Contextual influences on sound quality evaluation

Product sound quality judgments are based on perception of both acoustical characteristics and various non-acoustical factors. This paper focuses on how non-acoustical, contextual, factors might impact sound quality evaluation. Three different experiments showed that a positive or negative attitude towards the product (induced by priming tasks, mood, or reading about others' opinions) systematically influenced how sounds were perceived. Moreover, temporary influences such as mood interacted with more stable individual differences such as noise sensitivity. These findings suggest that product sound quality evaluation is variant across people, and that both research and industry need to consider contextual factors to fully understand how the concept of quality is constructed.