Behm. Res. Thu. Vol. 26, No. 4. pp. 321-330. 1988 ooO5-7967,88 53.00 + 0.00

Printed in Great Britain. All nghts reserved Copyright C 1988 Pergamon Press plc

AFFECT MODIFICATION THROUGH EVALUATIVE CONDITIONING WITH MUSIC

GEORG H. EIFERT, LYK CRAILL, EDWINA CAREY and CHRISTINE O’CONNOR

Department of Behavioural Sciences, James Cook University of North Queensland. Townsville, Qld 481 I. Australia

(Received 3 Seprember 1987)

Summary-Results from two studies are reported which investigated the affective impact of strongly evaluated music and its evaluative conditioning potential. The first experiment showed that positively or negatively evaluated music could be used to establish a conditioned response to previously neutral Greek letter stimuli. It was found that the affective responses elicited by liked or disliked music transferred onto previously neutral stimuli changing subjects’ evaluation of and preference for these stimuli accordingly. The second study examined the potential of music to change existing negative affective responses to feared animals in persons with genuine animal phobias. Positively evaluated (liked) music was included in every second treatment session involving in uiro exposure to the feared animals. Overall, results show that liked music invoked a positive affective state that increased the effectiveness of in aitw exposure. In sessions with music clients’ evaluations and fear decreased more than in sessions without music. The role of music in emotional processing is discussed as well as alternative explanations for the effects of music.

INTRODUCTION

The interplay between affect, cognition and behaviour has been the topic of many lively recent debates in general psychology (Zajonc, 1980, 1984; Lazarus, 1984) as well as in behaviour therapy (Rachman, 1981, 1984; Lang, 1984; Mahoney, 1984). One of the outcomes of these debates was to challenge the assumption of proponents of cognitive therapy (e.g. Beck and Emery, 1985) that affect is primarily post-cognitive and can always be changed through a process of rational reevaluation. Another important consequence has been an increased focus on the important role of affective responses in human behaviour.

It is often overlooked that whilst several researchers use a different terminology in their attempts to characterise the very nature of affective responses, their definitions are surprisingly similar (Eifert, 1987, in press) in that affective responses (Zajonic, 1980), evaluative responses (Levey and Martin, 1983), and primary appraisals (Lazarus, 1984) refer to the same type of responses: they are non-reflective subjective responses to salient environmental stimuli experienced and expressed in terms of liked/disliked, pleasant/unpleasant or good/bad. If the eliciting stimulus is strong enough, peripheral physiological arousal, overt behaviour, and cognitive elaborations, will follow the affective response to produce a complete emotional response. In other words. the

affective+valuative respone is a central nervous system response and the core and basis of what is general termed an “emotional response”.

With regard to the involvement of such affective responses in learning, Martin and Levey (1978, 1985) have argued that the establishment and transfer of an affective response to a previously neutral stimulus is “the carrier of the mechanism of classical conditioning. . . . Conditioning occurs only if an evaluative response is elicited and that what is conditioned is in fact the evaluative response” (1978, p. 60). Given the finding of Ost and Hugdahl(198 I) that a large number of animal phobias are acquired by overt traumatic and/or semantic classical conditioning, it is conceivable that the establishment and transfer of a negative affective-evaluative response is not a by-product of conditioning but a central aspect of the phobic response. Hence, therapy should be aimed at abolishing this response.

Many treatment studies with animal phobics have demonstrated that for most clients some form of exposure is a sufficient, although probably not a necessary, condition for fear reduction (cf.

All correspondence and requests for a list of the music used in these studies should be sent to G. Eifert.

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322 GEORC H. EIFERT c’! d

Rachman, 1985). ft is possible that failure to countercondition the evaluative component of phobic fear could be responsible for those l@-1.5% of clients that do not at all benefit from exposure (Barlow, Hayes and N&OR, 1984) If the conditioning of a negative evaluative response is indeed involved in simple phobias, the extinction of that evaluative componsnt would be an important goal of therapy. However, Zajonc (1980) described affective responses as “irrevocable” and Levey and Martin (1983) noted that it is “difficult to extinguish evaluative responses once firmly established” and suggested “counterconditioning” for treatment. In that case the crucial task for the therapist is to find salient stimuli that produce scron, 0 enough positive evaluative responses to produce such counterconditioning effects (cf. Eifert. 1987).

