Music and compliance: Can good music make us do bad things?

Abstract

Music is commonly used in various contexts as a means to manipulate people. Two studies examined the effect of positive background music on compliance with a request to harm a third person. In Study 1 participants were asked by a male researcher, in the context of obligatory experiment participation, to call another participant and tell her she could not take part in the study. In Study 2, participants on a voluntary basis were asked by a female researcher to call another student and tell her she would not receive promised course material. In both cases, no justifiable reason for the request was given, other than the researcher “didn’t feel like it.” Compliance rates were higher in both studies when pleasant, familiar music was played than with no music. No effects of mood were found. Results and implications are discussed in terms of the power of music to influence behavior.

Keywords

background music behaviour change everyday life familiarity mood social psychology

Background music is present in a variety of contexts. It is used in the media in advertisements, TV news and shows, and in other contexts such as movies, waiting rooms and restaurants. In these settings, music is intended to manipulate individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and behavior in more or less specific ways. Intuitively, we tend to think of pleasant, uplifting music in positive terms, leading to positive, prosocial attitudes, emotions, and behavior. Annoying or aggressive music, on the other hand, should lead to opposite responses. Indeed, a large number of studies examining the effects of music in various settings have suggested as much. The possibility that music which is perceived as positive may lead us to act in a negative way seems unlikely. But is it? Could pleasant and liked music bias our judgment and lead us to accept controversial messages and agree to hurt someone? The aim of the present studies was to examine whether music which is perceived as happy and positive may lead us to comply with a request implying harm to a third person.

Music and persuasion

The effect of music on persuasion has been studied extensively in the context of advertising, where music is commonly used as a means to influence people’s perceptions, attitudes, and behavior. Three main models explain music’s effect on the acceptance of messages. According to the classical conditioning model, the positive emotion or mood elicited by music is associated with an advertised product, leading to a favorable attitude towards it. Music that is liked, or induces a positive mood, has been found to lead to preference of or positive attitudes towards various products and stimuli (e.g., Apaolaza-Ibanez, Zander, & Hartmann, 2010; Broekemier, Marquardt, & Gentry, 2008; Middlestadt, Fishbein, & Chan, 1994; Tom, 1995; Wheatley & Brooker, 1994). The fitness model suggests previous familiarity with musical pieces or styles activates related information and associations. When these associations are congruent with the advertised message, the message becomes more persuasive and effective (Kellaris, Cox, & Cox, 1993; Lalwani, Lwin, & Ling, 2009; North & Hargreaves, 2008; North, Mackenzie, Law, & Hargreaves, 2004, Study 1; Oakes & North, 2006; Zander, 2006; for a review, see Oakes, 2007). Finally, the Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986a, 1986b), considers music as a peripheral cue, leading to less thorough processing, either by distracting listeners from the message or by creating a certain mood which activates a heuristic strategy in message processing and less thorough processing of its content (Schwarz, Bless, & Bohner, 1991). Background music thus leads to poorer recall of adverts’ content (Oakes & North, 2006, Study 1; Wheatley & Brooker, 1994; Ziv, Hoftman, & Geyer, 2011), suggesting that the attention-gaining quality of the familiar music interferes with processing of the advertised message.

The studies on the effect of music in advertisement thus show that music may influence the acceptance of messages. However, these studies examine the effect of music on the evaluation of products and not on individuals or groups. Could music influence social cognition and behavior in a similar manner?

