Called “the Mozart effect”, this theory states that listening to classical music, especially that of the Austrian composer, makes you smarter. But what is it really?
“Music gives soul to our hearts and wings to thought”, the philosopher Plato already affirmed more than two millennia ago. If it is undeniable that music softens morals and has real benefits for humans, can listening to it have effects on our intellectual faculties? This is the theory advanced by the defenders of the “Mozart effect”, which advocates the fact that listening to the Austrian composer would make you smarter. In the 1990s, a group of American researchers from the University of California claimed that teenagers obtained better test results after listening to the Sonata for two pianos in D major by Mozart (1781).
The experiment, divided into two phases, was carried out on about thirty volunteers, divided into three groups: one spent 10 minutes in silence, the other 10 minutes doing relaxation exercises and the last 10 minutes to listen to the Sonata for two pianos in D major of Mozart. The second phase of the study consisted of running a series of intelligence quotient assessment tasks, called “spatio-temporal reasoning.” People who listened to classical music before these exercises saw their performance “improved”.
A simple marketing stunt?
The study caused a stir, spreading the idea that listening to classical music in general and Mozart in particular had real benefits for our intellectual abilities. But what is it really? This theory is in fact only a legend, even a marketing stunt. In 2010, a team from the University of Psychology in Vienna, led by Jakob Pietschnig, also contradicted the famous “Mozart effect.” These researchers pointed to numerous biases in the survey, a confusion between causality and concomitance effects. It is established that the famous study does not in any way confirm that listening to Mozart’s music has an effect on intellectual abilities.
“I recommend everyone to listen to Mozart, but it will not increase cognitive abilities as some hope,” said Jakob Pietschnig, who led the study. No offense to Mozart, it would in fact be more broadly the stimulation of the brain thanks to the music which would have a positive effect on our intellectual capacities.