Experimental Studies on the Efficiency of Musical Emotions for the Reconciliation of Conceptual Dissonances

Debates on the origin and function of music have a long history. While some scientists argue that music itself plays a nonadaptive role in human evolution, others suggest that music clearly has an evolutionary role, and point to music's universality. A recent hypothesis suggested that a fundamental function of music has been to help mitigate cognitive dissonance, which is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting cognitions simultaneously. It usually leads to devaluation of conflicting knowledge. The researcher provided experimental confirmation of this hypothesis using a classical paradigm known to create cognitive dissonance. In the present study, cognitive dissonance was experimentally created in 4-year-old children using a well-established method (the induced-compliance paradigm). According to previous research, cognitive dissonance similar to that of adults can be confirmed in children as young as 4-years-old using this method. The results of the experiment revealed that exposure to Mozart's music exerted a strongly positive influence upon the children's performance and enabled them to reconcile the cognitive dissonance they had experienced during the experiment.