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Musical Soundtracks as a Schematic Influence on the Cognitive Processing of Filmed EventsAuthor(s): Marilyn G. BoltzReviewed work(s):Source: Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Summer 2001), pp.427-454Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/mp.2001.18.4.427 .

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Music PerceptionSummer 2001, Vol. 18, No. 4, 427454

2001 BYTHEREGENTSOFTHEUNIVERSITYOFCALIFORNIAALLRIGHTSRESERVED.

427

Address correspondence to Marilyn G. Boltz, Department of Psychology, HaverfordCollege, Haverford, PA 19041. (e-mail: [email protected])

ISSN: 0730-7829. Send requests for permission to reprint to Rights and Permissions,University of California Press, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223.

Musical Soundtracks as a Schematic Influence on the

Cognitive Processing of Filmed Events

M A R I L Y N G . B O L T ZHaverford College

Previous research has demonstrated that the accompanying music of afilm can influence both the affective impact of a scene as well as its sub-

sequent remembering. The intent here was to investigate whether theaffect of music can also contribute to a storys comprehension by guidingthe course of selective attending and providing a more elaborative en-coding of characters actions, motivations, and inherent temperament.These ideas were examined by presenting participants with three am-biguous film clips accompanied by positive, negative, and no music. Im-mediately after viewing each clip, some participants were asked to ex-trapolate the films ending, evaluate the personality and motivations ofthe main character(s), and complete a series of bipolar adjective ratingsabout the films actions. In addition, other participants returned a weeklater for a surprise recognition test that assessed their memory for cer-

tain objects within each film. Results revealed that relative to the controlgroup of no music, positive and negative music significantly biased view-ers interpretation and subsequent remembering of a film in a mood-congruent fashion. These findings are discussed in terms of the sche-matic influences of music upon the cognitive processing of visual scenes.

Received January 19, 2000; accepted January 24, 2001.

FILMS and movies provide a major source of entertainment within oursociety, and in the background of the ongoing action, there is typically

an accompanying musical soundtrack. Although the primary focus of film-making is upon the visual depiction of a story, the music selected for a filmis an integral aspect of the art form itself and is intentionally used to exertdifferent effects upon a viewing audience (Bordwell & Thompson, l979;Gianetti, 1982; Johnson, l969). For example, the choice of a particulargenre of music, such as classical, jazz, or rap, often helps to establish thecontext and setting of a story and in what particular era it occurs. Perhaps


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428 Marilyn G. Boltz

even more frequently, music is selected for the affect it conveys. Playingmusic in parallel with a particular episode of a film can not only highlightthe scenes significance but accentuate the emotional meaning of the de-

picted activities as well. For example, the tragedy of a death scene and itseffects upon loved ones is much more poignant when accompanied by musicthat conveys a sense of anguish and despair. In other cases, music can beused to induce suspense by relying upon a strategy known as foreshadow-ing. Here, music is played immediately before a climactic scene which therebyinvites viewers to generate expectancies about what will happen next. Thefilms of Alfred Hitchcock provide many such examples of this technique inwhich ominous music may be played at the onset of a seemingly innocent

scene of birds flying about a town square.

Effects of Music on the Movie-Viewing Experience

From a cognitive perspective, the use of music within film provides aninteresting context in which to investigate effects of the auditory modalityupon the cognitive processing of visual information. The primary questionof interest is How does the presence of music influence the interpretationof the unfolding story and those aspects of the film that are selectivelyattended to and subsequently remembered?

To date, much of the past literature has primarily focused upon musicsability to enhance the emotional impact of a films narrative. In one suchdemonstration of this effect, Thayer and Levenson (l983) monitored thephysiological responses of participants while they viewed a film on indus-trial accidents. The music accompanying the films scenes was manipulatedsuch that it consisted of relaxing documentary music, ominous horror music,or no music at all. Relative to the control condition, the results revealedthat while the documentary music significantly decreased electrodermalresponses, the stressful horror music led to significant increases in physi-ological activitythereby suggesting that music altered the level of inter-nal arousal within viewers.

