Musical Valence Affects Spatial Attention in a Likert Scale Rating Task

Abstract

Music has wide usage in many situations in everyday life, and has been shown to affect a wide range of behaviors from basic line bisection to driving performance. One hundred fourteen participants performed a rating task on works of art in silence or while listening to music with a sad or happy valence. The results demonstrated a replication of earlier work on pseudoneglect in line bisection tasks when the ratings were performed in silence, but demonstrated a reversal of the effect when happy music was present and a negation of the effect when sad music was present. The presence of music and its valence impacted spatial attention as evidenced by ratings on a visual analog scale. The results are framed within theory regarding hemispheric specialization in the brain, and how the findings might be applied to situations in everyday life. Specifically, the results suggest a way to potentially ameliorate pseudoneglect on rating and response scales, improving the efficacy of such instruments in research and user experience environments.