Jochen Steffens

Personal and situational influences on the functions of music listening

On the one hand, the majority of research on the functions of music listening focuses on individual differences; on the other hand, a growing amount of research investigates situational influences. However, the question of how much of our daily engagement with music is attributable to individual characteristics and how much it depends on the situation is still under-researched. To answer this question and to reveal the most important predictors of the two domains, participants (n = 587) of an online study reported on questions regarding the situation, the music, and the functions of music listening for three self-selected situations. Additionally, multiple person-related variables were measured. Results revealed that the influence of individual and situational variables on the functions of music listening varied across functions. The influence of situational variables on the functions of music listening outweighed the influence of individual characteristics. On the situational level, main activity while listening to music showed the greatest impact, while on the individual level, intensity of music preference was most influential. Our findings suggest that research on music in everyday life should incorporate both – individual and situational – variables determining the complex behavior of people interacting with music in a certain situation.

The sound of success: Investigating cognitive and behavioral effects of motivational music in sports

Listening to music before, during, or after sports is a common phenomenon, yet its functions and effects on performance, cognition, and behavior remain to be investigated. In this study we present a novel approach to the role of music in sports and exercise that focuses on the notion of musical self-enhancement (Elvers, 2016). We derived the following hypotheses from this framework: listening to motivational music will (i) enhance self-evaluative cognition, (ii) improve performance in a ball game, and (iii) evoke greater risk-taking behavior. To evaluate the hypotheses, we conducted a between-groups experiment (N = 150) testing the effectiveness of both an experimenter playlist and a participant-selected playlist in comparison to a no-music control condition. All participants performed a ball-throwing task developed by Decharms and Davé (1965), consisting of two parts: First, participants threw the ball from fixed distances into a funnel basket. During this task, performance was measured. In the second part, the participants themselves chose distances from the basket, which allowed their risk-taking behavior to be assessed. The results indicate that listening to motivational music led to greater risk taking but did not improve ball-throwing performance. This effect was more pronounced in male participants and among those who listened to their own playlists. Furthermore, self-selected music enhanced state self-esteem in participants who were performing well but not in those who were performing poorly. We also discuss further implications for the notion of musical self-enhancement.

Psychological factors influencing the evaluation of electric vehicle interior noise

Increasing global awareness of the benefits of electromobility has brought about the need for new concepts in terms of the acoustic design of future vehicle generations. This includes both the creative design process and the development of suitable methods for the subjective evaluation of target sounds. The main difference between e-car sound surveys and those carried out on familiar sound categories is the potential consumers lack of experience with electric vehicles. Thus, the consumer has no, or very unspecific, expectations in this regard. Several studies have shown that many subjects have to construct their personal frame of reference for evaluation within the listening experiment. However, this is possibly at odds with experience-based expectations relating to sounds of conventional combustion engines. The result is a conflict of objectives between the traditional and the modern, familiarity and strangeness, and not least between driving freedom and ecological awareness. In this context, the authenticity of the sound and the subjective interpretability of the sound information also appear as moderator variables. Moreover, associations with other vehicle categories, for example, streetcars, also influence the perceived sound quality. Within this contribution, these factors will be expounded and their influence on the evaluation of interior noise discussed.

Music listening as self-enhancement: Effects of empowering music on momentary explicit and implicit self-esteem:

In everyday life people use music to adjust their levels of arousal, to regulate their mood and emotions, and to cope with previous experiences, indicating that music plays an important role for everyday wellbeing. While the relationship between music and emotions has received considerable interest in past decades, little is known about the self-esteem boosting function of empowering music. In the present study, we investigated the relationship of music listening and self-esteem, by examining how momentary explicit and implicit self-esteem are (a) influenced by the expressive properties of music and (b) predicted by individual differences in responses to music. Results indicate that both explicit and implicit self-esteem are affected by music listening but in different ways. While momentary explicit self-esteem changed as a function of the expressive properties of the music and was positively predicted by liking, implicit self-esteem was positively predicted by empathy and negatively predicted by nostalgia. In contrast to changes in self-esteem, no changes in mood were observed. We anticipate our findings to be a starting point for further investigations of the cognitive and affective processes involved when listening to empowering music.

