Investigating the Mozart Effect

Soon after Rausher and colleagues (1993) published the original experiment on Nature, the scientific community started to work to understand why that exceptional result was observed.

By 1999, it was already clear that the Mozart effect originally observed by Rausher and colleagues was likely a mirage: the replications that were carried out to check that original finding reported either a very small effect (much smaller than the original one) or no effect at all (e.g., see Steele, Bass, & Crook, 1999).

A Type I error?

In 1999, the journal Nature published two studies (including one meta analysis) that could put an end to the story (see Chabris, 1999; Steele et al., 1999). Meta analyses are studies in which scientists compare the results of various experiments investigating the same thing. From this meta analysis, it was clear that the original result observed by Rausher and colleagues was something like a “lucky find”. Note that the original authors were never questioned for fraud: they indeed observed that result.

But it seemed that they could have observed what is commonly described as a Type I error, which occurs when a result observed in a study isn’t actually a reflection of reality, and it’s a typical error in empirical research.

Every research and study is limited in space and time and it’s possible that the results gathered by one study don’t reflect the reality of the world.

Studies that affirmed the original

Type of music

Investigating the context

Participants that liked the audio book had a Mozart effect after listening to the book, whereas participants that liked Mozart revealed a Mozart effect after listening to the music by Mozart.

Coming to a conclusion

All in all, the decades of studies that investigated the Mozart effect have allowed us to shed some light on the original finding observed by Rauscher et al. (1993).

References

• Bangerter, A., & Heath, C. (2004). The Mozart effect: Tracking the evolution of a scientific legend. British Journal of Social Psychology, 43(4), 605-623.
• Chabris, C. (1999). Prelude or requiem for the ‘Mozart effect’?. Nature 400, 826–827.
• Nantais, K. M., & Schellenberg, E. G. (1999). The Mozart effect: An artifact of preference. Psychological Science, 10(4), 370-373.
• Rauscher, F. H., Shaw, G. L., & Ky, C. N. (1993). Music and spatial task performance. Nature, 365(6447), 611-611.
• Rauscher, F. (1999). Prelude or requiem for the ‘Mozart effect’? Nature 400, 827–828.
• Thompson, W. F., Schellenberg, E. G., & Husain, G. (2001). Arousal, mood, and the Mozart effect. Psychological science, 12(3), 248-251.
• Schellenberg, E., & Hallam, S. (2006). Music listening and cognitive abilities in 10 and 11 year-olds: The blur effect. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1060, 202-209.
• Schellenberg, E. G., Nakata, T., Hunter, P. G., & Tamoto, S. (2007). Exposure to music and cognitive performance: Tests of children and adults. Psychology of music, 35(1), 5-19.
• Steele, K. M., Bass, K. E., & Crook, M. D. (1999). The mystery of the Mozart effect: Failure to replicate. Psychological Science, 10(4), 366-369.
• Steele, K., Dalla Bella, S., Peretz, I. et al. (1999). Prelude or requiem for the ‘Mozart effect’?. Nature 400, 827.