Music and social cognition and emotion

Music is a social product, and musical activity is a social act (Davidson, 2004). Its effect is dependent on the social context in which it is heard (Brown & Theorell, 2006). However, relatively little research has been devoted to music’s effect on social attitudes and behavior (LaMarre, Knobloch-Westerwick, & Hoplamazian, 2012). Most of the studies which did examine this issue concentrated on the effect of lyrics. As expected, music with prosocial lyrics, as compared to music with neutral lyrics, has been shown to lead to an increase in prosocial thought accessibility and empathy towards a fictive other (Greitemeyer, 2008, studies 1 and 2 respectively), more positive attitudes towards women (Greitemeyer, Hollingdale, & Traut-Mattausch, 2012), less antisocial thoughts (Greitemeyer, 2010, Study 1), reduced negative attitudes towards violence (Greitemeyer, 2010, Study 2), and reduced aggressive affect and cognition (Greitemeyer, 2010, Study 3). Conversely, songs with antisocial lyrics increase violent and hostile feelings, and antisocial thoughts (Anderson, Carnagey, & Eubanks, 2003). Misogynous lyrics lead to more negative cognitions and vengeful feelings towards women by men (Fischer & Greitemeyer, 2006, Studies 2, 3).

Although most of these studies are based on the General Aggression Model (Anderson & Bushman, 2002) or the General Learning Model (Buckley & Anderson, 2006), which suggests that music and personality traits interact in social contexts and influence internal states such as arousal, cognition and affect, most either do not measure arousal or affect (Greitemeyer, 2010, Study 1), or find no differences in these factors (Anderson et al., 2003; Fischer & Greitemeyer, 2006, studies 2 and 3; Greitemeyer, 2008, 2010, studies 2 and 3; Greitemeyer et al., 2012). Thus is it may be inferred that the effects found in these studies may be attributed to the lyrical content of the songs used and the cognitions they evoke. Moreover, since in these studies no control condition exposing participants to lyrics alone (either heard or read) was used, it is impossible to ascertain the specific effect of the music itself.

Music and social behavior

As for the effect of music on actual social behavior, here, again, most studies focus on lyrics. Songs with prosocial lyrics, as compared to neutral lyrics, led to an increase in prosocial behavior such as donating to non-profit organizations (Greitemeyer, 2008, Study 3), taking flyers promoting human and women’s rights, or recommending a doctoral student for a job position (Greitemeyer et al., 2012, Studies 3 and 4 respectively). Similarly, songs with prosocial lyrics reduce aggressive behavior, leading to more positive evaluation of job candidates, and to administering less hot chili sauce to a fictive participant (Greitemeyer, 2010, Studies 4 and 5 respectively).

Songs with antisocial, and specifically misogynous lyrics, on the other hand, increase aggressive behavior, leading males to administer more hot chili sauce and to assign longer time periods for a female confederate to put her hand in freezing water (Fischer & Greitemeyer, 2006, Studies 1 and 3, respectively). Similarly, male participants who heard misogynous rap songs chose to show a female confederate more violent or sexually violent video vignettes than neutral vignettes (Barongan & Nagayama Hall, 1995). As in the previous studies on lyrics, here too, no presentation of lyrics without music was included.

Two studies examined the effect of background music on social behavior without reference to lyrics. One study (LaMarre et al., 2012) compared the effect of different styles of background music on allocating funds to different ethnic groups. Hearing top 40 pop hits led to more equal allocation between groups, whereas listening to rock led to more allocation to white groups, and radical white power rock led to less funds allocated to American Blacks and American Arabs. Although these genres generally differ in their lyrical topics, the authors suggest that the genres themselves are associated with different social groups, and listening to them triggers cognitions regarding one’s own social status, and influences social judgment. A second study examined the effect of instrumental music on outgroup derogation (Maher, Van Tilberg, & Van Den Tol, 2013). It was found (Study 3) that participants who heard instrumental music that was structurally unconventional and deviating from expectations gave longer jail sentences to an outgroup member (an Englishman) who abused an ingroup member (an Irishman) than participants who heard conventional music. The authors maintain that music that is difficult to reconcile with existing structural and sound expectations elicits compensatory efforts, which in turn are expressed in intergroup biases.

As with the studies mentioned above, the studies here either did not measure mood or arousal (Fischer & Greitemeyer, 2006; Greitemeyer, 2008, 2010, Study 4; Greitemeyer et al., 2012; LaMarre et al., 2012) or did not find any differences on arousal (Greitemeyer, 2010, Study 5; Maher et al., 2013).

