Music alters visual perception

Our visual representation of the world around us is not only affected by what we think or what we believe. How we feel has a profound impact on the ‘picture in our mind’ as well. In the present study, we further investigate the effect of mood, as induced by music, on top-down processing of visual information. 

We let observers do a difficult stimulus detection task, in which they had to detect schematic happy and sad faces embedded in noise. Mood was manipulated by means of music. We found that observers were more accurate in detecting faces congruent with their mood, corroborating earlier research. However, in trials in which no actual face was presented, observers made a significant number of false alarms. The content of these false alarms, or illusory percepts, was strongly influenced by the observers’ mood. 

The content of these illusory percepts was also strongly modulated by mood, showing that mood not only enhances sensitivity to mood- congruent features in visual input, but can even determine content of visual perception in absence of real visual input.

The results show that our conscious experience of the world may be less objective than we think. Conscious experience does not only reflect ‘what is out there’, but also our previous knowledge and expectation. The findings show that mood, as induced by music, is also reflected in visual awareness, both in biasing processing sensory input, as in the generation of conscious visual percepts in absence of structured visual input. In other words, the music you are listening to might directly alter the way you perceive the world.