Overcoming Bias About Music Puts the Brain to Work

News research suggests it takes extra brainpower to get past biases and stereotypes about the music we listen to.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Expectations and biases play a large role in our experiences. This has been demonstrated in studies involving art, wine and even soda. In 2007, Joshua Bell, an internationally acclaimed musician, illustrated the role context plays in our enjoyment of music when he played his Stradivarius violin in a Washington, D.C., subway, and commuters passed by without a second glance.

Elizabeth Margulis, Distinguished Professor of music theory and music cognititon at the U of A, along with psychology researchers at Arizona State University and the University of Connecticut, studied this phenomenon and recently published their results in Scientific Reports. They found that simply being told that a performer is a professional or a student changes the way the brain responds to music. They also found that overcoming this bias took a deliberate effort.

The study involved 20 participants without formal training in music. Inside a functional magnetic imaging, or fMRI, machine, the participants listened to eight pairs of 70-second musical excerpts, presented in a random order. Each pair consisted of two different performances of the same excerpt. The participants were told that one of the pairs was played by a “conservatory student of piano” and the other was a “world-renowned professional pianist.” Although participants were actually listening to a student and professional performance, they heard each pair twice during the experiment with the labels reversed, ensuring that the researchers could investigate the effect of the label independent of the qualities of the performance itself.

Participants rated their enjoyment of each excerpt on a scale of one to 10, and they indicated which of the two excerpts in each pair they preferred. The researchers used the fMRI scans to examine regions of the brain that are associated with auditory processing, pleasure and reward, and cognitive control.

In order to study the brain activity associated with bias, the researchers compared brain images of the participants who preferred the “professional” excerpts with images of participants who preferred the “student” excerpts. They found that when a participant preferred the piece attributed to a professional player, there was significantly more activity in the primary auditory cortex, as well as a region of the brain associated with pleasure and reward.

This activity started when the participant was informed that the player was a professional —  before the music even began — and remained consistent during the excerpt, suggesting that the belief that a musician is a professional caused these participants to pay more attention to the music and biased their listening experience not just at the start, but throughout the excerpt.

The researchers also examined the brain activity of participants who preferred the “student” recordings over the “professional” recordings. While these participants were listening to the recordings attributed to the professional, researchers saw higher activity in a region of the brain related to cognitive control and deliberative thinking throughout the course of the excerpt. They also found that these participants had more connectivity between the parts of their brain related to cognitive control and reward.

“The participants who could resist the bias (who decided they liked the performance primed as student or disliked the one primed as professional) had to recruit regions devoted to executive control — it looked like work for them to suppress the bias,” said Margulis. “These data demonstrate how critical factors outside the notes themselves, like the information you have about a performer (explicitly in the form of a prime or implicitly in the form of positioning on stage at Carnegie Hall or on a subway platform) can transform what you are able to hear and how you evaluate a musical performance.”

These findings have implications beyond music preference, the researcher explained. “Our findings are relevant for behavioral economists, psychologists and artists alike, as they demonstrate that ‘deliberative and effortful thinking’ can play a crucial role in overcoming cognitive heuristics related to socially constructed concepts and stereotype,” they wrote in the paper.

About the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences: Fulbright College is the largest and most academically diverse unit on campus with 19 departments and more than 30 academic programs and research centers. The college provides the core curriculum for all University of Arkansas students and is named for J. William Fulbright, former university president and longtime U.S. senator.

About the University of Arkansas: The University of Arkansas provides an internationally competitive education for undergraduate and graduate students in more than 200 academic programs. The university contributes new knowledge, economic development, basic and applied research, and creative activity while also providing service to academic and professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the University of Arkansas among only 2 percent of universities in America that have the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the University of Arkansas among its top American public research universities. Founded in 1871, the University of Arkansas comprises 10 colleges and schools and maintains a low student-to-faculty ratio that promotes personal attention and close mentoring.

Please note: This story originally appeared in the University of Arkansas’ Research Frontiers publication. Please visit researchfrontiers.uark.edu for more stories like this.