Manipulation Revealed: Psychological Effects of Music (3/3)
Jan 29, 2025
Marketing experts make use of the power of music extensively. In almost all commercials music is one of the key design elements.
But what kind of music leads to skyrocketing sales rates? Research suggests that it is especially important, that the music fits the product.
But how big are the effects? Is it sufficient to play French music in a supermarketto make customers buy more French wine?
Author: Eskil Burck (Degreed Psychologist)
www.learningpsychology.net
[Music]
well we started this episode with wine
and we will finish this episode with
wine and this time it's not about the
buying decision but it's about the taste
of wine and the study on this topic was
conducted Again by Adrien North and
published in the British Journal of
Psychology in
2012 the title of the study is the
effect of background music on the taste
of wine all in all they had 250
participants recruited on the University
campus and they were recruited by asking
them well we make a little study on the
taste of wine um it would be really nice
if you could participate it takes only
about 5 minutes and if the person said
yeah let's do it I like to drink a
little bit of wine why not they were
told okay here's your glass of wine
there were always about 125 ml but to
make sure that you are not influenced by
any other persons or anything else we
will'll just go to a room and there you
drink the wine within 5 minutes and then
you just answer some questions on the
taste of this wine because that's what
we are interested in we have this wine
and we want to know the taste of this
wine half of the participants received a
red wine and the other half of
participants received received a white
wine but how does the music come into
play well in the room the participants
were taken to there was background music
they had five different rooms one room
with no music this was the Baseline
condition this is very important because
you need to know how does the wine taste
without any music playing and in the
other four rooms they had different
kinds of music playing in the first room
they had Kamina Burana by K
off which is obviously very powerful and
heavy um in the second room there was
the walls of flowers by chaikovsky which
can be described as subtle and refined
in another room they had just can't get
enough which is more zingy and
refreshing and in the last room they had
the song Slow breakdown by Michael Brook
which is obviously soft and
mellow and after drinking the red or
white wine in one of these rooms the
participants well you can guess it they
were asked what do you think um on a
scale from was this wine powerful and
heavy or from 0 to 10 was it subtle and
refined or was it sinky and refreshing
or was it soft and mellow the results
were really impressive because in
comparison to the no music condition
music seemed to have shifted the
perception of the wine seem to have
shifted the taste of the wine for
example the ratings of the red wine as
powerful and heavy were 60% higher than
in the red wine no music condition on
average
the different kinds of music seemed to
have shifted the perception of the wine
the taste of the wine for the red wine
drinkers um for about
42% and the effect for the white wine
group was a little bit smaller the
effect was at about
32% so the mean effect for both wines
was
37% just due to different background
music of course it's not clear how well
this experiment would work with real
experts with people with 30 or 40 years
experience in wine
drinking nevertheless if you are u a
beginner in wine drinking and maybe you
are not so happy with the taste of the
wine you just bought and you want to
present to your guests maybe it helps to
put on Kamina Burana
or or something else that conveys the
taste that you want to
have that's it for today I hope you
enjoyed the episode see you next
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