Music and compliance

The studies reviewed above suggest that music influences the way we feel and behave toward other people. However, they do not examine music’s effect on compliance with a direct specific request. Compliance is defined as acquiescence to a request, which may be explicit or implicit (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004). Mood is related to persuasion and compliance, with positive mood leading to less critical appraisal of requests and more compliance than negative mood (Forgas, 1998; Schwarz, 2012). When asked to comply with a request, people in a good mood rely more on heuristic strategies and feelings-as-information (Schwarz & Clore, 1983), and are more likely to help (Schwarz & Clore, 2007).

Very few studies examined the effect of music on compliance to a direct request. Guéguen, Jacob & Lamy (2010) found that female participants were more likely to comply with a request to give a male confederate their phone number after being exposed to a song with romantic lyrics than a neutral song. However, here, again, the authors refer to lyrics, and did not measure mood or arousal. Another study examined compliance with a request to aggress. Wiltermuth (2012) found that participants, in groups of three, in which one participant was a confederate, were more likely to comply with a suggestion by the confederate to aggress a following group of participants by exposing them to a “noise blast” after having engaged in a synchronized task with music. In this study, no differences in mood were found between the experimental groups, but more connectedness to other group members was found in the synchronized task group. The author maintains that this sense of connectedness was partly the factor that increased willingness to comply. Only one study addressed the effect of music on mood and compliance. North, Tarrant and Hargreaves (2004) found that participants in a gym exposed to uplifting (up-tempo Top 20 hits) music complied more with a request to help by agreeing to distribute leaflets for an association for disabled athletes than participants exposed to annoying music (avant-garde computer music). In this study, mood was found to be more positive in the uplifting music group than in the annoying music, and the authors attribute the difference in compliance rates to this effect.

The present research

The studies reviewed above suggest that positive music influences perception, cognition, and emotion, and may lead individuals to accept messages more easily and agree to comply with various requests. Can the same process occur to facilitate compliance with a request implying harming someone? Ziv et al.’s studies (2011) have shown that positive music may lead to the acceptance of unethical messages in an ad. The present studies sought to expand this finding to agreeing to comply with a request implying actual harmful behavior. It was hypothesized that after being exposed to positive background music, participants would be more inclined to comply with a request implying direct harm to a third person, than when no music was played.

Method: Study 1

The aim of Study 1 was twofold: first, to examine whether pleasant music would lead participants to comply more with a request implying harming a third person; and, second, to examine whether the effect, if found, is attributable to mood, lyrics, or familiarity.

Pre-test

The aim of the pre-test was to choose three musical pieces for the study. Since previous studies have shown that music that is perceived as positive and arousing has the strongest effect on mood (Webster & Weir, 2005), one criterion was for all musical pieces to be positive and arousing. Likewise, since familiar music has been shown to lead to more pleasure, preference, and emotion than non-familiar music (Pereira et al., 2011; Schubert, 2007), both familiar and unfamiliar musical pieces were required. In order to control for the effect of lyrics (e.g. Greitemeyer, 2008), a familiar, positive, and liked song with incomprehensible lyrics was needed. The pre-test was thus conducted in order to choose three musical pieces: a familiar, liked song with comprehensible lyrics, a familiar, liked song with incomprehensible lyrics, and an unfamiliar, liked, instrumental piece.

In order to choose musical pieces for the study, two pre-tests were conducted with 2 groups of 20 participants each, who did not take part in the study (5 males, 15 females, and 6 males, 14 females). Participants rated 15 musical pieces (5 songs in English, 5 songs in Spanish or Portuguese, and 5 instrumental pieces) on familiarity, valence, liking, and understanding of lyrics (for the songs). Based on participants’ ratings, the familiar, liked song in English chosen was James Brown’s I Got You (I Feel Good) (1965). The song was familiar and liked by all participants, and the lyrics were comprehensible. The familiar song in Spanish chosen for the study was Elvis Crespo’s Suavemente (1998). The song was familiar and liked, but lyrics were incomprehensible to the participants. Finally, the instrumental piece chosen was the Boston Horns’ Pink Polyester (2007). The piece was unfamiliar and liked.

