The mood of rock music affects evaluation of video elements differing in valence and dominance.

This research investigated the influence of the mood of two examples of instrumental rock music (ominous and happy) on audience evaluation of two video elements that differed in positive/negative valence and dominance (a positive, dominant character and a negative, secondary world) within a single video. Two broad questions were addressed: Does music mood affect evaluation of the elements according to semantic congruence, and how does music mood impact the relationship between evaluation of individual film elements and the overall evaluation of a film as a whole. In an experiment, 106 undergraduates were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: a video with happy rock music, the same video with ominous rock music, or the video with no music. Results showed that happy music increased positive evaluation of the world (negative, secondary element) and strengthened its correlation with overall video evaluation to a level equivalent to that attributed to the main character (positive, dominant element). It also showed that the presence of music strengthened the correlation between the positive and negative elements, suggesting that music systematically influenced both elements in a music-congruent direction to a limited extent. These results are discussed in terms of the Congruence-Associationist Model (CAM) (Cohen, 2001), cognitive schemas (Boltz, 2004), evaluative ambiguity, and cognitive effort. (ProQuest-CSA LLC: . denotes obscured text omitted.) Films often are described in terms that emphasize cognitive constructions of meaning such as the plot or the main characters. Yet, the cognitive processing of film is only part of the picture. One common reason audiences view entertainment films is for the emotional experience, and one ubiquitous contributor of emotional information in film is music. Music has long been held as a means of communicating and evoking emotion (Juslin & Sloboda, 2001). Of course, cognition and emotion do not work in isolation from one another. Many elements within a film can communicate both cognitive and emotional information, such as the scowl on a character's face as he shovels dirt into a grave or a peaceful establishing shot of a pristine mountain. The exact nature of the association between emotion and cognition is under debate, but there is little doubt that these two entities work together in numerous situations (e.g., Forgas & Bower, 2001 ; Martin & Clore, 2001; Solomon, 2000). To explore the relationship of mood, cognition, and evaluation in the context of film music, the present research examines the influence of music mood on viewers' cognitive appraisal of a short video. A Foundation in Attitude Theory A field that frequently studies cognition and emotion together is attitude research, where attitudes are conceptualized as mental structures based upon a combination of cognition and emotion. These structures cause people to evaluate an entity with a certain degree of favor or disfavor (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). "Evaluation" here is defined as a general positive-negative continuum rather than one of the three semantic differential dimensions from Osgood, Suci, and Tannenbaum's( 1957) "The Measurement of Meaning" (i.e., evaluation, potency, and activity). While "favor" or "disfavor" encompasses different types of evaluations such as like-dislike dispositions or good-bad judgments, the current research focuses on a general valence judgment of whether video and musical elements are positive or negative, such as helpful versus manipulative and heroic versus villainous. The current study departs from this description of attitude theory in reference to the term emotion. Although the term "emotion" could be used, the overall mood communicated by a musical piece is a more accurate description of what is being studied. Emotion is more transitory and attributed to a specific cause, whereas mood is more enduring and may not be associated with a specific cause. …