When your ear sets the stage

Psychology of Music, 2001, 29, 70—83

© 2001 by the Society for Research in Psychology of Music and Music Education

When Your Ear Sets the Stage: Musical Context Effects in Film Perception OLIVER VITOUCH Music Psychology Unit, Department of Psychology, University of Vienna, Liebiggasse 5, A-1010 Vienna, Austria [email protected] Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition (ABC), Lentzeallee 94, D-14195 Berlin, Germany vitouch @mpib-berlin.mpg.de Abstract Psychological experiments dealing with the music-dependent perception of film sequences often use reductionist approaches (stereotyped stimuli) and rely on subjects' direct (overt) ratings of the material (e.g., using semantic differentials). For this study, a more ecologically valid covert design was constructed to investigate experimentally musical context effects on perceivers' plot-related expectations. Forty-eight participants were presented with one of two music versions (original v. fake score) of the visually identical film sequence. They then wrote brief continuations of the plot, which were subsequently analysed using quantitative and qualitative content analysis, with the focus on emotional content. Results show that viewers'/listeners' anticipations about the further development of a sequence are systematically influenced by the underlying film music, which implicitly co-determines the psychological reality of the scene.

Background "[Film music] makes the difference. [...] All you have to do to get the point of film music across to the skeptical is to make them sit through the picture without the music." David Raksin (Kalinak, 1992, p. xvii). "[...] the final function of film music, at least for me, is to complete the psychological meaning of a scene." Miklös Rdzsa (Brown, 1994, p. 271). Music can have strong psychological or cognitive effects on the explicit or implicit perceiver in a variety of everyday domains. One of these domains, although seldom considered (probably due to its realistic complexity) in mainstream music psychology, is music in films (i.e., in movies, but also in TV documentaries, advertising spots, etc.). Film music can substantially alter the spirit of a scene. As Jack Taylor, editor of Psychomusicology, noted in his preface to a special volume on the psychology of film music (guest editor Annabel Cohen, published May, 1996), "It is an accepted fact that music strongly contributes to the drama of a film or video production, yet research in this area is minimal" (Taylor, 1994/96, 70

Musical Context Effects in Film Perception

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p. 1). This is especially true for empirical research. The integrative theoretical advancement in the field engages very different approaches and disciplines, ranging from hermeneutics–semiotics (with a methodological focus on introspective interpretation and comparative phenomenology) to musicologically-grounded analyses to psychoacoustics and empirical cognitive psychology. For a multidisciplinary selection of recent research progress, see, for instance, Brown (1994), Bullerjahn (1997; in press), Chion (1994), Cohen (1999), Gorbman (1987), Kalinak (1992), Phillips (1999), Tagg (in press), Tagg and Clarida (in press), and Vitouch (1999; in prep.). Film theory commonly assumes a strong impact of musical factors on the viewers' (cinematographically constructed) reality perception. For instance, the music can be an essential underpinning of the "inner mental states" of a scene's agents, fulfilling the function of an "expression of the inexpressible" (attr. to Claude Debussy; see Thomas, 1996, p. 164). The general functions of film music can be roughly conceptualised in a framework of at least three major categories (Vitouch, in prep.): (1) direction and management of attention, (2) "emotionalisation" (the most salient and most elusive category), and (3) transfer of information (nonverbal auditory communication) – hence, the "AEI(OU) of film music". A similar, but more detailed classification has recently been proposed by Cohen (1999). At the same time, and in spite of these obvious functions, film music is frequently believed to have mainly "subliminal" effects (especially for non-musicians): the best film music be the one that remains unheard (cf. Brown, 1994; Kalinak, 1992; Karlin, 1994). Except for the analytical ears and eyes of the specialist, music and montage have been put side by side as being the two "most `invisible' contributing arts to the cinema" (Brown, 1994, p. 1). The American composer Aaron Copland, who also wrote several film scores, stated rather provocatively that for millions of filmgoers the musical context of a film is so self-evident that even five minutes after leaving the cinema they cannot teil if they heard any music at all (Thomas, 1996, p. 16). This supposition has been empirically supported to a considerable extent (cf. Bullerjahn, 1997, pp. 153ff.; Meyer, 2000). In sum, several related questions about the effects of film music seem worth studying from a cognitive/psychological perspective: does music influence our (visual/holistic) perception, what are these influences, and how strong are they ("picture v. sound variance")? Can these influences be tested by quantitative empirical means, in an experimental design, or are they left to introspection or phenomenal experience? And are these dramaturgic means in films effective on a subliminal (music as a "hidden art" in cinema) or on a supraliminal basis? A general way to probe these questions is to present visually identical film sequences with different musical underscoring in order to test if, and to what extent, different impressions are induced in the perceiver. Beyond the assumed change in expression due to the music alone (ceteris paribus), also the spontaneous recognition of the role of music as an essential dramaturgical means in film production seems worth studying. Similar effects in other domains of cognitive psychology have been subsumed under the unifying concept of context determination: one and the same entity can be perceived very differently, depending on the particular context in which it is embedded. In film theory, the same phenomenon is known as a musical Kuleshov effect: Lev Kuleshov

