When Your Ear Sets the Stage: Musical Context Effects in Film Perception

Psychological experiments dealing with the music-dependent perception of film sequences often use reductionist approaches (stereotyped stimuli) and rely on subjects' direct (overt) ratings of the material (e.g., using semantic differentials). For this study, a more ecologically valid covert design was constructed to investigate experimentally musical context effects on perceivers' plot-related expectations. Forty-eight participants were presented with one of two music versions (original v. fake score) of the visually identical film sequence. They then wrote brief continuations of the plot, which were subsequently analysed using quantitative and qualitative content analysis, with the focus on emotional content. Results show that viewers'/listeners' anticipations about the further development of a sequence are systematically influenced by the underlying film music, which implicitly co-determines the psychological reality of the scene.