Effect of Music and Perceptual Load on Decision Making

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There are various kinds of information present in the environment, due to which it affects an individual’s ability to accurately detect and distinguish information. Therefore, the current study aims at understanding the effect of perceptual load (high load and low load) and music (tempo) on decision making (i.e., during a conjunction search task). 62 participants were recruited for the experiment and the responses were collected through Open Sesame. The participants were asked to report whether a red circle is present or absent, while listening to music. Two-way Anova, one-way Anova and student’s t-test were employed. The results indicate that perceptual load does not have a significant effect on the accuracy of responses. However, tempo of the music has a significant effect on the accuracy of responses (pes=0.08), in a conjunction search task. There is a significant difference between the proportion of hits and correct rejections, across different perceptual and tempo conditions. Students and workers listen to various kinds of music during their task involving varying levels of difficulty and perceptual systems. The perception during this process can either be facilitated or hindered with. Various studies have investigated upon the influence of music (i.e., classical, jazz, pop) but only few have focused upon Bollywood music with varying tempo.