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(1899-1970), a film pioneer in the early days of the Soviet Union, was reportedly the first director to recognise fully and systematically investigate the power of montage. He found that the Same shot, presented in the context of other shots, may evoke completely different impressions in the viewer. In an emotionally indifferent and objectively unchanged human face, people saw a change of expression towards either sadness or joy, depending on whether the face had been preceded by the picture of a dead woman or of a plateful of steaming soup (Niedermeier, 1997; cf. Bullerjahn, 1997, p. 127). Thus, people constructively (and holistically) see something that is not in the picture. Apart from experimental investigations and individual phenomenal impressions, the potential power of musical Kuleshov effects (musical context determination effects) becomes evident in a famous anecdote: it is said that Sergei Eisenstein's revolutionary silent movie Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets Potyomkin, U.S.S.R. 1925), often voted the greatest picture of all time (cf. Tookey, 1994, p. 669), had been approved by the censors in several European countries whereas Edmund Meisel's accompanying score from 1926 was not approved (London, 1936; cit. from Ungerböck and Schlagnitweit, 1995, p. 39). Generally, and unfortunately, the most frequent approaches to assessing such effects tend to be oversimplified. Psychological experiments in this field typically rely on subjects' overt ratings of the material. For example, subjects are instructed to evaluate the subjectively perceived characteristics of a sequence directly (and purportedly on an interval scale), using semantic differentials (polarity profiles). In addition, such approaches are often reductionist in that stereotyped ("experimentally shaped") stimuli are presented, pursuing the idea of isolating and identifying simple, additive effect components. For an excellent overview of the empirical evidence on film music effects, including a lot of "gray literature", see Bullerjahn (1997; in press). Recent studies that used direct quantitative evaluation methods have been conducted by Bolivar, Cohen and Fentress (1994/96), Iwamiya (1994/96), Lipscomb and Kendall (1994/96), and Sirius and Clarke (1994/96). In a more qualitative tradition, Tagg and Clarida (in press) used a free induction method (classification and clustering of listeners' verbal–visual associations, VVAs) to empirically identify "musical meaning" in film and TV title themes. However, also these qualitative approaches until now have centered on the focused and deliberate assessment of the music's "content" itself. Aims and Hypotheses In contrast to most earlier experimental work on the effects of film music, the present study employed a covert design to investigate the influence of musical context on viewers'/listeners' plot-related expectations. The aim was to construct a largely unadulterated and musically defocused "real-cinema setting", using the opening sequence from an original movie with its original score and designing a qualitatively oriented method for data collection which does not provide any information about the evaluative background of the study. A somewhat similar path has independently been followed by Bullerjahn and Güldenring (1994/96), who successfully supplemented a traditional rating scale approach (mood evaluation) with a content analysis of subjects' responses to open-ended questions