Others have investigated the effects of music upon affective judgments.Through its structural arrangement of pitch, timing, and loudness charac-teristics (Hevner, l936; Levi, l982; Rigg, l964; Scherer, l979), music is not

only able to induce different levels of arousal but express different types ofmoods such as joy, anger, or melancholy. By pairing such melodies withscenes varying in their overall affect, one can assess the combined effects ofthese two stimuli together relative to the presence of one modality alone.Relying on this sort of strategy, Marshall and Cohen (l988) presented par-ticipants with a short animation film prepared by Heider and Simmel (l944)that depicted three geometrical figures (a large triangle, a small triangle,


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429Musical Soundtracks

and a small circle) moving about a rectangular enclosure. These figureshad previously been found to vary along the semantic differential dimen-sions of activity, potency, and evaluation, and in the presence of strong

versus weak music, the magnitude of these judgments additively increased.For example, the large triangle was perceived as the most aggressive andagitated of the three characters and even more so when accompanied bylouder and more active music, but less so in the presence of weak music.Several subsequent studies have revealed similar effects (Bolivar, Cohen, &Fentress, l994; Lipscomb & Kendall, l994, Expt. 2; Sirius & Clarke, l994)and as a set, demonstrate that the mood (in)congruity of music can en-hance or attenuate the affective impact of a visual scene.

In addition to effects upon perceptual judgments, there is also evidence

that music can influence the remembering of filmed events. Boltz, Schulkind,and Kantra (1991) addressed this issue by manipulating both the relativeplacement as well as the mood of music relative to that of a visual scene. Inthis study, melodies that had been prerated as positive or negative in theiroverall affect were factorially paired with 16 different film clips that re-solved to either a positive or negative ending. In one group, participantsviewed these clips in the absence of any musical soundtrack but in twoother groups, music either coincided (accompanying condition) or immedi-

ately preceded (foreshadowing condition) the films outcome. Afterwards,all participants performed a series of memory tasks, one of which requiredthem to recall as many of the 16 film clips as possible. The primary findingwas a significant interaction between mood congruity and musical place-ment. Relative to the control group, participants in the foreshadowing con-dition better remembered those films in which the music was incongruentwith that of the scene. However, in the accompanying condition, the oppo-site effect occurredhere, films displaying mood-consistent informationwere the most memorable.

In interpreting this overall pattern of results, Boltz et al. (l991) appealedto certain principles of schema theory. Foreshadowing music encouragesan audience to extrapolate a future scenario of events that is consistentwith the implied mood of the music. However, if this expectancy is subse-quently violated by a mood-incongruent scene, then this creates a sur-prise that becomes more salient in memory than does a mood-consistentscene. The enhanced memorability of expectancy violations has been re-peatedly demonstrated in the past literature (Belmore & Hubbard, l987;

Bower, Black, & Turner, l979; Graesser, Woll, Kowalski, & Smith, l980;Hastie, l980; Maki, l990; Nakamura, Graesser, Zimmerman, & Riha, l985)and is typically attributed to attentional mechanisms in which people pre-sumably devote more processing effort toward unexpected information inorder to make sense of the anomaly (Bobrow & Norman, l975; Friedman,l979).


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The effects of accompanying music, on the other hand, were suggestedby Boltz et al. (l991) to involve a somewhat different set of underlyingmechanisms. Here, musical affect is assumed to direct a viewers attending

toward those aspects of a film that display a similar connotative meaning.This not only ensures that attending is focused on that information mostrelevant to the storys plot and overarching theme but, in addition, mayenable a viewer to elaborate and generate certain inferences so that thecharacters motivations and behaviors become more clear. The resultingmemory code is therefore a more integrated one than would be the case ineither the absence of music or the presence of mood incongruent music. Inthe latter instance, memory is impaired because attending is misguided to-

ward irrelevant information that has no meaning relative to the plot con-flict. In sum, then, music is suggested to perform functions beyond that ofmood accentuation by contributing to the storys comprehension.

Music as a Schema?

Although schema theory provides a useful means in which to explain theeffects of mood congruity and musical placement on the overall memora-bility of a film, the comprehension function of music has never been di-rectly assessed. The recall data within the study by Boltz et al. (l991) of-fered one such opportunity but unfortunately, given the relatively largenumber of film clips to recall, participants provided only very brief sum-maries of each clip with minimal descriptive details. Hence, additional re-search is needed to evaluate systematically the idea that music may per-form an elaborative function in film comprehension and remembering. Thisin turn demands a closer examination of the schema literature in order todetermine the specific ways in which music may influence the semanticprocessing of a film and how these processes might be assessed in an em-pirical setting.

