Abstract
The purpose of this study was to clarify the impact of different self-centered moods on music preference without listening to music. Participants’ affective state (sad vs. happy vs. neutral) were experimentally manipulated through the mood induction procedure, and then their preferences for music were ascertained through self-reports. To understand participants’ internal motivations for their choices, we also asked them to indicate how appropriate he/she felt it would be to select the different music types as well as why they made such choices. Results suggested that participants in a sad mood were inclined to listen to sad (and slow) music, those in a happy mood preferred to listen to happy (and fast) music, and those in a neutral mood did not consistently prefer to listen to neutral music. In addition, participants were averse to sad music when they were in a happy or neutral mood; while they showed no aversion to happy music when they were in a sad mood. In conclusion, individuals select valence-consistent music when they are in an autobiographical memory-induced mood state.
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Notes
We calculated our sample size prior to beginning the study using software G-power, and identified the number constituting an appropriate sample size on the basis of formal power analyses standard (Rosenfeld et al. 2008).
In the present study, neutral music was defined as a kind of music that was neither extremely happy, nor extremely sad music, but between two extremes.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by National Natural Science Foundation of China (31600904), Humanities and Social Science Research Project of Hubei Provincial Education Department (18Q017) and the Natural Science Foundation of Hubei University (170016). We would like to thank all the participants in this research.
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Handling editor: Riccardo Brunetti (European University of Rome);
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Xue, C., Li, T., Yin, S. et al. The influence of induced mood on music preference. Cogn Process 19, 517–525 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-018-0872-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-018-0872-7