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about the film's content and continuation. Compared to earlier evaluation studies, such indirect approaches to data acquisition and measurement should lead to gains in ecological validity: can authentic, realistically complex effects of film music also be demonstrated by experimental design, in the psychological laboratory? In this study, through use of a narrative design, 1 investigated to what extent different musical settings induce differing anticipations about the continuation of the same movie scene (context determination effect; musical Kuleshov effect). As opposed to a direct and conscious evaluation of the perceived material, participants were asked to produce free continuations of the plot, which yielded information about their expectations of the further development of a scene. The main experimental hypothesis predicts that carefully selected, different musical versions of the same film sequence will elicit systematically different plot expectations, and that these differences will be most prominent in the emotional content of participants' plot continuations. In addition, the spontaneous recognition and mention of the function of film music should be explored to gain more information about the hypothetical "subliminality" of film music effects. Method Materials and Experimental Conditions Subjects participated in an alleged "film study", without any reference being made to music. In a sound-attenuated and dimly lit basement laboratory room, they watched the opening sequence of Billy Wilder's film drama The Lost Weekend (U.S.A., 1945) in one of two musical settings: either in the original version (score by Mikl6s R6zsa; Condition 1), or with a carefully pre-tested fake score (Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, op. 11, from 1936; Condition 2). Although The Lost Weekend is a much-acclaimed part of modern film history (it is even mentioned in Malcolm Lowry's preface to the 1949 first French edition of his likewise dipsomania-centered novel, Under the Volcano), it is unknown to today's average media consumer. Similarly, Barber's Adagio, although rather well known in the USA (partly due to Leonard Bernstein's liking for the piece and its association with John F. Kennedy's funeral), is generally unknown to average audiences from continental Europe. The presented opening sequence of the film starts with a full angle shot on New York City in the 1940s, the eye of the camera then passing a wall with several windows and slowly entering, through the last open window, the apartment of the protagonist (Ray Milland) – end of the experimental scene. This one-minute sequence (b/w), containing no dialogue, was presented on a standard TV screen (music via TV loudspeaker with a comfortably audible sound level). The beginning of Mikl6s R6zsa's opening theme is quoted in Figure 1. The music draws a rather positive mood of the city ("New York in the morning") and its thus-far anonymous inhabitant, although it slowly changes in character as the camera moves in to the close-up of Ray Milland (finally changing into the eerie "dipsomania theme" on the electroacoustic Theremin after the experimental cut). So one would expect this score sequence to evoke positive to ambivalent expectations in the listener about the continuation of the scene. In contrast, the Barber piece, primarily chosen for its excellent fit and pacing with the visual

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sequence, has been experimentally validated as a prototype for "sad" or "melancholic" music (see its use in a study about musically induced basic emotions; Krumhansl, 1997, p. 9 ) . Therefore, the Barber version was predicted to change the expression of the original scene accordingly and evoke predominantly negative expectations about the film's ongoing development. In addition to the prerequisite of both the film and the music being unknown to all experimental subjects, the good dissociability of the visual material and the soundtrack and the open-endedness of the scene were other criteria for selecting the film. The opening sequence of The Lost Weekend gives relatively few cues to the viewer, which makes this material well-suited for implementing the study's projective hypothesis, with the end of the scene being the "white canvas" and the subjects cross-modally projecting their impressions of the scene's atmospheric reality into their spontaneous textual micro-stories. Will there be a measurable effect of the music (R6zsa v. Barber) an the perceivers' immediate plot expectations, also in this indirect "camouflage" design? Instruction and Dato Collection After answering some general sociodemographic and film-related questions, participants received written instructions to relax and watch the film sequence that would follow and then give a brief continuation of the plot. Following the video presentation (alternately either the "Rözsa" or "Barber" version), they were instructed to use their imagination to write a few sentences about the possible immediate continuation of the story. The following three anchoring questions were given as a guide: "What could this man be thinking at the moment?"; "What are his life circumstances?"; "What could happen next?". When the participants