Although many different accounts of schema theory have been offered(e.g., Bartlett, l932; Brewer & Nakamura, l984; Hastie, l981; Neisser, l976;Taylor & Crocker, l981), most theorists agree that one of the primary func-tions of a schema is to provide an interpretative framework. That is, at anygiven point in time, people are inundated with information arising from

the multitude of events surrounding them. And yet, one rarely feels over-whelmed by this information due to the existence of certain cognitive frame-works, termed schemas, that contain knowledge on how to perform differ-ent types of activities and how people in different social and vocationalroles typically behave. Schemas therefore allow one to make sense of whatis going on, why people are behaving in the ways in which they are, andwhat is likely to occur next. This in turn serves to reduce the amount of


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attentional effort that is needed for perception and comprehension, and toorganize ones perceptual experience into a coherent and intelligible whole.In addition, this interpretative function of schemas also exerts an influence

upon memory. When experiencing a given event, the invoked schema servesto guide selective attending toward those actions and objects consistentwith the adopted interpretation so that these items are subsequently muchbetter remembered than schema-irrelevant information. Particularly aftera time delay, it is also very common to erroneously remember new infor-mation that never occurred but nonetheless is consistent with the activatedschema. This not only includes particular objects from the relevant eventbut also inferences about peoples motives, actions, and behaviors.

These various theoretical functions of schemas have been validated in a

number of empirical studies, many of which have relied upon ambiguoussituations that can be interpreted from multiple perspectives. By systemati-cally activating different schematic frameworks in different groups of indi-viduals, one can examine how the same event can lead to differences inselective attending and remembering as well as the types of inferences gen-erated to explain the characters actions and behaviors. One such exampleof this methodological strategy is found in a study by Zadny and Gerard(l974), who presented subjects with a videotape of a man and a woman

walking around the living room of an apartment and handling variousobjects. The key manipulation was the intention ascribed to these individu-als. One group was told that the characters were looking for drugs in afriends apartment; a second group was informed that the characters wereburglars, searching for objects to steal; and the third group was told thecharacters were waiting for their friend to return to his apartment. Imme-diately after viewing the film, subjects were asked to recall all objects fromthe room. The results showed that even though all subjects saw the exactsame scene, their memory was biased by the initial interpretation that wasprovided. For example, subjects in the theft condition remembered itemssuch as a diamond ring and credit cards better than drug-related items suchas a water pipe and roach clip. Overall, then, this study illustrates howdifferent schemas can be activated for the same scenario and lead to differ-ences in selective attending and subsequent remembering. These findingshave been corroborated by others (Anderson, l977; Bransford & Johnson,l972; Pichert & Anderson, l977) who have also relied on biasing instruc-tions as a means of manipulating subjects perspectives during story com-

prehension.Within the realm of film-making, screenwriters and directors often rely

on the basic functions of schemas, either intentionally or unintentionally,to enhance the overall enjoyment level of the viewing audience. Brewer(l980) and his colleagues (Brewer & Lichenstein, l981) have noted that theelements of suspense and surprise are key ingredients to a good story


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whereby peoples level of internal arousal is heightened and then subse-quently resolved. Although many different techniques are used to inducesuspense during the viewing experience, one common strategy is to intro-

duce ambiguity to the underlying plotline of a story. As in the case of theZadny and Gerard (l974) study, a screenwriter may create an ambiguoussituation that can be interpreted from multiple perspectives, bias viewerstoward a given interpretation, and then surprise the audience by resolvingto an alternative outcome. Within this overall strategy, the techniques usedto bias viewers toward one interpretative framework versus another mayinvolve the use of particular camera angles, suggestive dialogue or, as ar-gued here, the use of music during the ambiguous portion of the storys

plot. For example, suppose at the onset of a film, we see a man who isunobtrusively following a woman throughout the streets of a large city. Onthe surface, we have absolutely no idea who this man is or why he is fol-lowing this woman. However, if soft romantic music is playing in the back-ground, we might infer he is an old lover who has returned to the city afteran absence to renew his romance with the woman. After adopting thisperspective, our selective attention may then be guided toward some ob-jects and actions within the scene and away from others; lead us to adoptcertain inferences about the mans personality; and generate expectanciesabout what actions and events will appear next. On the other hand, if theinitial scene is accompanied by eerie, ominous music, then the interpreta-tive framework that is adopted is apt to be a much more negative one thatleads one to attend to and subsequently remember a very different set ofobjects and actions.

