Music may cause an attitude: A clue about conflict resolution?

As those of you who read Brains on Purpose™ know, I have been researching the use of music in conflict resolution. A study at Kansas State about which I read today may be a small piece of the puzzle. Obviously much more research will need to be done to verify the priming effects of any kind of music.

From "Patriotic Music May Close Minds, Children's Music May Open Them" (Science Daily):

The words to "Itsy Bitsy Spider" tell a simple story about an arachnid and a spout, but simply recalling the lines could initiate an unintentional attitude.

...

[Eduardo] Alvarado is working with Donald Saucier, associate professor of psychology at K-State to study the effects priming can have on behavior by looking at the positive and negative responses stimulated from music lyrics from a variety of song categories, including patriotic and Christmas songs. Priming, he said, is when someone is exposed to a certain environment and their subconscious is activated, and then they tend to act in accordance with that environment without deliberate intent. Priming can manipulate behavior; if someone witnesses violent behavior, they would likely behave more violently.

...

Alvarado said the researchers wanted to see if certain musical lyrics activated a pro-social response, which is a positive feeling like empathy, or an anti-social response, which is a negative feeling like aggression. ...

...

...He said the preliminary findings showed that the patriotic songs had a negative effect on the participants, as shown through their responses to the survey's questions about other cultures and diversity. The patriotic songs made the participants close-minded and prejudiced.
"Once they were in a patriotic point of view, they were less empathetic," Alvarado said. "They didn't put themselves in other people's perspective."

Though songs like "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" were meant to be neutral primes, the researchers found that they stimulated a pro-social response.

I think an assumption made by the researchers was incorrect: "Alvarado said the researchers assume people act similarly to primes ... ." It is likely that the more self-aware a person is, the more he or she

engages in metacognition, the less the effects of priming. Nevertheless, this research may provide some clues in my quest for learning about music and dispute resolution.

Other articles about the effect of music on people:

"Notes from the Front: Soldiers Tune in to the Iraq War" (New York Post): Excerpt:

"These soldiers know they are using music to create a heightened sense of awareness to put them in a psychological state where they have to go and deal with the possibility of engaging in combat."

[Colby] Buzzell, for one, says music helps when his motivation is down: "Sometimes . . . you're like, 'I don't want to play soldier today.' But then you hear 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' theme song and you're like 'F - - - , yeah, hell yeah, I'll go out on a mission today.' "

"Futility Music" (New Yorker). Excerpt:

In Errol Morris’s documentary “Standard Operating Procedure. . .” an American soldier talks about employing music as a means of breaking down the resistance of enemy combatants during interrogations. They can withstand “Hip Hop Hooray” and “Enter Sandman. . .” he says, but not country music. ...

"Blam" (New Yorker). Excerpt:

Music, [Jonathan] Pieslak writes, has always been a part of the military experience ... . In [his] book’s fourth chapter, “Music as a Psychological Tactic,” Pieslak examines a “sonic battle” between American troops—who blasted “Welcome to the Jungle,” by Guns N’ Roses, and “Hell’s Bells,” by AC/DC—and Iraqi mullahs, who tried to drown out the metal with chants of “Allahu Akbar” and Arabic music. Standing near the “J”s, he said, “Plato thought that different musical scales could have different effects on the human condition. We tend to have a misconception about music—that it is this thing that delights the senses, elevates the spirit. While I like that idea, it is only part of what music has been.”

Comments

[Todd I. Stark]

Yes, I agree. I think that would be consistent with most of the findings regarding "central" vs. "peripheral" persuasion in social psychology as well. Some priming effects are lessened by metacognition (though probably not all to the same degree).