Rachman commented on the implications of Zajonc’s work in a similar vein: ‘-perhaps the most important goal _ . _ is to search for techniques that provide easy entry into the affective sys- tem . . . . We should expand behaviour modification to include affect modification*’ (198 1, pp. 285, 286). He pointed out that music may be more congruent with affect than is the verbat-cognitive system and sugested the in~festigation of the processin, 0 of musical stimuli to determine why they can feed into the affective system with relative ease. “Given the imperfect influence of verbal operations on affect, attempts should be made to directly modify affective reactions using non-verbal means where possible (e.g. music)” [l%J, p. 587, italics added].

The emotional effects of music have indeed been known for a long time and can be observed in all cultures (Hargreaves, 1986): it is used to express, evoke or augment feelings of sadness, happiness, and at times even ecstacy. Music has also been applied in clinical settings to treat institutionalised psychiatric patients, retarded children (Harrer, 1982), and depressed persons (Reinhardt and Lange, 1982). However, apart from some controlled and successful applications of music as a reinforcer in operant interventions (e.,. 0 Deutsch and Parks. 1978). clinical “studies” on the effects of music have often applied music in a very haphazard fashion using either only very subjective measures (e.g. therapist’s rating of improvement) or no actual measures at all. Interestingly, the only study (Gorn. 1982) which explicitly used music as an unconditioned stimulus was done in the context of marketing research to change preference and choice behaviour for consumer goods. Recently the impact of music on mood has been investigated more rigorously. For instance, Clark (1983) and Sutherland, Newman and Rachman (1982) found that music was a better means of inducing affect than emotive self-statements (Velten technique). An ingenious study by Goldstein (1980) looked at the “thrill-producing ” effects of music and found that of all stimuli and events listed by subjects, thrills occur most commonly in response to music, primarily to musical passages with special emotional meaning for a person, Often subjects reported that “what makes a certain musical passage able to elicit thrills is some association with an emotionally charged event or a particmar person in the subject’s past. as though the music had become a conditioned stimulus for the emotional response” (p. 127).

Goldstein’s observation is extremely interesting as it points to some of the mechanisms underlying the emotional effects of music. Although Tvfartindale (1981) reports evidence from studies with humans and rats f!) that the brain seems to be “hard-wired” to respond optimahy to the semitones of the musical scale, many of the emotional effects of music are learned through processes of classical conditioning. For instance, particular types of music are often associated with certain types of events: by constantly pairing a certain type music with emotional scenes in movies that music becomes a conditioned stimulus and will elicit “sentimental” feelings and moods even when only listened to on its own. Staats (1975) described the commonly experienced phenomenon of pairing a piece of music with a strongly evaluated person such as a lover. Such music will be able to elicit strong emotional reactions and images ~~onditioned sensory responses) of that person Iong after the couple has separated. This has been delightfully described as the “Darling, they’re playing our tune” phenomenon (Davies, 1978).

It follows from these arguments that, in conditioning terms, music could be viewed as a higher-order or secondary unconditioned stimulus. At the same time, it must be noted that investigating music within conditioning theory raises some unique problems. Music is not a discrete, clearIy defined stimulus producing discrete responses. Kimmef and Gardner (f986) have recently discussed the properties of such non-discrete long-lasting “tonic stimuli” and found that classical conditioning effects can be obtained with them. However, the tonic CR must be viewed as an affective state rather than as a reaction because of its obviously longer time-course. Similarly.

Affect modification through music 323

Levey and Martin (1983) pointed out that in recent “liberalised” conditioning models constructs such as ‘UCR’ and ‘CR need not refer to simple stimuli, simple responses, or simple links between them.

In the investigations to be reported here, two studies were conducted to examine the affective impact of strongly evaluated music and its conditioning potential. The first experiment examined whether positively or negatively evaluated music could be used to establish a conditioned response to previously neutral stimuli. It was hypothesized that the positive or negative affective response elicited by liked and disliked music would transfer onto previously neutral stimuli, changing subjects’ evaluation of and preference for these stimuli accordingly. Encouraged by the positive results of that experiment with a non-clinical sample, we conducted a second study which examined the potential of music to change existing negative affective responses to feared animals in persons with genuine animal phobias. Positively evaluated (liked) music was included in every second treatment session involving in ciao exposure to phobic animals. It was hypothesized that liked music would invoke a positive affective state that would be conditioned to the phobic stimulus. It was expected that in exposure sessions with music clients’ evaluations and fear would decrease more than in sessions without music.