In sum, it is argued that those structural characteristics of music thatgive rise to certain moods (Hevner, l936; Levi, l982; Rigg, l964; Scherer,l979) can influence the viewing experience beyond simply enhancing orattenuating the affective impact of a visual scene (Bolivar et al., l994;Lipscomb & Kendall, l994, Expt. 2; Marshall & Cohen, l988; Sirius &Clarke, l994). Musical soundtracks may also play a role in comprehensionby activating a given schematic framework that gives rise to certain biasesduring selective attending and subsequent remembering, as well as elabo-rative inferences that clarify the characters temperament and behavior.

The Present Study

The purpose of the present experiment was to evaluate this idea by pre-senting participants with three short ambiguous film clips that could beinterpreted from either a positive or negative perspective. One film waspaired with positive music, another with negative music, and a third withno music at all. Immediately after viewing a given film, participants were


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divided into two groups and asked to perform tasks in which differentschematic functions could be independently assessed from one another. Inorder to evaluate whether music can bias the overall interpretation of a

film, one group of participants was asked to extrapolate the films futurecourse and to complete a series of essay questions concerning the charac-ters personality and overall intentions. This was then followed by a seriesof questions concerning particular scenes within the film that asked par-ticipants to evaluate, on an 11-point Likert scale of polarized adjectives,what the characters were feeling. One week later, a second group of partici-pants was asked to return to the laboratory for a surprise recognition testthat assessed their memory for particular objects within each film. Theintent here was to examine whether music can selectively bias attending

such that some objects not only become more memorable than others butalso lead to false recognitions such that new schema-consistent informa-tion is incorrectly identified as having occurred in the film.

METHOD

Design and Participants

The design was a 3 3 mixed factorial. All participants were presented with three filmclips in which the accompanying music varied in its overall affect (positive, negative, or no

music). The between-subjects variable was the particular type of music paired with a givenfilm, and this varied across three different sets.

One hundred and eight participants from an introductory psychology course at HaverfordCollege were tested in the experiment for course credit.

Stimulus Materials

Presentation Phase

The filmed material used in this experiment was based on several feature-length films

and 30-min programs recorded from network television

1

: The Hitchhiker, Alfred HitchcockPresents, and Shortstories. Eight different clips, each approximately 5 min in duration,were then selected according to several criteria. First, each film clip necessarily had to be anambiguous one in which the actions and intentions of the main characters were unclear andcould be interpreted in either a positive or negative fashion. In addition, each had to berelatively unfamiliar to most college students; display a clear beginning and end so that itcould be considered a distinct episode within the context of a story (Thorndyke, l977); andlack any preexisting music within the background of a characters dialogue. Last, each cliphad to contain several different objects that could later be tested for in a recognition memorytask.

These eight film clips were then presented to an independent group of six participants

who were asked to rate each, on a 7-point scale, for its degree of familiarity (1 = veryfamiliar) and ambiguity (1 = very ambiguous). Those three film clips deemed the mostambiguous were then used as stimuli for the actual experiment.

The first scene was from the movie Cat People (Fries & Schrader, l982) and depicts asister who has just arrived at her brothers home after a long separation. They become

1. The use of all filmed material in this experiment conformed to the specifications of theHouse Report on piracy and counterfeiting amendments (House Report 97-495, pp. 8-9).


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reacquainted and examine various memorabilia from their childhood. Without having seenthe rest of the movie, the intentions of the brother toward his sister are very unclear. Thesecond scene was taken from the movie Vertigo (Hitchcock, l958) in which a man follows awoman through the streets of San Francisco, stopping at various locales along the way.

