The Effect of Music on Biopsychological Response

Elicited by a Horror Video Game

By: Amanda Cordero, Angela Lorenzana
Period 4

Introduction
Hypothesis Recap: If exposed to an
environment with classical music, then a
person will have a lower heart rate than a
person only focused on a horror game.
So what was the experience like?

Experimental Procedure
1. Set up storage room with appropriate materials.
2. Gather participants for the day.
3. Equip participant with EKG strips and clips and explain to them experiment
rules: must turn off BPM recording once finished with game (finishing = first
death)
4. Participant is left in room with lights off until they have completed the task
5. Data collected from one participant: video recording of reaction, BPM
recording through Logger Pro

Participants
Gathering procedure: asked teachers for permission
(went for student aides or study skills classes)
30 participants in control group (w/o music)
15 participants in experimental group (w/ music)
Approximately evenly divided between genders
Majority seniors

Changes Made
Quota was NOT made; experimental group
cut in half (30 to 15 participants)
lack of time
technical issues

Regular classical music changed to eeriethemed classical music

Data
*Laptop with data was corrupted, so no visual example of our data can be
presented today (will retrieve later)
1.
2.

BPM averaged around 90 at rest without music and a lower 86 with music.
Peak BPM reached around 110 without music and 105 with music.
The results were fairly consistent across the board. Discrepancies
occurred due to participant differences and movement of the EKG sensors.

Results: Participants With Classical Music

As we came to the group participants that would have the classical music
playing, we found that there was a weaker biopsychological response due to
the distraction the music posed. We started to see our hypothesis supported
throughout the testing of participants.
The music seemed to be a comforting aspect in the experiment; we saw an
increased heart rate at the beginning of the horror game without the music and
a decreased heart rate at the beginning with the music.

Music Example
The music chosen
for the experimental
group remained
consistent per
participant; the
video to the left is
what we used.

Obstacles

People didnt want to participate.

After testing the whole class, our Senior Research period was in conflict
with other periods so we could not obtain more participants.
The time during class was not enough to test the quote of participants. We
wanted to test 5 each class period but time only allowed for 3 at the most.
We did not ask any study skills teachers before hand if their students were
able to participate in the experiment.
Towards the end of our experiment, our data collecting computer crashed
with all our data. We will need to find some way to recover all the data and
reaction videos.

Improvements
Main Focus:

Need to remove release forms from the methodology since participants do

not talk about their experiences with new participants. (participants were
verbally informed of the mental danger instead)
Fix the data collecting computer and try to get back lost data.

If we have more time:

Gather remaining number of participants.

Conclusion
Since the last presentation, we expected to see a pattern by 30
participants. However, we started to see a pattern immediately after starting to
test the second group of participants and comparing them to the first.
We conclude that the biopsychological response showed in the group of
participants with the classical music a lower average heart rate than the group
of participants without the classical music.
Further exploration can be done with different factors and a more
controlled environment.