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had completed their texts, they were asked to briefly describe, retrospectively and on a separate sheet, the subjective basis for their continuation ("explanatory texts"). This was done to collect introspective information on the cues used and to make subjects' implicit impressions more explicit. The main purpose of the explanatory texts was to determine whether, and to what extent, participants were aware of the role the film music played in guiding their impressions of the scene. Finally, at the very end of the experiment, subjects were asked about their musical background, and then debriefed before leaving. Data were collected in several single sessions, with one to a maximum of six subjects per session (to avoid "collective" response patterns and improve experimental control; mean group size = 2.3) and with consecutively alternating experimental conditions (quasi-randomised assignment). Verbal data were analysed post-experimentally by quantitative and qualitative content analysis, focusing on the emotional content of the Stories. Participants Altogether, 50 college students participated in the study. Two subjects had to be excluded for formal reasons, so that an experimental Sample of N= 48 subjects (41 females, 7 males), 24 per experimental condition, with a mean age of 23 years (min. = 18, max. = 46, median = 21.5 years) remained. Subjects reported a rather low frequency of going to the cinema (12 x "once per month", 23 x "less than once per month"), a slightly below-average subjective film knowledge (Austrian school grades rating scale from 1–5; M = 3.3, SD = 0.9), and an average subjective music knowledge (collected post-hoc; M = 2.8, SD = 1.0). Data Analysis To analyse the verbal data (continuation texts and explanatory texts) quantitatively, several theory-guided categories were designed. These a-priori categories were optimised for exclusiveness and exhaustivity in a first round of blind coding of the data, done by the author. Data were then conclusively coded in a second blind round. Following the quantitative coding, texts were categorised qualitatively (in a third, "open" round) as prototypical and antitypical with respect to the experimental hypotheses. The final categories used in the quantitative coding of the continuation texts were: number of words, number of sentences, time of day of the scene (if specified; e.g., "this man just woke up"), genre (from "love story" to "film noir"), and emotional content. In the analysis of explanatory texts, the categories were: music, camera/angle, light, situative cues, cliche (e.g., "typical contents of b/w films"), personal motif (preferred story type), and similarity to other films (title given). In the quantitative as well as in the qualitative analyses, the main focus of the study was on the emotional content (EC) of the texts. Quantitatively, the scoring of this key category was based on the dominant mood or "emotional shade" of the story text, using single emotion-related verbal cues (e.g., "sad", "sadness") as well as more holistic cues (e.g., "leaving/losing/good-bye" motifs, which were frequently observed in the Barber condition). In this manner, each plot continuation was classified according to one of four possible coding alternatives: emotionally indifferent (neutral), ambivalent (ambiguous or mixed), negative, or positive.

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Classification was supported and documented by a coding catalogue of explanatory definitions plus literal specimens. Two examples for each coding alternative of the EC category follow (translated from German): Indifferent: "Single man, cooking breakfast, doing the housekeeping, thinking about the course of his day. After he's ready with everything, he could go to work." [Rözsa, subject 3.] "The man packs his suitcase, dresses. He's leaving the house and takes a taxi to the train station. He has finished his job in this town and leaves. End of the film." [Barber, subject 19.] Ambivalent: "He dresses and thinks about picking up his love from the central station. Although he does not have much money, because he lost his job, he has made the apartment beautifid for her. He takes his keys, leaves the apartment and goes to the station." [Barber, subject 9.] "Man at home, has no job [...], doesn 't want to do industrial work, just married, his wife will have a baby soon, he's worrying [...] how he shall care for his family. His wife enters, both very glad; happy that they have each other, but afraid because of the future. " [Rözsa, subject 24.] Negative: "The man has been left by his wife (girlfriend). He's visiting the places where he thinks she could be. When he finally finds her together with another man, he shoots him." [Barber, subject 17.] "Why did this happen to me? How shall 1 go on? Can 1 handle all that alone? [...] He's just been left (or a very dose person has died). [...]" [Barber, subject 21.] Positive: "The man is in a good mood, has a secure and well-paid job, and is just preparing a meal for his new love (candle-light dinner for two). [. . . , next day] Then they go for a walk and explore the beauties of this city. [...] It's a nice warm autumn day with leaves on the streets. [...]" [Rözsa, subject 12.] "He's sorting phone numbers – whom should 1 call – with whom should 1 spend this wonderful day. He's well off – a good-looking and well-dressed man, taking the telephone and calling one of his girlfriends to make a date." [Rözsa, subject 20.] Results Quantitative Content Analysis Average text length was 64.5 words (SD = 29, min. = 19, max. = 174) for the continuation texts and 36 words (SD = 19, min. = 2 ["purely intuitive"], max. = 85) for the separately collected explanatory texts. There were no significant


