| Abstract: | To what effect does a movie soundtrack enhance an individual's physical and emotional reaction to the film they are watching? To answer this question, this experiment divided a motion picture into its separate audio and visual components and tested each to determine the emotional reaction they produced both independently as well as mutually together. The methodology involved dividing a given subject sample randomly into one of three groups and giving each group one of three different stimulus combinations. The subjects were asked to evaluate a series of five motion pictures, each which presented an action sequence with accompanying music, but no spoken language. Measures of emotional reactivity and physical manifestation were determined by a survey instrument, designed specifically for this experiment, which allowed the subject to record their reactions in a logical and structured way. Results showed that music is indeed a very powerful emotional facilitator, especially in the domain of motion pictures. The groups that received the music either by itself or paired with the video scene showed a significant difference in emotional reactivity to the group that only received the video stimulus by itself |
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