Participants

One hundred and twenty participants took part in the study: 24 males (mean age = 26.7, SD = 6.93) and 96 females (mean age = 23.37, SD = 1.81). Participants were first-year behavioral studies students at the college, who participated as part of the requirement to take part in empirical studies. Participants were divided into 4 groups: no music (control) (30 participants: 3 males, 27 females); a familiar song in English (James Brown: I Feel Good) (30 participants: 9 males, 21 females); a familiar song in Spanish (Elvis Crespo: Suavemente) (30 participants: 8 males, 22 females); and instrumental unfamiliar music (Boston Horns: Pink Polyester) (30 participants: 4 males, 26 females).

Materials

Music

The three musical pieces chosen for the music groups, as mentioned above were: I Got You (I Feel Good) as a positive, familiar song with comprehensible lyrics, Suavemente as a positive, familiar song with incomprehensible lyrics, and Pink Polyester as a positive, unfamiliar, instrumental piece.

Cognitive task

Participants were told the study was about the effect of background music on cognitive performance. A slightly unclear photocopied page of a text in physics in English was used as the cognitive task. Participants were asked to underline all vowels in the text in 90 seconds.

Questionnaire

Participants were first asked to indicate their gender and age. In the second part of the questionnaire participants were asked to rate on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very much) the degree to which they felt: sad, energetic, stressed, happy, annoyed, tired and calm. These moods were based on Russell’s circumplex model (Russell, 1980), which considers mood on two dimensions: pleasure and arousal. Sad and happy are on the two extremes of the pleasure continuum, energetic and tired on the extremes of the arousal continuum, stressed and annoyed represent high arousal/low pleasantness, and calm represents low arousal/high pleasantness. Finally, participants in the music groups were asked whether they recognized the music (yes/no) and how much they liked the music (no/yes/very much).

Procedure

The study was administered individually by a male research assistant and conducted in a room at the college. Participants were told the study dealt with the effect of background music on cognitive processing. According to the experimental group, the music started playing in the background at a medium volume through a computer connected to an amplifier, and the participant was given the text in English, and was asked to underline as many vowels as possible in 1:30 minute. Once this was over, they were asked to fill out the questionnaire. The assistant then told the participant the study was over. However, the assistant said, he would like to ask the participant to do him a favor. The assistant said: “There is another student who came especially to the college today to participate in the study, and she has to do it because she needs the credit to complete her course requirements. The thing is, I don’t feel like seeing her. Would you mind calling her for me and telling her that I’ve left and she can’t participate?” This request was used since it requires the participant to harm another person who is in the same status and situation as the participant himself (a student obligated to participate in a given number of studies for credit). Compliance with the request would mean the fictive student would not be able to receive credit for her courses. In addition, no reasonable justification was given for harming the other person (the assistant just “didn’t feel like it”). If the participant refused, the assistant said “That’s okay, I’ll do it myself, thanks anyway.” If the participant agreed, the assistant took out his cell phone from his bag, looked at it and said, “Oh, wait, she texted me saying she’s not coming, but thanks anyway.” If the participant hesitated, the researcher did not try to convince them, but repeated the question, asking them if they were willing or not to make the call. In the music groups, the music played all through the procedure, which lasted about 5 minutes. After the whole study was run and all participants took part, they received an email message informing them the true aim of the study was to examine the effect of music on compliance.

Results and discussion

Compliance

All participants recognized the songs I Feel Good and Suavemente. None of the participants recognized the instrumental piece. All participants in the I Feel Good group liked the song, twenty-eight participants in the Suavemente group liked the song, and twenty-nine participants in the instrumental music group liked the music. No significant differences between genders were found on compliance rates.

