1. Does Listening to Your
Preferred Music Genre Affect
Your Task Persistence?
By: Michelle Godzinski & Chelsea
Perry

2. Previous Research
• Listening to Mozart’s music will increase spatial
task performance. (Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky’s,1993)
• Driving simulation with music (North and Hargreaves,1999)
• Found participants performed better while listening to
music

3. Previous Research cont’d
• Arousal, Mood and the Mozart Effect
(Thompson, Schellenberg, and Husain, 2001)
– Mozart sonata = heightened arousal and positive mood
– Albinoni adagio = low arousal and a sad mood.
– Differences in arousal and mood as well as enjoyment.
• Success versus Failure (Feather, 1961)
• More likely to be motivated on a task that is viewed as simple and is
familiar to participants

4. Purpose of Our Study
• Examine whether a person’s musical genre
preference has an influence on their
visiospatial task persistence.
• Hypotheses:
– Participants will persist longer while listening to a music genre
that they like in comparison to a genre that they do not like.
– Participants will persist longer while listening to fast tempo music
in comparison to slow tempo music and the no music applicable
group.
– Males will enjoy the harder forms of music (rock, hip-hop)
significantly more than females
• Females will enjoy more relaxing forms of music (country, pop) significantly
more than males

5. Independent Variables
– Genre group: 3 levels – Gender of Participant: 2 levels
• chosen genre group • male
• assigned genre group • female
• control group (no noise) – Music Tempo: 2 levels
– Music Genre: 4 levels • fast
• rock • slow
• rap/hip-hop
• pop
• country

6. Dependent Variables
– Persistence on Task
• Time
– Enjoyment of Music Genre
• 1 = not at all 2 = not very much 3 = neutral 4 = somewhat 5
= very much
– Mood
• Pre/Post

7. Methods
• 83 students attending Penn State Behrend
– 36 Males, 47 Females
• Mazes- 6 given in order of increasing difficulty
• Music: participants were randomly assigned to one of
five conditions
– Songs:
• (Slow) Gone Crazy by Alan Jackson
• (Fast) Knee Deep by The Zac Brown Band

8. Impossible
Maze

9. Procedure
Informed
Consent
Surveys
Chosen Chosen Control Assigned Assigned
Genre Genre Genre Genre
Fast Slow Fast Slow
Tempo Tempo Tempo Tempo
Maze
Completio
n
Post Study
Survey
Debriefing

10. Gender differences in Genre
5
Preference
4.5
4
3.5
Reported Enjoyment
3
2.5
Males
2 Females
1.5
1
0.5
0
Hip-Hop Country Rock Pop
Music Genre
F (1, 78) = 6.03, p = .02

11. Condition’s Effect on Mood Ratings
5
4.5
Mean Mood Scores
4
3.5
3
2.5
Pre Study
2
Post Study
1.5
1
Chosen Chosen Assigned Assigned Control
Genre Genre Genre Genre
Fast Slow Fast Slow
Tempo Tempo Tempo Tempo
F (4, 75) = 3.15, p = .02
F (1, 78) = 30.89, p
<.001

12. Condition’s Effect on Time
700
Persisted
600
500
Time Persisted
400
300 Males
Females
200
100
0
Chosen Genre Chosen Genre Assigned Assigned Control
Fast Tempo Slow Tempo Genre Fast Genre Slow
Tempo Tempo
F (4, 70) = 2.52, p <
.048

13. Correlations
Frequency of listening to
N = 83
music while studying
Frequency of listening to
music in general .47**
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Frequency of Frequency of
N= Enjoyment of Enjoyment of
listening to music in listening to music
83 Hip-Hop music Country music
general while studying
Rock
Music .35** .26** .43** .39**
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

14. Conclusions
• Primary hypothesis was supported.
– Those who chose their music persisted longer
• Fast versus Slow tempo difference
• Gender differences
• Limitations
• Implications

15. References
• American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication Manual (6th ed.,
pp. 233-234).
• Washington, DC: Author.
• Baumeister, R, & Tice, D. (1985). Self-esteem and responses to success
and failure: Subsequent performance and intrinsic motivation. Journal of
Personality, 53(3).
• Carey, B. (2005, January 20). Life Science: Current News on Space,
Animals, Technology, Health, Environment, Culture and History. Retrieved
December 7, 2011, from Life Science: www.lifescience.com .
• Cassidy, G.G. & MacDonald, R.A.R. (2010). The effects of music on time
perception and performance of a driving game. Scandinavian Journal of
Psychology 51, 455-464.
• Christenson, P.G. and Peterson, J.B. (1988) ‘Genre and gender in the
structure of music preferences’, Communication Research 15(3): 282–301.
• Curran, Shelly L.; Andrykowski, Michael A.; Studts, Jamie L. Psychological
Assessment, Vol 7(1), Mar 1995, 80-83.
• Dandeneau, S., & Baldwin, M. W. (2009). The buffering effects of rejection-
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students. Contemporary Educational Psychology , 42-50.

16. References cont’d
• Feather, N. (1961). The relationship of persistence at a task to expectation of success
and achievement related motives. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63(3),
552-561.
• Glassman, R.B, Leniek, K.M., Haegerich, T.M. (1998). Human working memory
capacity is 7 ± 2 in a radial maze with distracting interruption: Possible implication for
neural mechanisms of declarative and implicit long-term memory. Brain Research
Bulletin, 47(3), 249-256. 10.1016/S0361-9230(98)00083-5.
• Goldstein, D., Haldane, D., & Mitchell, C. (1990). Sex differences in visual-spatial
ability: The role of performance factors. Memory & Cognition, 18(5), 546-550.
10.3758/BF03198487
• Labbe`, E., Pharr, M., Babin, J., & Schmidt, N. (2007). Coping with stress: The
effectiveness of different types of music. Applied PsychoPhysiology And Biofeedback
, 163-168.
• North, A. C., & Hargreaves, D. J. (1999). Music and driving game performance.
Scadanavian Journal of Psychology, 40, 285-292
• Pietschnig, J., Voracek, M., & Formann, A. K. (2010). Mozart effect–Shmozart effect:
A meta-analysis. Intelligence, 38, 314-323.
• Piocuda, J. E. (2009). The Interaction between Music and Task Performance: The
Tower of Hanoi & Missionaries and Cannibals (Master's thesis). 29 April Retrieved
October 11, 2011, from PsychInfo.
• Rauscher, F., & Shaw, G., & Ky, K. (1993). Music and spatial task performance.
Nature, 365, 611.
• Thompson, W. F. , Schellenberg, G.E., & Husain, G. (2001). Arousal, mood, and the
Mozart effect. Psychological Science, 248-251.

17. Acknowledgments
• We would like to thank Dr. Dawn Blasko
for her help and guidance to make this
project run smoothly. Also, we would like
to thank Dr. Robert W. Light, Associate
Dean of research for his contributions to
the undergraduate research process
through the grant program at Penn State
Erie, the Behrend College.

18. Questions?