual reasoning subtest of the 4th edition of the Stanford-Binet IQ Test by 8 to 9 points (cited in Steele, Brown, & Stoecker, 1999). Since then, it has been verified by neuroscientific research. Sarathein, von Stein, Rappelsberger, Petsche, Rauscher, and Shaw (1997, cited in Rauscher & Shaw, 1998) had participants perform a paper folding task after listening to either the Mozart sonata or a short story control condition while taking their EEG readings. They found that Mozart “enhanced synchrony between the neural activity in the right frontal and left tempoparietal cortical areas of the brain,” and that this effect continued for “over 12 minutes” (Rauscher & Shaw, 1998, p. 839). Based on these results, Leng and Shaw (1991, cited in Rauscher & Shaw, 1998) speculated that listening to Mozart could be stimulating the neural firing patterns in the parts of the cerebral cortex responsible for spatial-temporal skills, which subsequently enhances the spatial-temporal abilities that are housed in those parts of the cortex.
However, there is great disagreement about whether or not this effect truly exists. Nantais (1997, cited in Steele, Brown, & Stoecker, 1999), Nguyen, Shaw, and Tran (1996, cited in Rauscher & Shaw, 1998), Rauscher, Hughes, and Miller (1996, cited in Rauscher & Shaw, 1998), Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky (1993, 1995), Rideout, Dougherty, and Wernert (1997), Rideout and Laubach (1996), and Rideout and Taylor (1997) have all found that Mozart increases performance on spatial tasks significantly more than relaxation instructions, silence, the reading of a story, British-type trance music, or Philip Glass’s “Music With Changing Parts.” On the other hand, Carstens, Huskins, and Hounshell (1995), Kenealy and Monsef (1994, cited in Rauscher & Shaw, 1998), Newman, Rosenbach, Burns, Latimer, Matocha, and Vogt (1995), Steele, Ball, and Runk (1997), Steele, Bass, and Crook (in press, cited in Rauscher & Shaw, 1998), Stough, Kerkin, Bates, and Mangan (1994), and Weeks (1996, cited in Rauscher & Shaw, 1998) have all failed to find this effect.
It has long been known that cheerful music makes people cheerful, while depressed music makes people sad (Parrott & Sabini, 1990, cited in Nantais & Schellenberg, 1999). Moreover, “happy music” has been shown to increase heart rate and blood pressure and to facilitate better performance on different tasks, while sad or boring music has been shown to decrease heart rate and blood pressure and to hinder performance on tests of motor, perceptual, cognitive, and learning skills (Boyle, 1983; Kavanagh, 1987; O’Hanlon, 1981; Parrott & Sabini, 1990; Pignatiello, Camp, Elder, & Rasar, 1989; Sloboda, 1992; Wyer & Srull, 1989; cited in Nantais & Schellenberg, 1999). Taking this into account, some researchers have hypothesized that the “Mozart effect” is actually a manifestation of preference (Nantais & Schellenberg, 1999; Wells, 1995).
Testing this idea by assessing performance on a spatial-temporal task, the Stanford-Binet Paper Folding and Cutting Task, 4th edition (SBPFC-4), after the presentation of different listening conditions, Nantais (1997, cited in Steele, Brown, & Stoecker, 1999) found a “Mozart effect” when Mozart was compared against a control of silence, but found no effect when Mozart was compared against a control of a narrated story condition; both increased performance on the SBPFC-4. Additionally, participants in the story condition who reported preferring the story condition to Mozart actually did better on the SBPFC-4 than those in the Mozart condition. Pointing out that preference increases attentiveness, Nantais proposed that it was preference that accounted for the “Mozart effect,” rather than anything peculiar to Mozart’s music.
Following up on this idea, Nantais and Schellenberg (1999) observed that “in all other instances in which the Mozart effect has been successfully replicated (see Rauscher & Shaw, 1998), control conditions consisted of sitting in silence or listening to relaxation tapes or repetitive music” (p. 370). They conducted a pair of experiments to compare the influence of the Mozart sonata versus a Schubert piece versus a Stephen King short story versus silence on performance on the SBPFC-4. They discovered that Mozart, Schubert, and King all facilitated performance on the SBPFC-4, but only when the participants preferred the listening condition they were in. This contradicted Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky’s (1995) earlier work, which found that task preference did not affect whether or not a “Mozart effect” was found.