From this episode alone, the relationship between the two characters is unclear. The thirdand final scene was from an episode of the television show, The Hitchhiker, entitled SplitDecisions (Chesler, 1984). A real-estate agent meets identical female twins at their home,which contains various props they have inherited from their magician father. Both sistersare very eccentric and it is unclear whether they intend to harm or seduce the visiting real-estate agent. These three film clips were given new titles to distinguish them in the partici-pants memory. In addition, even though all participants in the pretest were not familiarwith any of the films, it is possible they may have heard of their original titles, which couldhave had a biasing effect upon the experimental results. Hence, Cat People was renamedThe Reunion, Vertigo was relabeled The Drive, and SplitDecisions was renamed The Sale.A more detailed description of each film clip is presented in Appendix A.

For each of the three films, eight musical compositions were selected as potential stimuli:four tunes expressing a positive mood and the remaining four a negative, suspenseful mood.Because of their potential familiarity, none of these melodies constituted the original musi-cal score of a given film. Instead, each was considered relatively obscure to most collegestudents and selected on the basis of those structural parameters identified in the past litera-ture (Hevner, l936; Levi, l982; Rigg, l964; Scherer, l979) as conveying positive vs. negativemusic. In general, the negative music displayed a minor mode, atonality, and an irregularrhythm. Conversely, the positive music displayed a major mode, a consistent tonality scheme,and a very predictable rhythm. All melodies were instrumental with no lyrics.

A pretest was then conducted to validate the affect and familiarity of all tunes as well as

the appropriateness of a given melody relative to a given film clip. Ten independent judgeswere first asked to rate each melody, on a 7-point scale, for its overall familiarity (1 = veryfamiliar) and affect (1 = very positive) and to provide two or three adjectives that seemedmost descriptive of the tune. Results confirmed that those melodies selected as positive andnegative were in fact perceived as such, and that all melodies were completely unfamiliar toall participants. Following this initial set of ratings, participants then watched a given filmclip while listening to its respective set of four positive melodies and were asked to select theone melody that seemed most appropriate to that clip. This procedure was then repeatedfor the set of negative melodies as well as the set of tunes for the two remaining film clips.On the basis of these judgments, the following positive tunes were paired with each of thethree film clips: Blossom Meadow (Winston, l982) for the film Cat People - The Reunion;

Adagio for Strings (Barber, 1938) for the film Vertigo - The Drive; and Schutzliesel(Scholz,l993) for the film Split Decisions- The Sale. For the negative pairings, all three film clipswere paired with different selections from the Rubycon album by Tangerine Dream (1975).Each piece of music was approximately 5 min in duration and was edited such that it playedthroughout a given film clip. A structural description of these six melodies is presented inAppendix B.

A final pretest was then conducted not only to ensure that the selected pairings wererelatively valid ones but to aid in the selection of items for a subsequent recognition memorytest. An independent group of 12 participants was asked to view the three film clips, pairedwith accompanying music and after each, to provide an interpretation of the film and a

description of what they thought would happen next. They were also asked to recall anyobjects that came to mind and to list a set of objects they had expected to see but did not.These results confirmed that the accompanying music did indeed seem to bias participantsresponses.

Last, the three different film clips were arranged into 9 presentation orders for counter-balancing purposes. Within a given order, one clip was paired with positive music, a secondwith negative music, and the third with no music at all. Across the different orders, thetemporal sequence of the three individual film clips was varied such that each clip appearedin each of the three serial positions. These three arrangements were then factorially crossed


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with three other arrangements in which the affect of the accompanying music also appearedin each of the three serial positions.

Testing Phase

In the testing phase of the experiment, a questionnaire was constructed for each film clipthat was designed to evaluate participants interpretations of each scene. They were firstasked to extrapolate a films ending and describe what they thought was going to happennext. The participants were then asked to indicate whether they believed (yes or no) thatone of the main characters in the scene was planning on harming the other (brother hurtinghis sister in The Reunion; man hurting woman in The Drive; and the twins harming thereal-estate agent in The Sale) and to justify the reasons for their response. In addition, theywere asked to describe the personality and motivations of the main character.

In the second part of the questionnaire, the participants were asked to complete a seriesof four questions for each film by rating a characters feelings or intentions on an 11-point

bipolar adjective scale, ranging from 5 to 0 to +5. The sets of adjective pairs for each filmwere constructed from the responses obtained within the final pretest and are shown inAppendix A .

