Da dum. Da dum. Da dum. Does music affect our perception of sharks?
Take a seat and grab some headphones. Click the link here (ter.ps/jaws), close your eyes, and hit play. I’ll wait.
What kind of emotions does that song evoke for you? For me, I am filled with anticipatory anxiety, as I wait for something to attack. But this isn’t just any anticipatory, on the edge of your seat music. You might recognize it as the theme song to Steven Spielberg’s 1975 classic, Jaws. This movie has continued to maintain its relevance almost 45 years later, with spoofs and cute dog videos. But what does its continued fame mean for the sharks? Some researchers made it a mission to find out.
These researchers conducted a series of three experiments from August 2013 to February 2015. In this first experiment, they looked at whether the background music of a video of sharks affected viewers’ perception of the sharks. This study had three experimental groups and three control groups.
The experimental groups were shown a 60-second clip of sharks swimming from the series Blue Planet Seas of Life from the episode “Ocean World.” This video was set to one of three types of music: ominous music, uplifting music, or no music/silence. Participants in the experimental groups were assigned to one music type. The three control groups only listened to music; they did not see the clip of sharks. Again, the three control conditions listened to 60-seconds of ominous music, uplifting music, or no music.
After watching the video/listening to the soundtrack, participants were asked to rank how well a series of six words (scary, dangerous, vicious, peaceful, beautiful, and graceful) described sharks. The rating scale had 7 options, ranging from not at all to very much. Participants were also asked to generate one word of their own to describe sharks.
Those who watched the shark video with ominous background music rated sharks less positively and more negatively than participants who watched the shark video with either uplifting or silent background music. However, there was no significant difference in either negative or positive rating between the participants who had uplifting background music or no music. There was also no difference in ratings between subjects who only had audio. This means that participants were not rating the sharks based on their feelings about the music itself.
This first experiment also asked participants to indicate ‘to what extent do you support measures to restore depleted shark populations’” to conservation efforts. The researchers were not looking for a change in attitude, but also behavior. However, there was no significant effect of music on support for conservation. The experimenters conducted a second experiment to again test their hypothesis of whether music can go beyond influencing attitude and enact real change. In this experiment, the participants were randomized into the same six groups. The difference here was that half of them were asked the same question about willingness to support conservation whereas the other half were asked about their willingness “to donate to ‘a non-profit organization whose mission includes protecting sharks and increasing shark populations around the world?’” The researchers had two hypotheses as to why there was no effect on people’s support of shark conservation: 1) people’s dislike for sharks was too deep to be altered in a one-minute video or 2) these measures were too abstract. It is also important to note that this experiment did not replicate the differences in perception of sharks from the first experiment.
In a third experiment, the researchers wanted to get to the bottom of whether music can not only alter our perception, but our behaviors in regard to sharks. This time, they were also able to more closely replicate the effect of music on shark perception from the first experiment. Now, the willingness to support conservation was measured by in a slightly more concrete way. Participants were asked to vote between three different charities dedicated to helping the ocean. At the end of the study, the researchers would donate $100 to the charity with the most votes. The three options were a charity dedicated to “‘protecting sharks,’ ‘protecting dolphins,’ or ‘discretionary fund.’” Participants who watched the shark video with uplifting music were significantly more likely to choose to allocate the funds to the shark charity when compared to the group who watched the video without music. However, there was no significant difference between those that watched the video with uplifting vs ominous music or ominous vs no music. While these results point in the direction of what the researchers were trying to prove, I don’t know if it was entirely successful. As expected, there was also no difference between the participants who listened to audio but did not see the associated video.
Another interesting observation from the study was that people who only listened to the audio (or lack thereof) component rated the sharks significantly more negatively than those who watched the video with the audio. According to the experimenters, this could mean that the baseline feeling about sharks is more negative and the music overall actually makes people more amenable to sharks.
This is a really interesting study with the potential for far-reaching impact. Sharks play a vital role in our ocean ecosystems, but around 25% of shark species are currently threatened with extinction. If music truly can help change our feelings about shark conservation, this kind of research can do a lot of good.
I felt the researchers did a really good job at explaining their methods and pointing out where their hypotheses were wrong or where they produced null results. At the same time, this speaks to the point that we must be careful in our evaluations as consumers of scientific literature. I also had a few ideas of my own while reading this study. I understand that because there was no difference among the ratings of the groups who only listened to the audio, the change in perception was not due to the music itself. However, did people rate the sharks differently because of a change in their own emotions? It would be interesting to see the researchers repeat the study while asking participants to fill out a survey such as the Mood and Feelings Questionnaire (MFQ) to measure their mood before and after watching the video. I would also be interested if this effect is generalizable to other animals. Would this experiment work with a tiger? Or does this effect exist because of the way sharks are depicted in popular culture with sinister background music? Could you influence people to feel less favorably about an animal like a bunny?
In other news, the sharks might have caught wind of the effect music has on their perception and worked on some rebranding strategies with songs like baby shark. As a camp counselor who has heard baby shark too often, I honestly don't know which one makes the sharks look worse.
If you would like to check out the article yourself, you can find it at this link!
Citation for the research article:
Nosal, A. P., Keenan, E. A., Hastings, P. A., & Gneezy, A. (2016). The effect of background music in shark documentaries on viewers’ perceptions of sharks. PloS one, 11(8), e0159279.