STUDY 1

METHOD

Subjects

Forty-four female 15-17-year old high school students responded to a note asking for volunteers to participate in a psychological experiment. They received neither credit points nor payment. Three subjects had to be disqualified from_participation in the conditioning part of the study because at pretest we could not find sufliciently neutral stimuli to serve as CS. The remaining subjects were randomly allocated to one of four conditions. Four subjects did not appear for their conditioning session which left 37 subjects (mean age: 16.1 yr) in the groups: (a) Liked Vocal Music (n = 9); (b) Liked Non-Vocal Music (n = 11); (c) Disliked Non-Vocal Music (n = 7); (d) White Noise Control (n = 10). None of the subjects had any formal training in music or psychology.

Stimtdi, apparatus, and measures

Sternums. In order to minimise subject familiarity with the neutral stimuli, 15 Greek letters, not commonly used as mathematical symbols, were chosen as CS. Letters were drawn on 15 x 10 cm cards and also reproduced on photo slides. Slides were projected onto a white screen 2.2 m in front of the subject resulting in a visible picture of 1.3 x 1.6 m. Exposure times and intervals between slides were controlled by an electronic impulse timer.

A#ectice-evaluative measures. Like/Dislike (L/D) ratings of letters and music were obtained on a 15 cm line scale ranging from + 100 to - 100. In addition, the letters were rated on an Evaluative Adjective List consisting of five 7-scaled bipolar pairs of evaluative adjectives (e.g. good-bad, friendly-unfriendly etc.). Subjects were asked to respond according to their “first spontaneous reaction and gut feeling” and not to think about their answers.

Preference test. Standing in front of a wide table, subjects were given 15 cards each showing a different Greek letter and asked to arrange the cards in order of preference on the table from left to right. Labels were attached to the left end of the table (‘liked’), in the middle (‘neutral’) and at the right end (‘disliked’).

Mood. Mood was measured on five line scales, each 10 cm long (cf. Clark, 1983). The left sides of the lines read “I feel extremely X” and the right sides “I do not feel at all X”. The five different mood states “X” were “happy”, “irritated”, “anxious”, “relaxed” and “sad”.

Selection of music and procedure

Pretest. The purpose of the pretest was to identify for each subject the five most neutrally rated Greek letters (CS) and the most liked and disliked music (UCS). Two identical group sessions were conducted with half of the subjects in each session. Subjects were first asked to rate slides of the 1.5 Greek letters on the Evaluative Adjective List and L/D Scale. A rating was defined as neutral

B.R T. 26+-c

3’3 GEORG H. EIFERT er ul

when it was between +20 and -20 on the L/D Scale. Following this, all subjects listened to 21 2-min excerpts of non-vocal music ranging from classical symphonies and movie soundtracks to piano, guitar, banjo and synthesizer music. After each musical excerpt, subjects rated it on the L/D Scale. In addition, they were asked to write down the titles of their most favourite pieces of vocal music. Both pre-tests and all conditioning sessions were carried out by the same experimenters (LC and EC).

Conditioning. Approximately 1 week after pre-test each subject was seen individually for her conditioning session which took place in a reading room of the high school. A high quality stereo cassette had been recorded with the full length version of those pieces of music a subject had given the highest like or dislike ratings at pre-test. In the Liked-Nonvocal condition subjects mainly selected classical symphony, piano and synthesizer music whereas subjects in the Liked-Vocal condition chose almost entirely contemporary pop and rock music. Interestingly, some subjects in the Disliked group listened to the same classical music as subjects in the Liked-Nonvocal condition because they rated that music as negative. Control group subjects listened to low volume white noise.

Upon entering the room, subjects were informed the experiment concerned the perception of music and letters. After completing the mood scale, subjects were asked to rank the letter cards in order of preference on the table. In the subsequent conditioning phase, a subject was shown slides of those five Greek letters she had rated as most neutral at pre-test. While watching the slides, subjects tistened to music or white noise through earphones for about 17 min. Each of the five slides was shown 12 times in random order for 15 set with a I.5 set interval between slides. This means that the total conditioning time for each letter was 180 sec. Following the last slide. the music was faded out and subjects again rated letters and music, completed the mood scale, and repeated the preference test. Finally, subjects were strictly asked not to talk to other students about the experiment and debriefing was postponed until after the last subject had been tested.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Table I shows the post-experimental ratings of music and within-group changes from pre- to post-test for all dependent measures. These results were analysed with one-way between-group ANOVAs, except for the rankings of letters which were compared with Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed ranks tests. Differences between individual groups were evaluated by Newman-Keuis comparisons.

