Mozart effect

The Mozart effect is an idea that suggests listening to the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart might temporarily improve scores on part of an IQ test. Some popular stories claimed that "listening to Mozart makes you smarter," especially for young children, and that hearing classical music early in life could help mental development.

The original research from 1993 found that listening to Mozart for a short time could help people do better on certain mental tasks, like folding paper and solving mazes. This improvement lasted only about 15 minutes. However, the news and media exaggerated these results, leading many to believe Mozart’s music could make children smarter. This idea became very popular, with companies selling Mozart CDs to parents. Even the U.S. state of Georgia thought about giving every child a CD of classical music. Around the same time, the Baby Einstein videos were created, and one of them, called Baby Mozart, was made with the Mozart effect in mind.

Later reviews of many studies found little proof that listening to Mozart really helps with spatial reasoning or makes anyone smarter. The person who did the first study also said that Mozart’s music does not change general intelligence.

Rauscher et al. 1993 study

In 1993, researchers studied how listening to Mozart’s music might affect thinking skills, especially solving puzzles and understanding space. Participants listened to a piece by Mozart, relaxed in silence, or followed calming instructions before taking tests. The tests showed that after listening to Mozart, people did a little better on these puzzles for about 15 minutes. However, this did not mean their overall intelligence changed, as the test only looked at specific thinking skills.

Popularization

Some people thought that listening to Mozart could make someone smarter overall, even though the original study only showed a short-term boost in certain thinking skills. In 1994, a writer for the New York Times said that listening to Mozart might actually make you smarter. Later, in 1997, a book called The Mozart Effect suggested that playing Mozart's music, especially piano concertos, could temporarily raise a person's intelligence and help with many mental tasks. The author encouraged playing classical music for babies, hoping it would help their learning and growth.

The idea that music can help with thinking and health led to more books and products, including music meant to help with rest, learning, and creativity. However, many people question these ideas, and research on how music affects the mind has not given clear answers.

Political impact

In 1998, the idea that listening to classical music could help children learn led Georgia’s governor, Zell Miller, to suggest spending $105,000 each year to give every newborn child in Georgia a tape or CD of classical music. He believed that listening to music early in life could improve skills used in math, engineering, and even playing chess. To support his idea, Miller played some Beethoven’s "Ode to Joy" for other leaders and asked if they didn’t feel smarter already. He also asked Yoel Levi, the music director of the Atlanta Symphony, to choose the best classical pieces for the collection. One state representative, Homer DeLoach, wondered if including some Charlie Daniels music might also work, but was told that classical music was thought to have a stronger positive effect.

Subsequent research and meta-analyses

After the first study about the Mozart effect, more research was done. Some later studies found that any kind of music that makes you feel good might help with certain thinking tasks, not just Mozart's music. These tasks include solving problems and thinking quickly. But not all studies found that Mozart's music helps children do better on IQ tests or spatial tasks.

In 1999, scientists questioned if the Mozart effect was real. They found that any small improvement in thinking was only for one type of task and was linked to how much the person liked the music. For example, listening to Mozart or a scary story helped people with paper folding only if they liked what they heard. Sometimes, listening to Mozart helped a little, but other times it did not help at all.

A big review of many studies in 2010 found little proof that the Mozart effect is real. The improvements were very small, and some studies showed bigger effects because they were done by the original researchers who suggested the idea. There was also a problem because only studies that found positive results were published.

Even when scientists tried to repeat the original experiment exactly, they still could not find the Mozart effect. Whether people listened to classical music, jazz, or nothing, there was no real difference in how well they did on spatial tasks.

Many experts now think the Mozart effect is just because people feel more awake and in a better mood when they listen to music they enjoy. The idea that Mozart's music makes your brain work better for spatial tasks has been criticized a lot.

Governments also looked at the research and concluded that just listening to Mozart—or any music you enjoy—does not make you smarter. But they think more research is needed to see if taking music lessons might help children's intelligence over a long time.

Popular ideas that listening to Mozart makes you smarter are not true. One of the original researchers said that the effect only helps with certain spatial tasks and does not make you smarter overall. She thinks money should go to music education programs instead.

Many psychologists now consider the idea that playing classical music to children boosts their intelligence to be a myth.

Health benefits

Scientists have also studied if Mozart's music has health benefits. One study found that playing Mozart's Sonata K.448 to people with epilepsy reduced their seizures. Only a few other pieces of music, like one by Yanni, had a similar effect because they shared similar musical qualities with Mozart's K.448.

However, a more recent study in 2023 found that the research on Mozart's music helping with epilepsy is not strong enough. The studies had small numbers of people, did not follow good scientific methods, and could not be repeated.

Other uses of Mozart's music

Even though listening to Mozart doesn’t actually increase intelligence, scientists have looked at other ways music might help. Some studies have checked if music can affect things like seizures or even help baby animals learn better.

People have found creative ways to use Mozart’s music. For example, a sewage treatment plant in Germany plays Mozart to help break down waste more quickly. The plant’s chief operator believes the music’s vibrations might help by reaching through the water and even the cells in the sewage.

Alfred Tomatis

The idea of the "Mozart effect" was mentioned by a French researcher named Alfred Tomatis in his 1991 book Pourquoi Mozart? (Why Mozart?). He used Mozart's music in his work to help "retrain" the ear. Tomatis believed that listening to Mozart's music, which has different frequencies, could help the ear and support brain development and healing. However, his approach is different from the idea that listening to Mozart makes someone smarter.