The effects of the properties of music on creativity in the brainstorming

More recently there has been a great increase in the numbers of studies that investigate relationship between mood and creativity. Even though there have been experimental studies that manipulated mood, the topic of which characteristics of music influences performance has not known yet. The initial research, which manipulated mood through music, has shown no effect of mood on creativity (Gultepe, 2014). This outcome can be due to the fact that the characteristics of music (e.g. different instruments, keys, intervals, culture and etc.) were different across positive and negative mood conditions. In Experiment 1, negative music was manipulated by inverting a positive music into negative music by means of dissonant intervals. In this way the instruments and tones of music were controlled across positive and negative music conditions. The loudness of music was also manipulated by a means of either high or low intensity (decibel). After these manipulations, the participants were brainstormed. The results of the first experiment showed that participants in the positive music condition had higher positive feelings, flexible and original ideas than those in the negative music condition. Moreover, the finding that positive music lead to a higher number of flexible ideas, which in turn increased original ideas suggest that flexibility is a mediator between pleasantness of music and creativity. However, the volume of music had no significant effect on creativity. In Experiment 2, the participants were listened either pleasant-unpleasant music or high-low volume of music while generating their ideas. The results of this experiment showed that pleasant music increased the number of flexible and original ideas. Flexibility was found to be a mediator between pleasantness of music and creativity. In the first half of the brainstorming session, high-level music led to lower number of ideas than low level music. However such effect was no longer evident in this second part of the brainstorming session. In the second half of the brainstorming session the pleasantness of music became evident; indicating that the participants in pleasant music condition generated higher number of ideas than those in negative music condition. These findings were discussed in lights of models and relevant approaches.