Effectiveness of listening to music before simple repetitive tasks: Copying task and mental rotation task

Abstract

This study focuses on the effect of listening to music before simple repetitive tasks. Research on the Mozart effect suggests that listening to Mozart contributes to an enhanced arousal level and a positive mood which influences performance on a variety of tasks. Prom that research, this study hypothesizes that if music is expected to make workers' motivation rise, listening to music before doing a task could lead to inducing a positive affect and improving the performance on a simple repetitive task. The effectiveness of listening to music before tasks was examined through experiments. In the experiments, 44 subjects were required to do two sessions. In one session, they were required to do the simple repetitive task after listening to the music through which they expected their motivation could rise. In the other session, they were required to do the task without the music. There were 12 subjects who did the copying task in German, another 16 subjects who did the copying task in French, and another 16 subjects who did the mental rotation task as the simple repetitive task. The results of the experiments revealed that the positive mood of the subjects in the case of listening to the music before the task was significantly higher than in the case of no music, irrespective of the task. The results also revealed that the performance in the case of listening to the music before the task was significantly better than in the case of no music, irrespective of the task. These results revealed the effectiveness of listening to music before simple repetitive tasks in terms of positive mood and task performance.