In order to test the hypothesis, a chi square test was conducted between the groups on compliance. Compliance rates for each group are presented in Table 1. For the whole sample, a nearly significant result was found (Chi square = 7.55, p = .056, Cramer’s V = .215). In order to examine whether music in general had an effect on compliance, a chi square test was conducted comparing all music groups combined with the no music (control) group. The difference was significant (chi square = 6.08, p = .013, Cramer’s V = .225). Whereas 40% of participants (n =12) in the no-music group agreed to comply, 65.6% of participants (n = 59) in all music groups combined agreed to comply. This result may either be interpreted as confirming the effect of positive music on compliance (North et al., 2004) or message acceptance (Ziv et al., 2011), or as showing the distracting effect of music in general, leading to less thorough and critical processing of messages (Oakes & North, 2006).

Table 1.

Compliance rate by experimental group.

	Control	I Feel Good	Suavemente	Pink Polyester
Agree	12 (40%)	21 (70%)	21 (70%)	17 (56.7%)
Refuse	18 (60%)	9 (30%)	9 (30%)	13 (43.3%)

In order to specifically examine the effect of the different musical pieces used, comparisons between pairs of groups were conducted. Although the compliance rate in Pink Polyester (unfamiliar instrumental piece) was higher (56.7%) than the control group (40%), this difference was not significant. This result seems to suggest that although Pink Polyester was rated as positive and arousing in the pre-test, and was liked by most participants, it did not affect compliance rates. A significant difference was found between I Feel Good and the control group (chi square = 5.45, p = .018, phi = –.302). The difference between I Feel Good and Pink Polyester was not significant. Of the studies mentioned above examining compliance, this result seems to be in line with the study by North et al. (2004), which used liked, familiar music. It seems to suggest, as shown in previous studies (Pereira et al., 2011; Witvliet & Vrana, 2007) that familiar music leads to a stronger reaction than unfamiliar music.

Finally, compliance rates in the Suavemente group were similar to those in the I Feel Good group, and were significantly different from the control group (chi square = 5.45, p = .018, phi = –.302). Since the lyrics in this song were incomprehensible to participants, this finding seems to suggest that compliance rates were affected by the familiarity and liking of the songs, and not attributable to the lyrics, as suggested by previous studies (Greitemeyer, 2008, 2010; Greitemeyer et al., 2012).

Mood

No gender differences were found on mood scales. Means and standard deviations by experimental group are presented in Table 2. No significant differences on mood scales were found between the groups. Using the Bonferroni correction, no significant differences were found between the music groups combined and the no-music group, nor between pairs of groups, on any of the mood scales. Although this result seems to contradict previous studies showing the effect of music on attitudes (Apaoloza-Ibanez et al., 2010; Lundqvist et al., 2009), they resemble those measuring the effect of music on behavior (Anderson et al., 2003; Greitemeyer, 2008, 2010).

Table 2.

Means (SD) of mood ratings by group.

	Control	I Feel Good	Suavamente	Pink Polyester
Sad	2.8 (1.51)	2.16 (1.17)	1.93 (1.25)	2.33 (1.43)
Energetic	4.23 (1.47)	4.36 (1.27)	4.06 (1.5)	4.43 (1.35)
Stressed	2.76 (1.83)	2.4 (1.4)	2.16 (1.72)	2.53 (1.76)
Happy	4.33 (1.37)	4.76 (1.04)	4.43 (1.25)	4.26 (1.5)
Annoyed	1.83 (1.23)	1.76 (1.13)	1.66 (1.03)	1.66 (1.03)
Tired	3.7 (1.7)	3.53 (1.67)	3.53 (1.56)	3.9 (1.84)
Calm	4.2 (1.64)	5 (1.36)	4.46 (1.47)	4.43 (1.54)

No significant differences on mood scales were found between participants who agreed and those who refused the request.

The results of Study 1 thus show that exposure to familiar, liked music leads to more compliance to a request implying harming a third person. However, two related issues may have affected compliance rates. The first is the question of authority. Participants may have felt compelled to comply since they were asked to do so by the research assistant, in a situation in which he may be said to have legitimate authority over them (Koslowsky & Schwarzwald, 2001). The second issue is gender. In Study 1, the research assistant was male, whereas most participants were female. Previous studies have shown that men exert more influence than women (Carli, 2001), and that one of the defining features of femininity is compliance (Schippers, 2007).