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differences between the experimental conditions (Rözsa v. Barber) here. In only eight cases did texts give cues about the perceived time of day of the scene. With 23 codings, "love story" was the most frequently represented genre for both versions (Rözsa: 11, Barber: 12). The raw data for the most salient category, emotional content (EC), are given in Table 1. TABLE 1

Cross-tabulation of the emotional content (EC) of plot continuations for the two music versions.

indifferent

ambivalent

negative

positive

2

8

8

6

2

4

14

4

4

12

22

10

Rözsa Barber

24

48

The number of plot continuations with indifferent EC is low, and equally distributed over conditions. This shows a strong tendency towards "emotional" stories for both music versions. Due to this distribution, and the comparatively small sample (which has to be seen in the context of the effort involved in verbal data coding and the qualitative aspects of the analyses), this raw matrix is unsuited for statistical testing of between-group differences. Therefore, in order to increase the cell-specific expected frequencies under Ho, sub-categories were grouped according to the experimental hypotheses (expected "expressive content" due to the respective underscoring; cf. Materials and Experimental Conditions subsection): The four indifferent cases were excluded, and ambivalent and positive cases were pooled. This systematic agglomeration of sub-categories led to the testable matrix in Table 2, which shows the observed v. expected frequencies for positive/ ambivalent v. negative plot continuations in the two music conditions. With xz (1) = 3.27,p (directed) = .035, and rq = .27, the original (Rözsa) version evoked significantly more positive or ambivalent plot continuations, whereas the Barber version evoked more negatively tinted continuations. In addition, several split criteria were applied. There was no improvement in the explained variance within the subgroups "preference for classical music", "higher music education", "higher frequency of going to the cinema" 2 x / month), or "better subjective film knowledge" (self-rating 58 words, n = 23; rr = .39). The latter result points to a motivation effect: those participants who were more involved in the study and produced more elaborate texts also showed higher correspondence with the experimental hypotheses.

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Oliver Vitouch TABLE 2

Emotional content (EC) of plot continuations, sub-categories combined.

Rözsa

Count

negative

positive or ambivalent

8

14

.

.

22

11 0

11 0

(22)

14

8

22

.

.

Expected C. Barber

Count

11 0

11 0

(22)

22 (22)

22 (22)

48

Expected C. Total

Another question of interest was if subjects would identify music as an important influence on their continuations. The answer here, yielded by the explanatory texts, is a clear yes. At least after the instructional "request for introspection", film music was recognised by the majority of participants as a crucial dramaturgical component. In 33 of the 48 explanatory texts, music was spontaneously mentioned as a factor influencing the continuation. On the average, music was referred to as early as the eighth word (M = 8.4, SD = 10.2). In comparison, there were 24 codings for camera/angle, 20 for situational cues, and 13 for cliche. This "music credit" effect was even more pronounced for the "fake score", that is, the Barber version (music mentioned in 22 of 24 cases, 17 x as the first argument). In conclusion, although there was a significant effect in the direction of the experimental hypothesis (different EC dependent on the music version), this effect was not as strong as expected. So what could explain the rest of the (error) variance? The qualitative analyses shed some light on the individual perceptions of the scene presented. Qualitative Content Analysis Only a few aspects of the qualitative text analyses can be presented here (for a more detailed description see Vitouch, 1999, pp. 575ff.). In general, the aim of the qualitative analysis was the collection and comparative juxtaposition of confirming v. disconfirming examples (prototypes v. antitypes) with respect to the experimental hypotheses, and the search for their causes (also in the Sense of a single-case person fit). For some of the expectation–convergent prototypes, see the version-specific examples in the Data Analysis section. Of special interest were several texts in which the music version actually turned out to have "coloring" effects on visual perception. For instance, the Barber Adagio drew a certain picture of the New York panorama for subject 18 ("good-bye" motif; translated from German):


