Film music influences how viewers relate to movie characters.

Abstract

Film music has powerful aesthetic effects on the perception and understanding of screen content, but does it also influence viewers' sense of connection with movie characters thereby creating antecedents for an experience of empathy? Participants viewed clips showing characters' neutral or ambiguous reaction to an event, person, or object. Viewers rated character likability and their certainty about characters' thoughts in three conditions: thriller music, melodrama music, and no music. The effect of music conditions differed significantly from the no music condition. Compared to melodramatic music, thriller music significantly lowered likability and certainty about characters' thoughts. During subsequent cued recall of screen content, thriller music increased anger attributions and lowered sadness attributions, while melodramatic music increased love attributions and lowered fear attributions. The study provides evidence that film music can influence character likability and the certainty of knowing the character's thoughts, which are antecedents of empathetic concern and emphatic accuracy. Thus film music may be regarded as modulating antecedents of empathic concern and empathic accuracy.

An Art-Based Leadership Intervention for Enhancement of Self-Awareness, Humility, and Leader Performance

“…The music affects the body and activates selfreferential processes (Fischer-Lichte, 2008). Music has the unique ability of stimulating visual imagery, it is like a "fantasy ground" and both portrays and arouses a wide range of complex emotive states and reactive emotional memories (Juslin and Vastfjall, 2008), and may become an antecedent of an empathic response (Hoeckner et al, 2011. Interaction between music and text could facilitate a context for understanding through broader associations.…”

“…It has been suggested that music evokes emotion by creating dynamic patterns to which our socio-emotional brain is particularly sensitive (Coutinho and Cangelosi, 2011). Music might contribute knowledge facilitating empathic response and empathic concern (Hoeckner et al, 2011).…”

Is empathy related to the perception of emotional expression in music? A multimodal time-series analysis.

“…While music offers a rich area for studying expressive human interactions (Juslin & Laukka, 2003), the role of empathy in the perception of emotional expression in music has scarcely been addressed empirically. Research along these lines is needed, given that the ability to decode expressive intentions is crucial for aesthetic appreciations of many types of music (Juslin & Sloboda, 2010), Specific music may even affect the interpretation of others' thoughts and their likability-both seen as antecedents of empathy (Hoeckner, Wyatt, Decety, & Nusbaum, 2011), In the present paper, perceptions of emotional expression in music was investigated and related to cognitive and affective empathy. Both a string quartet and independent observers rated continuously the expressiveness conveyed by the musicians.…”

How Soundtracks Shape What We See: Analyzing the Influence of Music on Visual Scenes Through Self-Assessment, Eye Tracking, and Pupillometry

“…Finally, Hoeckner et al (2011) deepened the interesting question about how viewers relate to movie characters in correspondence of different music and how their sense of empathy is shaped by two soundtracks: thriller music and melodrama music. They found that "compared to melodramatic music, thriller music significantly lowered likability and certainty about characters' thoughts, " while "melodramatic music increased love attributions and lowered fear attributions."…”