The manipulation of the independent variable (differently evaluated music) was successful as subjects in the respective groups did in fact strongly like or dislike the music or felt neutral about the white noise. This is reflected in large and significant differences of the post-experimental ratings of music/white noise between the groups except for the two Liked Music groups who gave similarly positive ratings for vocal and nonvocal music. The affective impact of the music is also reflected in significant mood changes that occurred during conditioning. The mood of subjects in both of the Liked Music conditons became more positive whereas subjects who listened to disliked music experienced a negative mood change. The mood of subjects in the control group did not change.

Table 1. Means of postexperimental ratings of music and within-session changes from px- to post-rest for all dependent measures

Condition

Liked-Vocal Liked-Nonvocal Disliked COFWOI F‘:: P

Post-test: MUSIC 84.4 86.4 -85.7 1.0 110.259”

Pre-Post Changes: MOOD 23.3 17.5 - 37.3 - 3.9 LETTERS

Like~DisIikc 23.2 12.0 -31.1 1.1 Alfect. Eval. 10.3 3.9 -22.5 0.3 Ranking 5.7 4.9 -4.4 3.7

Range of possible scores: ranking + 15/- 15, all other measures .t lOOi- 100. ***p <O.oOl; l *P <O.OI; *P <0.05.

4.45”

4.69’9 3.12’ 2.01’

Affect modification through music 325

These findings support the results of other studies that have successfully employed music to produce mood changes (e.g. Sutherland et al., 1982; Clark, 1983).

Table I shows that the change scores on the L/D Scale and the Evaluative Adjective List are significantly different between groups. Individual comparisons reveal that on the L/D Scale there were significant differences between the Disliked group and all other conditions but no differences between the two Liked Music groups themselves nor between the two Liked Music groups and the Control group, Individual comparisons from the Evaluative Adjective List indicate significant differences between the two Liked Music and the Disliked Music groups but no differences between any of the experimental groups and the control group.

Overall, these results suggest that the positive and negative evaluations elicited by the music have transferred onto the previously neutral letter stimuli. This effect was always more evident on the L/D Scale than the Evaluative Adjective List and might be due to differences in the ambiguity of the two measures: several subjects commented after the experiment that they found it easier to give their ratings on the straightforward L/D Scale rather than on the more ambiguous list of adjective pairs. In any case, the fact that consistent effects occurred, despite a very short conditioning time of only 3 min, is very encouraging.

A conditioning effect is also evident in the letter ranking task (preference test). The results of the Wilcoxon tests reveal significant positive changes in the Liked Vocal and Nonvocal groups, whereas subjects in the Disliked group ranked the letters more negatively following conditioning. There was a nonsignificant but interesting tendency for subjects in the control group to give the experimental letters more positive rankings at post-test. This could be an indication of the “mere exposure effect” that Zajonc (1980) reported: merely exposing subjects repeatedly to unfamiliar stimuli tends to make these stimuli more attractive.

Although none of the differences between the Liked Vocal and Nonvocal groups was statistically significant, it is noteworthy that the strongest conditioning effects were consistently obtained in the Liked-Vocal group. This could indicate that including verbal meaning to music may in some cases elicit stronger evaluative responses than nonvocal music. On the other hand, the almost identical mean like ratings of vocal and nonvocal music (see Table 1) argue against this notion and nonvocal music was nonetheless quite able to produce evaiuative conditioning. Another interesting possi- bility is that the human voice itself has a unique and strong affective impact: opera enthusiasts as well as rock fans often love ‘their’ music regardless of whether they understand the actual words or not. However, the potential differences between vocal and nonvocal music certainly require further experimental investigation.

