Effect of Music on the Performance and Impression of Simple Repetitive Operation of Calculation

It is often said that music affects the impression of our environment and also our behavior. The author’s group previously investigated the effect of music on the performance and impression in the virtual environmental context of video games; racing games and Pachi-slot games (slot-machine type games). The results commonly showed that the “no music” condition provided the best performances, and that a musical excerpt which provided a high degree of “unpleasant” impression to the games resulted in a high degree of negative effect on the performances. In the present study, we examined the effect of music on the performance and impression in the situation of simple repetitive operation. We provided a repetitive calculation task based on the Uchida-Kraepelin test. The experiment consisted of two sections. In Section 1, the participants performed the calculation task with one of the various types of musical excerpts or without music. In Section 2, the participants only listened to musical excerpts without the calculation task. The results showed that the number of the calculation in a 10 min was larger in the condition of “no music” than the other “with music” conditions. Moreover, a principal component analysis and multiple-regression analyses revealed that a “light” and “mixed” musical excerpt provides “bright” and ”unpleasant” impression to the calculation task and, in turn, results in a serious negative impact on the performance.