For the memory phase of the experiment, a set of objects was selected for each film thatfell into four categories: old positive and negative objects that had actually been present inthe film, and new positive and negative objects that had never been present but were consis-tent with the affective interpretation of the film. These items were obtained from the earlierpretest in which a group of participants was asked to interpret each film and produce bothold and new objects. To ensure greater validity, these items were presented to an indepen-dent group of 12 participants, who after viewing a given music version of each of the threefilm clips, were asked to judge the overall valence of an object on a 7-point scale (1 = very

positive). This resulted in a total of 20 word items for each film clip: 5 old positive, 5 oldnegative, 5 new positive, and 5 new negative. Appendix A contains a complete list of itemsfor each film.

Apparatus

A Panasonic AG-1950 video-editing system, connected to two Panasonic VCRs and twoNEC PM-1971A television monitors, was used to copy and edit the videotapes. Accompa-nying music was imposed by playing prerecorded music from a Kenwood KR-V5570 stereoreceiver through a Sima SSM-3 sound mixing board, which allowed any existing dialogue

within a film to be preserved. The volume of the music relative to that of the scene wasadjusted such that the perceived ratio was equivalent across all music/film pairs and ap-proximately 3/4 the amplitude of the scenes dialogue.

During the actual experiment, the participants viewed the set of filmed episodes on a 19-in. Panasonic CT-20R12T television monitor interfaced with a Panasonic PV-2501 video-cassette player. For the recognition memory task, the list of words for each film was pre-sented via the PsyScope software program (Cohen, MacWhinney, Flatt, & Provost, l993)on four Power Mac 6115 CD computers.

Procedure

All participants were randomly assigned to one of the nine counterbalancing conditions.In order to independently assess the effects of music on the interpretation and rememberingof films, respectively, participants were randomly assigned to one of two task groups. Ineach, they were informed that they would be watching a set of film clips and later askedsome questions. Participants in the first group were tested on the same day that the filmswere presented. Immediately after viewing a given clip, they were administered a question-naire that asked them to extrapolate the films ending, interpret the characters motivations


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and actions, and complete the set of adjective ratings. After all three film clips had beenpresented, participants were also asked to indicate whether they had previously seen any ofthe films or heard any of the melodies. This session lasted approximately 45 min.

The second group merely viewed the films during their presentation and afterwards,

they too were asked if any of the films or melodies were familiar. One week later, theyreturned to the laboratory and were given a surprise recognition memory test. For each ofthe three film clips, participants were presented with a randomized list of 20 words thatwere flashed onto the computer screen in front of them. The word remained on the screenuntil the individual pressed either the old or new key on the computer console, atwhich point the next word appeared. Before each task began, the participants were giventhe title of the respective film as well as a brief, one-sentence description of the clip torefresh their memory. The ordering of the three sets of memory tasks was identical to that ofthe presentation phase of the experiment. This phase of the experiment was approximately15 min in duration.

RESULTS

Separate analyses were conducted on the three dependent measures ofinterest, namely, the interpretative responses, adjective ratings, and the rec-ognition memory data. In each, the data were collapsed over the variableof film order so that the resulting statistical design was a 3 3 mixedfactorial in which musical affect was the repeated-measures variable andfilm instance/musical affect pairing was the between-subjects variable. When

significant effects emerged, they were further analyzed through a set ofTukey post-hoc comparisons whose error term was adjusted for repeated-measures variables. Given that two participants had previously seen Ver-tigo, their entire data set for this particular film was omitted.

Interpretative Responses

In order to obtain a single quantitative value for the set of interpretative

responses to each film, four naive judges evaluated participants responsesto the extrapolation task and the set of short-answer questions. They as-signed a value that ranged from 3 to 0 to +3 that was based not only onwhat participants thought would happen next, but also on whether theybelieved one character was going to harm another and what kind of personthey thought the main character was. A score of 3 corresponded to astrongly negative interpretation involving death or extreme violence. A scoreof 0 reflected a very neutral interpretation that was neither positive nor

negative. Finally, a score of +3 suggested a very positive interpretation in-volving some form of a very happy outcome. Overall, the four judges dis-played a relatively high degree of agreement (r2 = .95), and their scoreswere averaged to obtain a single value for the statistical analysis.