Method: Study 2

Since authority and gender are related, to the extent that men traditionally possess more power than women (Carli, 2001), Study 2 was conducted by a female assistant. In addition, participants were recruited on a voluntary basis, in which the assistant had no authority.

Participants

Sixty-three participants took part in the study: 31 males (mean age = 26.42, SD = 3.5), and 32 females (mean age = 25.53, SD = 3.6). Participants were BA students who volunteered to participate after being approached by the research assistant in the college cafeteria. Participants were divided into two groups: no music (17 males, 13 females), and the familiar Spanish song used in Study 1 (14 males, 19 females).

Materials

Music

In light of the results of Study 1, in Study 2 only two music conditions were used: no music, and Suavemente, the familiar Spanish song used in Study 1.

Cognitive task

The same cognitive task used in Study 1 was used in Study 2.

Questionnaire

The same questionnaire used in Study 1 was used in Study 2. In addition, since participants were randomly approached in the cafeteria, participants were asked to indicate their field of study. Thirty-eight participants studied social sciences (16 in the no music group and 22 in the music group), 18 participants exact sciences (10 in the no music group and 8 in the music group), and 7 humanities (4 in the no music group and 3 in the music group).

Procedure

Participants were approached by the female research assistant, who presented herself as a psychology student doing a research project. She asked participants to take part in a study on the effect of background music on cognitive performance, which would take a little over 5 minutes. Participants who agreed to participate were taken to a room at the college, in which there were two chairs and a table. In the control group, participants were asked to underline as many vowels as they were able to in the photocopied text in a minute and a half. In the music group, the song was played in the background throughout the procedure. The music continued playing throughout the completion of the questionnaire.

Once participants completed the questionnaires, the research assistant said the study was over, but she would like to ask them for a favor: “Could I ask you to do me a favor? There is a student from my class who missed the whole of the last semester because she was very sick. I promised her I would give her all the course material and summaries. She came here especially today to get them, but actually I don’t feel like giving them to her after all. Could you call her for me and tell her I didn’t come here?” Besides the fact that the fictive student missed classes because of an illness and thus assumingly deserves some sympathy, compliance with the request would mean she would not receive promised study material. Participants’ reply (yes/no) was noted. If the participant refused, the researcher said: “That’s okay, thanks anyway.” If the participant agreed, the assistant took her phone as if to give it to the participant, and said: “Oh, wait, she texted me saying she wasn’t coming after all, but thanks anyway.” As in Study 1, if the participant hesitated, the researcher asked again, until a positive yes/no reply was given. Once the procedure was over, the researcher informed the participant the true aim of the study was to examine the effect of music on compliance.

Results and discussion

In the music group, all participants liked the song, though four participants did not recognize it. None of the participants reported understanding the lyrics. Of the four participants who did not recognize the song, three agreed to comply.

Compliance

In order to test the hypothesis, a chi square analysis was conducted. Compliance rates by group are presented in Table 3. Chi square between groups was significant (chi square = 15.24, p < .001, phi = .492). More participants in the music group (81.8%) agreed to comply with the request than in the control group (33%). This result confirms the findings of Study 1, showing that listening to a familiar, liked piece, leads to higher compliance rates, beyond gender and authority of the figure conducting the research.

Table 3.

Compliance rate by group.

	Music	No music
Agree	27 (81.8%)	10 (33%)
Refuse	6 (18.2%)	20 (66%)

No significant differences in compliance between males and females were found. In the control group, 11 males and 9 females refused, and 6 males and 4 females agreed. In the music group, 1 male and 5 females refused, and 13 males and 14 females agreed. Similarly, no significant differences in compliance were found between students in the various study fields.

Mood

As in Study 1, no significant differences were found between the groups on any mood scale. Similarly, no significant differences between genders were found on the mood scales. Means and standard deviations by experimental group are presented in Table 4.

