Music and Emotive Response - Example of Experimentation

Here is an example of a psychological experiment into a viewers emotional response in relation to music in film found in a Journal titled: "Film Music influences: How Viewers Relate to Move Characters" 2011 by Hoeckner, B, Wyatt, E, Decety, J and Nusbau, H.

The authors state that music can be used as a narrative device for the audience to establish a relationship with screen characters based on "a reliable access to the characters state of mind, an understanding of the context of the characters actions and having morally evaluated the characters on the basis of this knowledge".

The authors go on to conducting their own experiment to find if viewers perception of a character can change depending on the style of music used to describe their emotional state. 

The experiment was tested on 3 groups of students, these groups making up a total of 36 people. They were shown 38 short (less than one minute) clips of non commercial film, these were each scored with their own original piece of music either from the thriller genre or a melodramatic piece, this being for the viewer to relate to the character on a sad, provocative emotional state or in a possibly more angry and pulsating feeling. ten of the 18 clips were filler clips that were not a part of these genres. No clips included sound effects other than any ambient enviornment noise that was recorded whilst filming.

The test subjects were given seven point scales to judge their thoughts on the clip. These judged areas of likeness of the character and certainty of the emotion felt by the subject. After the clips were shown they were further asked what it was they believed to have happened during the clip and what they thought the character was feeling during the clip. 

One of the groups were shown each clip with no music. 

The end result in a nutshell was the thought that melodramatic music spoke to the audience in the most emotion provoking manner. 

The reason why I have included this in my blog is to highlight a method of testing emotional response to film as this is something I will have to do during my honours project, how will the audience react to a change in my character, does certain music work better to change an emotive response and can the audience pin point both how they feel as the test subject but also how the on screen character is feeling and does this aline with how I want the audience to perceive that character at that specific point of film.