STUDY 2

METHOD

Clients

Six female clients ranging in age from 24 to 48 yr (mean: 35 yr) responded to an article in the local newspaper offering free treatment of animal phobias. All clients met DSM-III criteria for simple phobias and suffered from no other psychological disorder. They were severely incapacitated by fears of either canetoads (n = 3), green frogs (n = I), cockroaches (n = I) or snakes (n = I), all of which are prevalent in tropical North Queensland. All clients had been suffering from their fears for at least eight years and were able to trace their fear back to one or several traumatic experiences with their feared animal. None of the clients had ever received any formal training in music or psychology.

Measures, apparatus and stimuli

Self-report measures. The affective evaluation of the feared animal was assessed with the same Like/Dislike Scale and Evaluative Adjective List used in the first study. In addition, subjective levels of fear were measured in Subjective Units of Discomfort (SUDS) ranging from 0 to 100 ( = minimum to maximum discomfort).

Behauioural measure. Overt behaviour was assessed with a Behaviour Approach Test which consisted of eight tasks ranging from approaching a glass cage containing the feared animal from

326 GEORG H. EIFERT er al.

a distance of 2.5 m to touching and finally holding the animal outside the cage, If a client refused to proceed with a step, instructions were repeated twice within 60 set and if she still refused to go any further, the test was terminated.

P~y~ioZogic~~ measure. Heart rate was monitored throughout the treatment sessions wih a Pulse Meter (HR 1OOT) and every 30 set epoch was translated into a digital readout by a Keithly Trams Multimeter.

Stimuli. Four live animals were kept in locked glass containers: a I .5 m carpet snake, a canetoad. a green frog, and a large cockroach (all these animals are very common in Northern Australia).

Music. Music was recorded on high quality stereo cassettes and played to clients through headphones. At the end of the pre-treatment interview, each client listened to the same musical excerpts as subjects in the first study. Interestingty, al1 clients rated the following three pieces of classical music among their “top five” giving them a mean rating of +X.3 (SD = 7.5): Morning Mood from the Peer Gynt Suite by Grieg (4: 50 min), an excerpt from the Moldau by Smetana (9: 10 min), and the fourth movement from Dvorak’s New World Symphony No. 9 (1 I:05 min). This enabled us to use the same music as tonic higher-order UCS for all clients. This particular music selection also offered a wide range of tempo and vivaciousness.

Design

The present study used a repeated pre-test-post-test AIternating Treatments Design (cf. Hayes. Hussian, Turner, Anderson and Grubb. 1983) to assess the relative contribution of adding a new treatment component to an established form of treatment. All subjects received the same two treatments (exposure sessions with music and exposure sessions without music) which were alternated in every second session. As measures were taken before and after each session, this design allows an analysis of data at a group level but also an inspection of single-case results.

Interviews and assessments were carried out by the first author whereas another therapist (CC) conducted the actual treatments. All clients received six treatment sessions of 2.5 min duration twice a week in a therapy room at the university.

At the end of the pre-treatment interview, a behaviour test was conducted. The first exposure treatment session took place 1 week later and included music for half of the clients and exposure without music for the other half. Upon arrival, clients were escorted into the therapy room and asked to sit in a comfortable armchair. A glass cage containing their feared animal was 2.1 m in front of the client but still covered by a timber board when the client entered the room. After all equipment had been attached, the therapist turned on the music, removed the board from the glass cage and went to an adjacent room with a one-way mirror which enabled the therapist to observe client and animal. Clients were instructed to keep looking at the animal, and in music sessions they were encouraged to try to get into the mood of the music and enjoy it as much as possible while watching the animal. Before and after each treatment session, clients evaluated the animal on the L/D Scale and Evaluative Adjective List, and rated their subjective fear in SUDS. The music was rated after each session on the L/D Scale. At the end of the last treatment seasion, a further behaviour test was conducted. At follow-up, 6 months after treatment, the same questionnaires and some open-ended questions were mailed to clients and all were returned.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The results were analysed both at a group level by comparing within-session changes from sessions with and without music, and at an individual level by inspecting the results of each client.

Group data. Table 2 gives an impression of the overall treatment effects and shows the data of all six clients on a number of outcome measures at pre-test, post-test and follow-up. The results reveal that clients clearly benefitted from therapy and continued to improve after treatment. The significant improvement in overt behaviour should also be noted and reflects the fact that all but one client managed to hold or touch her feared animal in the behaviour test at post-test.

