What do you think of this idea for a simple psych experiment: we all know how hard it is at times to understand the lyrics of a song, however, it can be easier to understand the lyrics when we know the title of the song or the context of the song (the song is about “love" or the song is about “Loss”, etc.). Since my kids force me to listen to their music over and over again, here’s a song in which the lyrics (to me at least) are nearly impossible to understand. I had to “google” them to figure it out - it’s called “Titanium”.
An excerpt of the song can be found here in iTunes: https://soundcloud.com/thepsychfiles/anonymous-song-excerpt However, I have pulled out 3 seconds of the song in which the singer sings these words, “ghost town and haunted love”. She sings them, in my opinion, so lazily that you can’t figure out what she’s saying. The 3 second segment can be heard here: https://soundcloud.com/thepsychfiles/anonymous-song-excerpt <https://soundcloud.com/thepsychfiles/anonymous-song-excerpt> So there’s the study: Recruit participants who have never heard this song Randomly assign one group of subjects to listen to the 3 second segment and don’t tell them anything about what the song is about. Ask them to write down what they think the lyrics are The second group of subjects listens to the same 3 second segment, but you tell them that the song is about halloween. Dependent variable: since the participants' responses are open ended, experimenters will have to code the responses as to "degree of correctness” to the actual lyric. Hopefully, the “priming” of the word “halloween” will provide a context for correctly interpreting the lyrics. What do you think? Michael Michael A. Britt, Ph.D. [email protected] http://www.ThePsychFiles.com Twitter: @mbritt --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=39970 or send a blank email to leave-39970-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
