The Effects of Music on Compassion

Anderson, Stephen

The Effects of Music on Compassion

Persistent URL

http://hdl.handle.net/10456/41370

Author(s)

Anderson, Stephen

Date Issued

April 4, 2016

Abstract

Most current researchers define compassion as an idiosyncratic emotion that arises when acknowledging the suffering of others that is followed by a genuine motive to help. There is evidence that the experience of negative emotions (e.g. sadness) can act as a catalyst for the expression of compassion when witnessing suffering: research has demonstrated that negative mood can engender helping (Weyant, 1978), enhance acuity of perception of suffering in others (Hills, Werno, & Lewis, 2010), and lead to greater physiological reactivity to emotionally provocative stimuli (Yuan, Chen, Yang, Ju, & Norman, 2014). This study investigated whether negative mood induced by music can influence compassion. Participants were presented with images depicting the Syrian Refugee crisis with or without sad music, and were assessed on compassion through measures of self-report, helping, and time spent viewing the images. Participants without music reported more compassion and spent a shorter amount of time viewing the images. Results on the helping measure were not analyzed due to floor effects. Though differences between compassion scores were non-significant, with time scores approaching significance, manipulation checks suggest that the results may have contradicted the hypotheses due to emotional regulation, distraction, and /or reactance effects in participants who viewed the images with music

Major

Music

Psychology

First Reader(s)

Jackson, Lydia