In order to assess the relative contributions of including music to exposure, we compared changes that occurred during exposure sessions with music to changes during sessions without music. For

Affect modification through music 327

Table 2. Overall treatment effects expressed in means (and SDS) of all six clients at pretest, post-test. and &months follow-up

Measure Pre-test Post-test Follow up F,: P

Like/Dislike -91.7(14.6) -51.?(24.8) -35.0 (325) 9.359’

Affect. eval. -81.2(18.6) - 2 I .o (28.4) - 11.7 (29.0) 20.&S***

SUDS 87.5(11.8) 50. I (9.6) 39.2 (15.6) x49=**

Behaviour test 1.3 (0.5) ?.0(1.5) N;A 2.10’ (l-8 steps)

F-values for self-report measures refer to one-way repeated measures ANOVAs (d.f. 2. 10); z-score for the behaviour test was obtained from a Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed ranks test.

***p < 0.001; l *P < 0.01; ‘P < 0.05.

that, we calculated the difference between pre- and post-session scores across all clients separately for sessions with music and without music. Figure 1 shows the mean change per treatment session in the two different conditions. The results of r-tests for correlated groups indicate that decreases in fear and dislike as well as positive changes in the evaluation of the feared animals were significantly greater in exposure sessions with music than in sessions without music. Heart rate also decreased more in sessions with music than in sessions without music.

I~di~idMffi results. It may be tempting to conclude from the group data that the inclusion of music in in vim exposure to feared animals is clearly beneficial. However, an inspection of changes in individual clients qualifies this conclusion somewhat. As we used a repeated pre-test-post-test design we could plot the data from each client for the major dependent measures and compare whether differential rates of improvement occurred during sessions with and without music.

An inspection of all individual cases revealed that four of the six clients clearly benefitted from the inclusion of music. However, two clients were largely unaffected by the music: one client showed great improvements regardless of whether music was included in exposure or not and another client showed very little improvement in either condition. The latter is particularly interesting because following her first music exposure session she rated the music as -30 whereas at pretest she had rated the music t70. The unusually high activity level of the animal during the firt therapy session reminded her of the traumatic event that had been crucial in the development of her fear. Although there was no pronounced physiological arousal (mean HR: 80 bpm), her evaluation and SUD ratings for that and the following session deteriorated. It seems that for her the negative evaluation of the animal had transferred onto the music rather than vice versa resulting in “counter- conditioning in the wrong direction“ ! Although her music ratings in the two subsequent sessions were not quite as negative, they remained rather low (+3S, 1-40).

With all other clients it appears that the very controlled and safe type of exposure used in this study (which required no handling of the animal during therapy with the animal securely locked up in the cage} did not produce too strong negative responses that could not be “neutralised” by the music. Both the results and our observations indicate that a more moderate and manageable

s Exp. wirn music

n Without music

Like / Dislike Affect. tvol. SUDS Heart rate

(r-=3.8* f (I 13.1”) L t =3.7 l ) I tr4.2’)

Fig. I. Mean change per treatment session for exposure with music and exposure without music. The negative values indicate decreases in dislike, negative evaluation, SUDS and heart rate *P < 0.01.

328 GEORC f-I. EIFERT er al

level of fear during exposure enhances the beneficial effects of music. On the other hand, actual confrontation with a live phobic stimulus seems to have produced a strong enough response for emotional processing to occur. This is very much in line with a prediction by Lang (1984): actual exposure to a live phobic stimulus is very likely to occasion emotional processing because that stimulus information matches quite completely and consistently the phobia prototype.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

Although we interpret the present findings as preliminary support for a positive evaluative conditioning effect of music, alternative expfanations must be considered:

(a) The beneficia1 effects of music could be due to relaxation and/or distraction effects. The distraction hypothesis does not seem very plausible because, according to Lang (1984), distracting stimuli should actually decrease the emotional processing of phobic stimuli (and increase “cognitive avoidance”). An explanation of the present findings in terms of relaxation, however, is more difficult to refute. It should be noted though that the music differed considerably in tempo: whilst some parts were indeed very calm and soothing, other segments were very fast, vivacious and forceful. In any case, relaxation might not be an alternative so much as a supplementary explanation in that relaxation itself has positive hedonic properties (Teasdale, 1987, pers. commun.). In other words, part of the beneficial effects of relaxation could be mediated by the positive affective state it produces. Nonetheless, the potential interaction between positively evaluated music and relaxation effects will have to be investigated further.