An overall analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed a significant maineffect of music, F

2,28= 21.47, p < .0001, which is depicted in Figure 1.

Notice that in the no-music condition, all scores cluster around a value of 0


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corresponding to a neutral valence, thereby providing some validity to theambiguity of films used in this experiment. Relative to this control group,positive accompanying music led to more positive interpretations (p < .01)whereas negative accompanying music led to more negative interpretations(p < .01).

Figure 1 also shows that the effect of music generalized to all three filmclips. Nonetheless, a significant interaction between musical affect and filminstance, F

4,56= 3.21,p < .05, revealed that the affect of music differentially

influenced the individual films. In the positive music condition, the filmVertigo produced a significantly higher rating (p < .05) than the two re-maining films, and in the negative music condition, it produced the lowestrating. Conversely, the film Split Decisions was perceived to be the mostnegative film in the negative music condition (p < .05) and the least positivein the positive music condition.

Content Analysis

In order to obtain insight into the nature of the interpretative responses,a content analysis was next conducted on both the extrapolation and short-answer questions. The same four judges who provided the set of interpre-tative scores were asked to code the responses into various categories thatemerged from the overall data set. Although individual participants useddifferent language to express their interpretation of a given film, a rela-

Fig. 1. Mean interpretative scores as function of the affect of accompanying music and filminstance. Error bars denote standard deviations.


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tively small set of themes consistently emerged. The judges were thereforeable to unanimously agree on the verbal identification of those motivationsassociated with a characters behavior as well as the set of adjectives (and

their synonyms) that described the characters personality. The results areshown in Table 1, where for each experimental condition, three columns ofresponses are provided: the percentage of participants who claimed thatone character would harm the other; the various intentions or motivationsascribed to the main character(s); and the personality traits used to de-scribe the main character(s).

For responses to the harm question, two of the three films (Cat People,Split Decisions) produced the predicted pattern of results. Although the

frequency of yes/no responses was evenly distributed in the no-music con-dition, responses in the positive-music condition were biased toward NO,one character will not harm the other but toward YES, one will harmthe other in the negative-music condition. The one exception was the filmVertigo. Here, almost all participants in both the positive and no musicconditions did not think the man would harm the womanin other words,

TABLE 1Content Analysis of the Interpretative Responses

Harm? Interpretation Brothers Personality

I. Cat PeopleThe Reunion

A. Positive MusicYes .17 Happy life together .44 Kind/caring .33No .83 Will fall in love .22 Loving .22

Sister will move in Playful .22with brother .22 Protective .17

Brother will harm Possessive .06sister .11B. Negative Music

Yes .94 Brother will harm sister .39 Crazy/deranged .22No .06 Brother will kill sister .33 Evil .17

Brother will do super- Manipulative .17natural harm to sister .17 Controlling/possessive .17

Sister will discover Mysterious .17something evil about Violent .06brother .11 Self-centered .06

C. No Music

Yes .44 Will have a sexual relation .28 Caring .28No .56 Brother will share family Manipulative .28

secret with sister .22 Strange .17Will have a happy life .17 Secretive .17Brother will try to win Troubled .06

sisters inheritance .17 Driven .06Brother will initiate a

sinister event .17


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TABLE 1 (CONTINUED)

Harm? Interpretation Brothers Personality

II. VertigoThe Drive

A. Positive MusicYes 0.00 Man is long-lost lover Caring/loving .35No 1.00 and/or is romantically Sensitive .23

infatuated with woman .88 Romantic .11Man is a private Nice .11

investigator .11 Shy .11Gentle .06

B. Negative MusicYes .82 Man is a hit man who Cold .47No .18 will murder woman .47 Lonely .35

Man will harm woman .35 Compassionate .11

Man is supposed to kill Secretive .06woman but is morallyincapable .11

Man is a privateinvestigator .06

C. No MusicYes .06 Man is a private Intelligent .28No .94 investigator .77 Analytical .28

Will become romantic- Curious .17ally involved .17 Honest .11

III. Split DecisionsThe Sale

A. Positive MusicYes .12 Twins will seduce Playful .43No .88 the real-estate agent .50 Strange .39

Twins want to do magic Sexy .11tricks on agent .44 Childlike .06

Twins will hurt man .06B. Negative Music

Yes .94 Twins will kill agent .67 Insane/psychotic .61No .06 Twins will hurt agent .22 Evil .22