The purpose of this study was to expand upon this growing body of research and test the Nantais hypothesis, that the “Mozart Effect” is an “artifact of preference” (Nantais & Schellenberg, 1999, title). Previous research, though, has asked participants about their preference for listening condition after assessing their performance on the SBPFC-4 or a SBPFC-4-like task. This leaves open the possibility that subjects’ performance on the task might influence their subsequent declared preference; in other words, those who do best on the task may be more likely to report liking the listening condition that they actually encountered. To factor this out as a possibility, this study sought to replicate earlier studies examining preference, with one exception – participants were asked about their preference before having them perform a spatial-temporal task, rather than afterwards. It was predicted that those who preferred the listening condition they encountered would do significantly better on the spatial-temporal task than those who did not prefer their listening condition. Also, previous research has shown a gender difference to exist in performance on spatial tasks (LeVay, 1993; Overfield, 1985), yet this has not been substantiated in the research on the “Mozart Effect” (e.g. Rideout & Taylor, 1997), so this study further examined gender in an effort to determine whether it was a factor in the “Mozart Effect.”
Methods
Instruments
Participants in this study encountered three possible listening conditions: 1.) the “Classical” condition, consisting of seven minutes of Mozart’s “Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major (K.448),” 2.) the “Rock” condition, consisting of seven minutes of Whitesnake’s “Is This Love” and Mr. Big’s “To Be With You,” and 3.) the “Control” condition, consisting of seven minutes of silence (or, more accurately, “white noise” consisting of the hum of a heater and the distant murmur of voices). Music was recorded on standard music CD’s and played on an Aiwa boom box with a 2-way bass reflex speaker system.
Before the presentation of the music, participants filled out a Music Preference Questionnaire asking them about their preference for two thirty-second excerpts of music. This questionnaire asked them first, to rank their preference for each excerpt on a 5-item Likert-type scale ranging from “like very much” to “dislike very much”, and second, to pick which piece, if any, they liked the best. Two demographic questions in the Questionnaire also asked about the participants’ gender and age group (see Appendix).
After the music presentation, participants were presented with a 16-item spatial-temporal Paper Folding and Cutting Task similar to the Stanford-Binet Paper Folding and Cutting Task, 4th edition (SBPFC-4). Each item gave instructions for folding and cutting an 8 ½ by 11 inch sheet of paper, and asked the subjects to imagine what the folded and cut paper would look like when unfolded. Five possible choices were given, and subjects were asked to select which one was the correct answer (see Appendix). Fifteen minutes was allotted for the completion of this Task.
Procedures
Subjects were approached during class and offered the chance to participate in a study assessing “the effect of music on a spatial-temporal task.” Those in Introduction to Psychology courses were offered extra credit for their participation. Those who voluntarily elected to participate came to classrooms at 14 predesignated times. During 5 of these times, participants were in the “Classical” condition, during 5 of these times, participants were in the “Rock” condition, and during the remaining 4 of these times, participants were in the “Control” condition. Conditions were assigned to their times to keep approximately the same number of subjects in each condition.
Upon arrival and filling out the informed consent document, participants were asked to listen to a thirty second excerpt from the “Classical” condition and a thirty second excerpt from the “Rock” condition. Half of the groups, selected at random, listened to the former condition first, and half listened to the latter condition first. In response to these excerpts, participants were given the Music Preference Questionnaire to fill out. Following the questionnaire, participants were told that they would be listening to seven minutes of music or silence. They were asked to sit in silence, pay attention to the music, and not talk amongst themselves. They were then presented with one of the three listening conditions. After the listening condition, the participants were given the spatial-temporal task, which was later attached to the questionnaire. Finally, the questionnaire and spatial-temporal tasks were collected without any identifying names or codes, and participants were given both a written and a verbal debriefing.
Results
66 undergraduate students participated in the study, 14 men and 52 women. 16 participants were in the Control condition, 24 were in the Classical condition, and 26 were in the Rock condition. Participants were also categorized into categories by preference match; preference-matched subjects were subjects whose preferred listening condition matched the actual condition they encountered in the study, while preference-unmatched subjects’ preferred listening condition did not match their encountered condition. There were 19 preference-matched participants, and 47 preference-unmatched.