The influence of film music on moral judgments of movie scenes and felt emotions

Music can modulate perceptions, actions, and judgments in everyday situations. The aim of this study was to investigate a potential influence of music on moral judgments in the context of film reception. In the course of an online experiment, 252 participants were assigned to three different experimental conditions (no, positive, or negative music). Participants were requested to assess actions shown in two 2–3-minute audio-visual film excerpts with regard to their perceived moral rightness and to report induced emotions after watching the film clips. Afterwards, they were asked to complete the MFQ-30 questionnaire measuring the foundations of their moral judgments. Results revealed that in one of four cases (i.e. happiness in film excerpt 1), music had a significant effect on recipients’ emotions and also indirectly influenced their moral judgment. In three of four cases, however, the intended emotion induction through film music did not succeed, and thus a significant indirect influence of music on moral judgment was not found. Furthermore, associations between moral foundations, perceived rightness of action, and induced emotions were observed. Future lab studies are indicated to investigate potential moderating influences of the experimental environment on emotion induction through film music.

Understanding music-selection behavior via statistical learning: Using the percentile-Lasso to identify the most important factors

Music psychological research has either focused on individual differences of music listening behavior or investigated situational influences. The present study addresses the question of how much of peoples listening behavior in daily life is due to individual differences and how much is attributable to situational effects. We aimed to identify the most important factors of both levels (i.e., person-related and situational) driving peoples music selection behavior. Five hundred eighty-seven participants reported three self-selected typical music listening situations. For each situation, they answered questions on situational characteristics, functions of music listening, and characteristics of the music selected in the specific situation (e.g., fast - slow, simple - complex). Participants also reported on several person-related variables (e.g., musical taste, Big Five personality dimensions). Due to the large number of variables measured, we implemented a statistical learning method, percentile-Lasso, for variable selection, which prevents overfitting and optimizes models for the prediction of unseen data. Most of the variance in music selection behavior was attributable to differences between situations, while individual differences accounted for much less variance. Situation-specific functions of music listening most consistently explained which kind of music people selected, followed by the degree of attention paid to the music. Individual differences in musical taste most consistently accounted for person-related differences in music selection behavior, whereas the influence of Big Five personality was very weak. These results show a detailed pattern of factors influencing the selection of music with specific characteristics. They clearly emphasize the importance of situational effects on music listening behavior and suggest shifts in widely-used experimental designs in laboratory-based research on music listening behavior.

Comparison of momentary and retrospective soundscape evaluations

The Peak and End rule describes the effect that retrospective evaluations of temporal events significantly depend on the most extreme affect (peak) experienced during an episode and on the affect at the ending. Other features, like the duration of an event, seem to be widely negligible. We are testing this hypothesis in the context of soundscape evaluation in a series of listening tests conducted in Montreal, Canada, and Duesseldorf, Germany. The soundscapes consisted of recordings of different locations (e.g., railway station, park) and were edited so that there was one presumed emotional “peak moment.” The task of the test group was to indicate momentary judgments by continuously adjusting a slider on a computer interface over the course of the stimulus presentation. Additionally, the participants had to make an overall retrospective rating of the soundscapes after listening to them. To investigate attention effects in the course of the test task a second group was asked to only judge the sounds retrosp...

How do driving sounds influence the subjective evaluation of longitudinal acceleration

The evaluation of vehicle interior sounds in a listening study is always based on multiple sensory interactions. In a driving simulator several visual and somatosensory stimuli are presented to the test subjects in addition to the pure driving sounds. These multisensory stimuli are processed consciously and unconsciously by the human brain. Thus attention processes and also the evaluation behavior change in comparison to monosensory acoustical experiments. In the automotive industry electric powered vehicles currently are a hot topic. These vehicles have a very quiet noise behavior compared to vehicles with combustion engines. So the question arises how driving sounds comprise to the subjective evaluation of a vehicles acceleration. Do we associate loud driving sounds with strong acceleration? Which part takes the spectral structure of a sound? In a comparative listening study different vehicle interior sounds and different accelerations were evaluated in two different driving simulators. Based on the re...

Structurized sound design process of electric vehicle interior sound

The sound character of electric vehicles extremely differs from internal combustion engine vehicles. While the electric vehicle development is still in the beginning, there is potential to consider customer expectations very early in the development process, to have an impact on the typical desired electric vehicle sound on market launch and to generate unique selling propositions in competition between vehicle manufacturers. The current electric powertrain noise is perceived as inconvenient and nonaesthetical especially on long journeys. A complete reduction of this powertrain noise emphasizes the perception of wind and rolling noise and avoids feedback of velocity and load dependency, which decreases emotional impression. Futuristic sounds by sound design systems have to be evaluated by customers and revised in their acceptance and authenticity. Besides the improvement of the sound character, sound design systems can additionally be used to influence the informative acoustic feedback of driving and vehi...