Twins will brainwash Cold/unfeeling .11

agent .06 Possessed .06C. No MusicYes .50 Twins will force agent Strange/disturbed .50No .50 to do magic tricks .39 Stupid/inane .22

Twins will hurt agent .28 Adventuresome .17Twins will seduce agent .23 Manipulating .11Twins will possess agent .11

Numerical values represent the proportion of participants responding to a given cat-egory.

positive music exerted no influence upon behavior. However, the negativemusic did bias responses in that the majority of participants claimed theman would harm the woman.

The two remaining analyses are more interesting because they reveal theperceived intentions and temperament of the main characters as a function


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of the accompanying soundtrack. In the film Cat People, participants inthe no-music condition produced a wide range of scenarios surroundingthe brothers actions toward his sister. Some thought the two might eventu-

ally engage in a sexual relationship (.28) or achieve a happy life together(.17) while others thought the brother might reveal a family secret to hissister (.22), try to win her inheritance (.17), or initiate some sort of sinisterevent (.17). The personality assessment of the brother was also mixed andproduced descriptive adjectives that ranged from manipulative, strange,and secretive to troubled and caring. However, in the presence of positive-music, participants responses displayed much less variability: most pre-dicted that the brother and sister would either live together (.22), develop a

happy relationship (.44), or fall in love with one another (.22). In addition,the personality of the brother was consistently described as kind/caring,loving, and playful. On the other hand, the presence of negative music castthe brother in a very different light. Here, the interpretative responses wereall negative in that participants believed the brother would either hurt (.39),kill (.33), induce some sort of supernatural harm to his sister (.17) or atbest, the sister would discover something evil about her brother (.11). Con-sistent with these ascribed intentions, the brothers personality was describedas evil, crazy/deranged, mysterious, manipulative, dominating, violent, andself-centered.

Table 1 reveals a similar pattern of results for the two remaining films.In the no-music condition ofVertigo, the man was most often perceived asa private investigator who was intelligent, curious, and analytical. How-ever, the same man was described as a sensitive, caring long-lost lover ro-mantically infatuated with the woman when the accompanying soundtrackwas positive in affect, but a cold, lonely hit man when the accompanyingmusic was negative in affect. Last, the film Split Decisions also produced awide range of both positive and negative responses in the no-music condi-tion. The presence of positive music, however, led participants to believethat the twin sisters were strange, playful women who merely intended toseduce or perform magic tricks on the real-estate agent but in the presenceof negative music, insane psychotic sisters who meant to kill or harm theagent. In sum then, the affect of music exerted a very strong influence onparticipants interpretations such that responses were biased toward theparticular mood of the music.

Adjective Ratings

For the adjective ratings, participants were asked to rate the actions andfeelings of the characters in each film on four 11-point bipolar adjectivescales. After converting all of the negative adjectives to negative numbersand the positive adjectives to positive numbers, the set of ratings for a


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given film were averaged together to obtain a single score. These are shownin Figure 2 as a function of film instance and the affect of the accompany-ing music.

The overall ANOVA revealed a main effect of music, F2,28 = 19.52,p


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Hit Rate

An overall 2 3 3 ANOVA was conducted that evaluated the repeatedmeasures variables of object affect (positive, negative) and musical affect(positive, negative, no music) for the three participant groups who variedin the particular film clip that was paired with a given type of musicalaffect. The most important finding was a significant two-way interactionbetween the affect of remembered objects and the affect of the accompany-ing music, F

2,46= 25.87,p < .001, which is shown in Figure 3. In the no-

music condition, positive items were better remembered than negative items(p < .05). However, the more interesting finding is that relative to the posi-tive items in the control condition, the hit rate of these remembered objects

significantly increased in the presence of positive music (p < .05) but sig-nificantly decreased in the presence of negative music (p < .05). The oppo-site effect was observed with negative items: relative to the control group,these objects became easier to remember with negative soundtracks (p

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