Table 4.

Means (SD) of mood ratings by group.

	Music	No music
Sad	1.90 (1.33)	2.26 (1.43)
Energetic	4.72 (1.15)	4.53 (1.75)
Stressed	2.69 (1.40)	2.76 (1.63)
Happy	5.27 (1.48)	4.66 (1.56)
Annoyed	1.81 (1.07)	1.76 (1.50)
Tired	3.36 (1.57)	3.13 (1.69)
Calm	4.81 (1.44)	4.43 (1.54)

No significant differences were found in compliance rates between participants in Study 1 and Study 2, neither in the no music group nor in the Suavemente group.

General discussion

The aim of the two studies was to examine whether positive background music may lead to more compliance with a request that implies harming a third person. The use of background music is one of the most important marketing tools in modern society for economic and political ends (Brown, 2006). A number of studies, reviewed above, have suggested that music and its lyrical content may lead to negative behavior under certain circumstances. However, no previous study has compared the effect of different musical pieces on a direct request implying harming a specific person.

In both studies reported here, participants were asked to comply with a request implying harming a third person with no justifiable reason except the research assistant “didn’t feel like” doing what they promised. In both studies, compliance rates were significantly higher when familiar, liked music was played than when no background music was used. The different musical pieces used in Study 1 show that compliance was affected by the familiarity of the music, and was not influenced by lyrics. An issue worth noting in relation to Study 1 is the lack of effect of the unfamiliar instrumental music. Compliance rates in this group were intermediate between the control (no music) group and the two familiar pieces groups, but yielded no significant differences in compliance with any group, although this piece, as with the familiar pieces, was liked by participants. This seems to suggest that liking in itself is not sufficient to induce compliance, and that familiarity plays a crucial role. However, given that the results are in the general direction of the hypotheses, it is possible that with a larger-sized sample these effects would be significant, assuming compliance rates remained the same. Replicating the study with larger participant groups would elucidate this issue.

Taken together, the results of the two studies clearly show that familiar and liked music leads to more compliance, even when the request presented implies harming a third person. It should be stressed that the request in both studies was formulated as a request for a favor, and not a direct request to harm. Participants thus complied out of willingness to help the researchers. This factor precisely points to the significance of the findings. The effect of positive music on persuasion and compliance, as demonstrated in previous studies (Apaolaza-Ibanez et al., 2010; North et al., 2004; Wiltermuth, 2012) could be a two-edged sword, leading to willingness to comply both with requests of positive behavior, and with requests which entail potential harm. In fact, it could be argued that in general, all negative behavior is subjectively justified by a positive motive. Ziv et al. (2011) have demonstrated that positive music may lead to acceptance of a message promoting unethical behavior. The reported studies expand this finding to willingness to perform an act implying harm.

Moreover, this tendency to comply is not attributable to the gender or authority position of the person presenting the request. Compliance rates when a familiar, liked song was played were significantly higher both for the male and the female researcher, and no significant gender differences in compliance were found between participants in either study. This finding suggests that under conditions like the ones used in the present studies, in contrast to previous studies (Carli, 2001), men do not exert more influence than women and authority does not play a role (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004).