(b) Secondly, the beneficial effects of music may not be due to evaluative conditioning but to the activation of positive associative memory networks. Again, it seems that these two approaches or expfanations are not mutually exclusive but complementary: evaluative conditioning could be seen to explain the process and mechanism by which affectively relevant associations are learned, whereas associative network theories-such as phobic networks (Lang, 1984)---provide models for how these relationships are cognitively represented and organised. It has been frequently pointed out (cf. Foa and Kozak, 1986; Lang, 1984; Rachman, 1985) that any technique that increases the emotional processing of fear during therapy and attaches new (positive) meaning to the phobia prototype is likefy to increase the overall effectiveness of therapy. Positively evaluated music could be seen to attach or condition new and more positive meaning to the phobia network while the network is highly activated during in uivo exposure. Both the commonly reported experiences of firm associations between particular pieces of music and certain persons and events (Goldstein, 1980) as well as the experimental literature on affect, memory and music (Sloboda, 1985; Teasdale, 1983) suggest that particular music is often an integral part of fairly large and complicated associative networks of memory.

It should also be noted that the earlier mentioned hypothesis that a negative evaluation may underlie simple phobic responses has not been directly tested in this study. Therefore, the data can neither support nor refute that hypothesis. This is partly due to the formidable problem of measuring affective-evaluative responses more directly. So far we can only measure these responses by inferring their occurrence from avoidance behaviour, self-report and non-specific physiological indices (e.g. heart rate, GSR). Rather than reIying on these after-the-fact observations more direct measures of affective responses, such as facial muscle tension (Lee, 1985) and facial expressions, must be developed and tested, For instance, expressions of disgust in animal phobics could be easily detected and observed directly during exposure and behaviour tests.

Verbal persuasion is one of the least powerful means of behaviour change in simple phobias (Eifert, 1987). It is thus a great advantage of nonvocal music in particular that it does not rely on verba mediation and can make an immediate and powerful affective impact. It was intriguing to observe how quickly our subjects were able to rate music: they did not have to think or deliberate much to “decide” whether they like or dislike a particular piece of music. This is in contrast to musically trained persons (e.g. musicians and art critics) who perceive, process, and judge music in a more analytical and technical fashion (cf. Kolb and Wishaw, 1984). The non-verbal nature and predominantly right-hemispheric emotional processing of music by untrained persons may make music indeed a more direct and powerful key to access and change affective responses. This notion is further supported by the findings of Goldstein (1980) who showed that the

Affect modification through music 329

“tht-ill-producing” effects of music were effectively attenuated by nalaxone, a specific antagonist at the opiate-ndorphin receptors. This author, a neurochemist, suggested the involvement of endorphins and the limbic system in the neurophysiological processing of music and concluded that the subjectively perceived effect of music “is a referred sensation from a central neural focus

. . with neural links to the limbic system and to central autonomic regulation” (p. 128). Such findings, as well as the earlier mentioned effects of music in elevating mood and accessing

“happy memories” might also encourage researchers to employ music in a systematic fashion to access and change affective responses in other clinical disorders such as depression. If music does in fact elevate mood and hence provide access to “happier” memories, then it could be systematically incorporated into treatments for depression. For instance, it might raise client mood just enough to make them more accepting towards more positive statements and thinking about themselves and their environment as aimed at in cognitive interventions.

Finally, it must be emphasized that due to the very nature of the present studies and the limited subject numbers, the current findings are necessarily of a preliminary nature. Also, conclusions regarding the mechanism responsible for the positive effects of music are rather speculative at this stage. However, the data were obtained both in a controlled simple learning experiment with a normal sample of teenagers and from disturbed individuals with circumscribed but genuine simple phobias. The studies indicate the potential of music to elicit positive affective responses and to function as higher-order tonic stimuli in the classical conditioning paradigm. The fact that other researchers (e.g. Kimmel and Gardner, 1986) have also turned their attention to the salient effects of longer-lasting non-discrete (tonic) stimuli is a further incentive to conceptualize the effects of music in a broadened conditioning framework.

Acknowledgemenls-We are extremely grateful to Irene Martin and Archie Levey for numerous encouraging discussions of the topic while the first author was visiting the Institute of Psychiatry (London, U.K.) and for their helpful and constructive comments on the draft of this article. Thanks also to John Teasdale for this comments. This research was funded by James Cook University Special Research Grants and Study Leave Program.

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