Mean scores on the Paper Folding and Cutting Task were calculated for each gender, condition, and for preference match. Means are displayed in Figure 1. Univariate analyses of variance were carried out, comparing these mean scores. At an alpha level of <.05, there were no significant differences for gender (F(1,65) = .000, p=N.S. by condition, F(1,65) = .014, p=N.S. by preference match), condition (F(2,65) = .274, p=N.S.), gender by condition (F(2,65) = .602, p=N.S.), preference match (F(1,65) = .077, p=N.S.), or gender by preference match (F(1,65) = .338, p=N.S.). The results of the analyses are displayed in Table 1.
There were some small gender differences in mean scores. By condition, men did best in the Control (X=4.00) and Rock (X=4.22) groups and worst in the Classical group (X=3.00), while women did best in the Control group (X=4.27) and worse in the Classical (X=3.65) and Rock (X=3.29) groups. By preference match, women did better when matched (X=3.88) than when unmatched (X=3.64), while men did better when unmatched (X=4.00) than when matched (X=3.33) (see Figure 2). None of these gender differences, however, were significant.
Discussion
The results from this study showed no significant differences between the Control, Classical, and Rock groups; between people who preferred the listening condition they encountered and people who did not prefer it; between males and females; or in the interaction of the first two factors with the third. This indicates that the so-called “Mozart Effect” may not exist at all. While some studies have found it to exist using dependent measures very similar to the Paper Folding and Cutting Task used in this study, this experiment adds to the growing list of studies indicating that Mozart does not significantly enhance performance on this particular spatial-temporal task. Also, these results shed considerable doubt on the explanation that the difficulty in finding a “Mozart Effect” is attributable to personal preference in music, since music preference did not seem to impact the Paper Folding and Cutting Task scores. Thus while Rauscher and Shaw (1998) may have been right in their assertion that the “Mozart Effect” does not depend on preference, they may have been wrong in their assertion that the “Mozart Effect” exists at all.
Like the background literature, this study also failed to find gender differences in the “Mozart Effect.” At first, this seems surprising, since gender differences have been found repeatedly in spatial tasks such as Paper Folding and Cutting Tasks. One explanation for these gender differences in spatial ability, however, is that men have more hemispheric specialization in their brains, favoring spatial tasks that utilize parts of the right hemisphere. The “Mozart Effect,” on the other hand, is believed to rely on “enhanced synchrony between the neural activity in the right frontal and left tempoparietal cortical areas of the brain” (Rauscher & Shaw, 1998, p. 839), so it could be the case that male spatial superiority, which is dependent on hemispheric specialization, fails to help in spatial tasks that rely on hemispheric synchrony. If this is the case, then gender differences should not be expected in the “Mozart Effect.” This is exactly what prior research has found, and the present study supports the idea that there are no gender differences in the “Mozart Effect.”
The sample surveyed in the current study was predominantly made of white female undergraduates whose music preferences did not match their listening conditions, so this may have biased the results. A follow-up replication using a larger sample would help to clarify whether these results were unique to the current population under study or whether they represent a true failure to find the “Mozart Effect.” Additionally, prior research confirming the “Mozart Effect” has used either the Stanford-Binet Paper Folding and Cutting Task, 4th edition (SBPFC-4) or a SBPFC-4-like task as the dependent variable, while this study utilized a SBPFC-4-like task created specifically for this study but never previously used before in actual research. The lack of differences in performance – and the uniformly poor scores – could indicate a problem with the dependent variable, though this is unlikely since other studies have supposedly been able to generalize the “Mozart Effect” to SBPFC-4-like tasks of spatial-temporal skill. If it is the case that the “Mozart Effect” is only generalizable to the SBPFC-4 and certain (but not all) SBPFC-4-like tasks, then the Effect is even more limited than is currently presumed. It is also possible that the uniformly low scores could reflect a lack of experience with spatial-temporal tasks in the current population under study, rather than a genuine failure to find the “Mozart Effect.” Further research is needed to clarify the issue.