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"

He's packing his luggage to leave this town. The city looks depressing. without a perspective for the future. [. . .] forgetting the miserable everyday life in New York." [Underline added.] Similar prototypes can be found in the explanatory texts: "Gloomy melody and surroundings." [Barber, subject 16.] "The music had a great influence on me — it sounded sad. The pan shot of the camera over the City (all gray and desperate) invoked a feeling of loneliness. In addition, this mood had something finnl." [Barber, subject 47; underline added.] The Same view can Look very differently in the Rözsa version: "Seems to be an agreeable film scene, due to the lovely weather, the beautiful surroundings and the agreeable background music." [R6zsa, subject 20; underline added.] These examples provide good evidence at a single-case level for musically determined top-down perceptual constructions ("score synaesthesia"): subjects are "hearing pictures", seeing details that may be inferred from the music, but are evidently not on the screen. Of course, from there data alone one cannot determine whether such retrospective effects are truly perceptual in nature (e.g., assuming cross-modal fusion in thalamic regions and/or cortical association areas) or rather memory effects (constructive memory retrieval). On the other hand, there were substantial differences in how the music was individually experienced. In the detailed analysis of the explanatory texts, there was evidence for several "mis-attributions" (in terms of the experimenter's intention) due to unexpected perceptions of the music's expressive character. Subject 36 (Barber), for instance, gave the following reason for his continuation: "[...] the beginning music; it sounded `narrative' to me and made me expect a `nice' Story from the life of this man." Due to such observations, it seemed crucial to investigate further how the music was actually perceived ("which" music was actually heard) by different individuals. This was done by systematically tabulating adjective lists of music TABLE 3

Spontaneous music descriptions given in the explanatory texts (translated from German). R6zsa

romantic, quiet / dramatic / something loving, nice / agreeable / quite dissonant / sad / positive / romantic, but also dramatic / dramatic / not pleasant

Barber

sad / sad / quiet / sad melody, minor mode / romantic / gloomy melody / sad / melancholic / sad / quiet / slow, rather sad / something melancholic and dramatic / sad / narrative, nice / melancholic melody / sad / tender, quiet, relaxed / sad, desolate / lovely-melancholic

