View all articles in this issue
The Effects of Music on Mood and Perception of a Visual Stimulus
Download this article for $1.00 (FREE for Members)
by Elizabeth J. Vella, Michael D. Irvin, Jason Solle, Scott Berendt, and Erin E. Ramirez - Sonoma State University
Category: Personality
We examined the influence of music on mood by instructing 81 undergraduate students to complete the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List-Revised (MAACL-R) both before and after watching a 15-min video that was or was not paired with a piece of music. The 2 music categories were pleasant or depressing. Participants from the depressing group experienced a drop in positive affect, whereas participants from the pleasant group showed an increase on this measure. Men from the pleasant group had the highest pretreatment and lowest posttreatment anxiety scores, whereas the women displayed no change in anxiety. The results indicate that music has only a slight impact on mood.