Unfortunately, the lack of any statistically significant differences between any of the examined groups strongly suggests that the so-called “Mozart Effect” does not exist, or if so, either it is confined to the Stanford-Binet Paper Folding and Cutting Task, 4th edition, it is found only in certain populations that were not examined by the current survey of undergraduates, or it is so small and short-lived that the present study failed to detect it.
References
Carstens, C. B., Huskins, E., & Hounshell, G. W. (1995). Listening to Mozart may not enhance performance on the Revised Minnesota Paper Form Board Test. Psychological Reports, 77, 111-114.
LeVay, S. (1993). The Sexual Brain. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Nantais, K. M. & Schellenberg, E. G. (1999). The Mozart effect: An artifact of preference. Psychological Science, 10, 370-373.
Newman, J., Rosenbach, J. H., Burns, K. L., Latimer, B. C., Matocha, H. R., & Vogt, E. R. (1995). An experimental test of “the Mozart effect”: Does listening to his music improve spatial ability? Perceptual and Motor Skills, 81, 1379-1387.
Overfield, T. (1985). Biological Variations in Health and Illness: Race, Age, and Sex Differences. Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.
Rauscher, F. H. & Shaw, G. L. (1998). Key components of the Mozart effect. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 86, 835-841.
Rauscher, F. H., Shaw, G. L., & Ky, K. N. (1993). Music and spatial task performance. Nature, 365, 611.
Rauscher, F. H., Shaw, G. L., & Ky, K. N. (1995). Listening to Mozart enhances spatial-temporal reasoning: Towards a neurophysiological basis. Neuroscience Letters, 185, 44-47.
Rideout, B. E., Dougherty, S., & Wernert, L. (1998). Effect of music on spatial performance: A test of generality. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 86, 512-514.
Rideout, B. E. & Laubach, C. M. (1996). EEG correlates of enhanced spatial performance following exposure to music. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 82, 427-432.
Rideout, B. E. & Taylor, J. (1997). Enhanced spatial performance following 10 minutes exposure to music: A replication. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 85, 112-114.
Steele, K. M., Ball, T. N., & Runk, R. (1997). Listening to Mozart does not enhance backwards digit span performance. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 84, 1179-1184.
Steele, K. M., Brown, J. D., & Stoecker, J. A. (1999). Failure to confirm the Rauscher and Shaw description of recovery of the Mozart effect. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 88, 843-844.
Stough, C., Kerkin, B., Bates, T., & Mangan, G. (1994). Music and spatial IQ. Personality and Individual Differences, 17, 695.
Wells, S. P. (1995). The effect of music on abstract/visual reasoning performance in high school music and non-music students. (Doctoral dissertation, East Texas State University, 1995). UMI Dissertation Services No. 9600110.
Table
1
Figure 1
Figure 2
Appendix
MUSIC PREFERENCE QUESTIONNAIRE
You listened to two brief pieces of music – a “Classical” piece first, and a “Rock” piece second. Please rate what you thought about these two pieces of music by circling the appropriate letter.
1.) This describes how I felt about the first piece I heard – the “Classical” piece:
A.) I really liked it; it was very good.
B.) I kind of liked it; it was okay.
C.) I neither liked nor disliked it; I have no feelings one way or the other.
D.) I kind of disliked it; it wasn’t very good.
E.) I really disliked it; it was terrible.
2.) This describes how I felt about the second piece I heard – the “Rock” piece:
A.) I really liked it; it was very good.
B.) I kind of liked it; it was okay.
C.) I neither liked nor disliked it; I have no feelings one way or the other.
D.) I kind of disliked it; it wasn’t very good.
E.) I really disliked it; it was terrible.
3.) This describes how I felt about both pieces I heard – the “Classical” piece and the “Rock” piece – in relation to each other:
A.) I liked the first piece – the “Classical” piece – better than the second piece – the “Rock” piece.
B.) I liked the second piece – the “Rock” piece – better than the first piece – the “Classical” piece.
C.) I liked/disliked both pieces about the same.
4.) My gender is:
A.) Male
B.) Female
5.) My age group is:
A.) 18-20
B.) 21-23
C.) 24-25
D.) 26-30
E.) 30-40
F.) 40-50
G.) 50-60
H.) 60+
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