Psychology: Seducing Girls with Music? (2/2)

Whereas the study results we discussed so far were all about different effects of annoying music versus uplifting music versus no music and maybe these results were not too surprising to you. I think the next two studies are very interesting because this time it's about music that is equally pleasant. So they had participants rating the different songs before they conducted their study and they said, well, these songs are equally nice, but these songs had different messages, they had different lyrics and the question is whether it's possible to change helping behavior or even compliance to a courtship request like in the second study with songs that, as I said, are equally pleasant but have different kinds of lyrics, for example prosocial or romantic lyrics. And the first study I want to present to you is the study by Celine Jacob and colleagues published in 2010 in the International Journal of Hospitality Management Effects of songs with prosocial lyrics on tipping behavior in a restaurant. In this study over a period of six weeks three different kinds of music were played in a French restaurant. There were either played songs with prosocial lyrics or equally pleasant songs, but with neutral lyrics and in the third condition the usual songs were played. So the songs that were usually displayed in this restaurant. This was the baseline condition. And the research question was, does the music influence tipping behavior? And the answer is yes. When songs with prosocial lyrics were played, more participants decided to give a tip and on average they also gave higher tips. So when prosocial lyrics were played on average they gave 1,38€, whereas when neutral lyrics were played they gave 1,22€, almost the same in the baseline condition 1,21€. So if you're working as a waiter or waitress in a restaurant maybe you can increase your income by telling your boss, hey, let's play more songs with prosocial lyrics. And if you want to get to know somebody, to fall in love with, maybe you should play romantic songs. Songs with romantic lyrics. That at least is the conclusion from another study of the same research team. This time the first author was Nicola Giger and the study was published in the journal the psychology of music in 2010. Love is in the air. Effects of songs with romantic lyrics on compliance to a courtship request. In this study 87 female students aged 18 to 20 years and all singles were told that they would participate in a study about testing the taste of organic food. But before the experiment started they were told by the experimenter, oh, well, I'm sorry, we still have to wait some minutes because the other participant hasn't arrived yet, but in a few minutes we can begin. And as they sat there waiting, music was playing in the background. For one group of participants it was a romantic song and as the study was conducted in France, it was a French song Je l'aime a mourir. I love you till I die. The other group of participants was listening to an equally pleasant song, but this time the lyrics were neutral. The title of this song was Leur Dété, the hour of tea or better tea time. After listening to the song the female participant was told, okay the other participant just arrived and we can now begin our experiment. In this experiment she had to judge a cookie together with a 20 year old male student who in fact was a confederate of the experimenter. Together they had to judge the taste of a cookie with organic ingredients versus a cookie with normal ingredients, but after only five minutes they were interrupted by the experimenter. Oh, I still have to do another task. Let's have a break for two or three minutes and then we can go on. This little break was used by the confederate to behave in the way he was told to because like an actor he was given a script and the script said, as you know, my name is Antoine, I think you are very nice and I was wondering if you would give me your phone number. I'll phone you later and we can have a drink together next week. Then his script said smile for 10 seconds and see what's happening. What do you think? How many of the female students complied to this courtship request? Well, when they had listened to a romantic song, 52% were willing to share their phone number, whereas when listening to this tea song, less than 30% were willing to give him their phone number. There are two interesting facts to mention about this study. First, the confederate was unaware of the aim of the study and as he didn't know what the aim of the study was, there was no danger that he subconsciously behaved different to the girls of the one group in comparison to the girls of the other group. The second information is quite funny because it was about the selection of the male confederate because they didn't just take anybody, but they chose Mr. Average. So before the experiment, they showed pictures of different male students to a group of participants and they had to rate on a scale from 0 to 9 how attractive these male students are. And on this scale, the confederate was rated with 5. Now you might wonder why? Well, if you think about it, it makes sense. If they had chosen somebody with a high attractiveness score, maybe all the single female students would have said, yeah, I will give you my phone number and then there would have been ceiling effects and there wouldn't have been any variation between the two groups. So with this funny fact, I finish this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you want, we'll see you next time.