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descriptions. Table 3 lists all spontaneously given music-related attributes from the explanatory texts for both music conditions (in order of their appearance in the data). Apart from the fact that there were more spontaneous descriptions for Barber (music was mentioned more often as an influential cue in this condition; see above), these descriptors demonstrate clearly that individual perceptions of the same music did differ to a considerable extent (and, thus, constituted a major source of variance). Some examples actually show astonishing cross-doublets: in both versions, music was perceived and evaluated as either "sad" or "nice" and "romantic". A detailed analysis revealed a perfect match between direct music description (when given) and continuation texts: If the Barber Adagio was, for instance, perceived as "narrative and nice", the person also gave an emotionally positive plot continuation. These findings show not only that individually different music perceptions lead to individual differences in the formation of proximate plot expectations; they also demonstrate the limits of an easily over-simplifying, exclusively quantitative approach. Discussion and Conclusion The results of this study show that film music effects can also be studied in nontrivial and externally valid experimental settings. Viewers'/listeners' expectations of the further development of a scene are clearly influenced by the underlying film music, which implicitly co-determines the perceivers' psychological reality. This has been demonstrated by adopting a hybrid methodological approach, linking quantitative and qualitative methodologies, and using authentic film material plus the original film score. The fact that different music tracks can significantly modify the atmosphere or narrative world of a scene shows interesting parallels to contemporary research in psycholinguistics (with an increasing focus on semantic, v. syntactic, processes and on text, v. sentence, comprehension): which information is retrieved from long-term memory (quickly, passively, and without notable decoding effort) to let a certain environment unfold and build a place, time, surroundings and an emotional setting? To which cues in a certain text passage or film sequence is this due (cf. McKoon and Ratcliff, 1998, who use the musicderived term resonance for this process and open with a text passage from Chandler's The Big Sleep)? Two important aspects, however, need further discussion: (1) The manipulative music effect (Rdzsa v. Barber) was not as strong and clear-cut as one might have expected; and (2) the film music was identified more often as a dramaturgical building block than has been assumed (especially in the Barber condition, which seemed to have a less "subliminal" character than the original score). As to the first point, some of the considerable amount of unexplained variance in this design results from the realistic complexity of the musical stimuli employed. An essential aim of the study was to use credible film music, rather than to artificially juxtapose music versions of highly selective emotional unidimensionality and, at the same time, blatancy (like contrasting the Yankee Doodle with Chopin's Marche Funebre). Due to these "naturalistic" (externally valid) and subtler stimuli, the music expression was obviously perceived in heterogeneous ways (see the Qualitative Content Analysis subsection), which added "noise" to the experimental outcome. Apart from this aspect, another source of


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error variance might be the momentary mood of the participants (due to extraexperimental, situational factors). This could be controlled for post-experimentally with an instrument like the PANAS scales (Watson, Clark and Tellegen, 1988), although a retrospective evaluation, after the mood-inducing experimental treatment, evidently also has its problems. A related point concerns the question of "isolated" pretests of the music alone, as well as of the picture alone. Due to the holistic effects and irreducible interactions of functioning picture/sound combinations, it will typically not be justified (sometimes even misleading) to assume a simple additive effect of "contributing mood variances" from different modalities, which would allow the independent testing of isolated components. A mute "picture alone" condition, for instance, is of limited comparative value because it often makes a strange impression on the viewer. Problematic as they may be, though, such comparisons can of course provide additional insights (e.g., about interindividual variabilities of music perception), and could also be collected post factum with independent test samples. As to the second point, the high rate of "musical cue identification" may have been influenced by several design-related factors and therefore may not give a reliable picture of the typical music awareness of average film consumers. First, the scene presented was deliberately selected to be neutral (no dialogue, little situational determination) and to give no significant cues about further action, so that the rote of the music became relatively dominant (and "conscious") simply by the lack of other cues. Second, there is still a considerable difference between the presentation of a single sequence and a whole film and, similarly, between an experimental setting and a cinema setting: the intention, motivation and direction of awareness of the participants will unavoidably differ. A more general criticism concerns the relatively small sample size, which is related to both the presentation of the film to single subjects or small groups and the extensive analysis of the verbal data. This could be improved by an extended replication of this study that would also include the development and comparison of different approaches for assessing inter-rater coding reliability. In conclusion, additional support for the impact of film music effects comes from an impressive application of a musical context determination effect (musical Kuleshov effect) in a recent TV commercial, Lufthansa's New York/New York spot (produced by Springer and Jacoby, Hamburg). This spot shows the saure visual sequence (41 shots in high-speed montage) of a cab ride through N.Y. city, twice in succession: first, with a free jazz/noise music collage ä la Lower East Side Avantgarde/John Zorn; then with Johann Pachelbel's (1653–1706) Canon as a perceptual pacemaker, followed by the epigrammatic slogan "You see the world the way you fly". In accordance with such applications, empirical studies of the psychology of film music effects provide experimental evidence that we sometimes see the world the way it sounds. Acknowledgement Thanks to Rick Ashley, Annabel Cohen, Jane Davidson, Alf Gabrielsson, Judith Glück, Peter Richter, Peter Vorderer and to an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on this project.

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Oliver Vitouch References

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