Mozart’s Effect Myth

5 min readDec 8, 2022

Introduction: YouTube video overview About the Mozart effect

General Background Information About Mozart:

Mozart’s full name is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He was born in Salzburg Austria January 7th, 1756, and died December 5th, 1791. It is said that most historians do not know how he died, but it is likely that he died to a common cold or flu like illness that developed into something worse. He only lived to the age of 35 and never was truly that popular for his work when he was alive. It is even said that Mozart became very poor towards the end of his life and was taking loans from his neighbors for things. Mozart was a very talented composer and started this talent of his when he was about four years old. This is when we learned how to play the keyboard and violin leading him to release his first work at the age of five. He was alive during the classical era, so this led to most of his work to be in this music genre. He did dabble in other genres but classical was his main focus. As a kid he would travel around Austria to perform in concerts with his family (his father and older sister). He moved to Viena when he was 25 and released most of his music while he lived there. He produced around 800 pieces in his short life span and ended up dying in Viena leaving behind his wife and kids (Homes, 1845).

What is the Myth About the Mozart Effect?

The Mozart Effect is a myth that basically states that if you listen to his music, it will make you more intelligent. The study that kind of made this myth kickoff happened in 1993 by scientist Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky. The original test these scientists had was that they gave this IQ test to some people who listened to nothing during the test and then gave the same test to people who listened to one of Mozart's songs for 10 minutes. In this certain experiment it was said that those who had listened to the Mozart’s music scored 8–9 points higher than those who did not listen to any music. However, none of the scientist said that listening to Mozart’s music would increase anyone's intelligence. It was said by the scientists that listening to this music just created a more ideal testing setting for the test takers because the music improved reasoning skills and lowered the blood pressure of the participants. Because of this study, this led to many different scientists to conduct different test involving Mozart’s music. They would often change variables like how long the participates listened to the music and specific songs that Mozart produced. All of these tests with the different variables led to different findings ultimately making this a myth. This study by Rauscher got taken out of context by the public and this myth started to spread starting in the mid 90's (Jenkins, 2001, pp 170–172).

Example of other Experiments on the Mozart Effect

Another study involving the Mozart effect that tested different variables is if the Mozart effect works on high school students. In 2007 scientist found 86 high school participants that were randomly put into two groups. One group being a control group and the second group being the Mozart group. So, during the test one group was in a silent room while the other group was in another room that was playing Mozart's music in the background ultimately trying to see if arousal and reasoning levels were different between the two environments. It was found that those in the Mozart testing area did show an increase in their reasoning levels compared to those in the control group. But there was not any evidence proving that the music changed the arousal levels and showed that they were similar to the control group. However, this is just one test that showed these results and would need more tests done with consistent results to show if the Mozart effect is real (Jones, 2007, p.219).

What does music bring to the table?

Music is said to help out with a lot more things than we expected. It was not until recently medical wise that we have found that it helps with a lot of important skills. Some skills music bring to humans is how it can help improve our memory and auditory skills (DeNora, 2014, pp. 1–10). This is because music allows our brain to go into this almost mediation like state and allows us to focus on the task that is infront of us more precisely. Another benefit that music helps with is that it helps with stress relief by lowering our blood pressure ultimately letting us take a step back and reflect on everything that is going on with clear eyes. Playing a musical instrument is also another part of music that brings a lot of positives especially to kids. Playing an instrument requires us humans to use both sides of our brains and helps with memory skills like mentioned earlier, but it also helps with an increase in cognitive development in kids. It is also said that those who play an instrument are less likely to develop dementia because of these cognitive connections ( Balbag, 2014). Some other positives music brings us is how it can help with pain reduction. This happens because it is shown that music often helps release muscle tensions and this allows for there to be less pain. It is also said that music can help with children's behavior through music therapy and allows these kids to act more independent and confident (Alvin, 1975, pp.284–7).

Works Cited

Alvin, J., & Andrews, J. (1975). Music therapy (pp. 284–7). London: Hutchinson.

Balbag, M. A., Pedersen, N. L., & Gatz, M. (2014). Playing a musical instrument as a protective factor against dementia and cognitive impairment: A population-based twin study. International journal of Alzheimer’s disease, 2014.

DeNora, T., & Ansdell, G. (2014). What can’t music do?. Psychology of Well-being, 4(1), 1–10.

Holmes, E. (1845). The life of Mozart: including his correspondence. Chapman and Hall.

Jenkins, J. S. (2001). The mozart effect. Journal of the royal society of medicine, 94(4), 170–172.

Jones, M. H., & Estell, D. B. (2007). Exploring the Mozart effect among high school students. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 1(4), 219.