As for the effect of music on mood, no differences were found in either study. Although previous studies have shown that music affects message acceptance through its effect on mood (Apaolaza-Ibanez et al., 2010; Broekmier et al., 2008), the findings of the present studies should be compared to studies examining the effect of music on social behavior and compliance. As mentioned above, most of the studies reporting the effect of music on behavior either did not find any differences in mood and arousal between the various experimental groups (e.g., Greitemeyer, 2008, 2010; Maher et al., 2013, Study 3; Wiltermuth, 2012), or did not measure these factors (Guéguen et al., 2010; LaMarre et al., 2012). The only study which measured mood and found positive music influenced both mood and behavior, in this case helping behavior, was the study by North et al. (2004). However, in that study, participants only rated their mood on a scale from 0 (really annoyed) to 10 (really happy). Moreover, participants were exposed to music for longer periods, while exercising in a gym. One of the distinctions between mood and emotion is based on the immediacy and duration of the response, with emotions considered immediate and more intense than moods (Scherer, 2005). In the present studies, participants were only exposed to one musical piece, and mood was measured after a short time period. Although it seems logical to conclude that participants in the familiar songs groups felt something different than in the other groups, perhaps the scales and moods used were not the most adequate to identify this difference. It is possible that measuring physiological responses or cognitive associations may have led to clearer differences (Hunter & Schellenberg, 2010). In addition, it has been shown that emotional ratings of music are higher when participants are asked to rate the emotion conveyed by the music than the emotion they feel (Ali & Peynircioǧlu, 2010, Studies 2 and 3). Perhaps if in the present study participants were asked to rate their perception of the emotion expressed by the music, more significant differences would have resulted.

The effect of music depends on the social context in which it is used (Brown & Theorell, 2006), and the present studies have important implications for a deeper understanding of the use of music as a manipulation tool. The findings raise interesting questions regarding the various factors influencing this effect, and suggest several directions for future studies.

The first would be to examine the underlying process influencing compliance rates. A possible route may be the examination of a social bond created by exposure to the music. Wiltermuth’s study (2012), mentioned above, suggests that a feeling of connectedness with group members was the factor influencing the willingness to comply with a request to harm a second group of participants. Similarly, the studies by LaMarre and colleagues (LaMarre et al., 2012) and by Maher and colleagues (Maher et al., 2013) suggest that certain musical styles and structures influence social cognitions and trigger intergroup bias, leading to in-group favoritism. It has been suggested that music, and especially familiar music, leads to a shared affective experience. The predictability of events in familiar music leads to more shared representations and better communication (Overy & Molnar-Szacaks, 2009). Boer and colleagues (2011) showed that shared musical preferences lead to inference of shared values, which in turn leads to liking and social attraction. Likewise, it has been shown that attitude similarity leads to liking and increases compliance (Goei, Massi Lindsey, Boster, Skalski, & Bowman, 2003). In the setting of the present studies, measuring connectedness or liking to the experimenter would have been out of place, but it is possible that a social bond was created, and this affected compliance in the familiar songs. In this context, repeating the procedures with less sympathetic researchers would allow to determine whether liking for the researcher affected compliance.

The second direction relates to the request itself. In the present studies, the requests were not extreme, and did not elicit total refusal, even in the control groups. As mentioned above, participants probably complied out of a desire to help the researcher and not as a result of being convinced to harm. However, the implication of compliance in both studies was clearly harmful to a third person (inability to finish course requirements in Study 1, and lack of promised study material in Study 2). Repeating the studies using more extreme requests, implying more serious and direct harm to a third person, would allow a clear evaluation of the strength and generalizability of the findings of the present studies.

Another issue which should be investigated more thoroughly is the interaction between lyrics, liking and valence. Since both songs used in the present studies were familiar and liked, it would be interesting to repeat the procedure using unfamiliar songs with comprehensible and incomprehensible lyrics, as well as familiar disliked songs. As mentioned above, the pieces leading to compliance were both familiar and liked, rendering the distinction between the respective contribution of each variable to compliance impossible. Such comparisons would thus allow to determine the impact of each of these factors separately.

A final direction for future studies would focus on musical choice. Although the musical pieces used were shown to be liked both by pre-test and study participants, they were not chosen by the participants. Musical preferences have been shown to be considered important aspects of individuals’ perception of themselves and their identity (Hargreaves, Miell, & MacDonald, 2002; Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003). In the present studies, liking of the music was measured only by three degrees: not at all/yes/very much. It would be interesting to see whether allowing participants to choose the background music themselves and using a wider scale to measure liking would increase or decrease compliance with a request to harm someone.

Footnotes

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The author wishes to express her gratitude to the Research Fund of the Research Authority of the College of Management Academic Studies, Rishon Lezion, Israel, for the financial support provided for this research/publication.

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