Gender related effects of music listening on aestethic appreciation of visual artwork

In this study we investigated whether musical genre (classic vs. jazz) affects aesthetic appreciation of figurative and abstract paintings. Participants were male and female undergraduate students with no specific background in fine arts or musical studies. They were presented with twenty sets of six paintings (half figurative and half abstract). The same set was presented under three different conditions (randomly intermixed within the experimental block): 1) a silent condition, 2) during simultaneous listening of classical music, or 3) jazz music. Overall, figurative artworks scored higher aesthetic appreciation than abstract artworks, replicating previous findings with laypersons. Listening to music (irrespective of its genre) tends to enhance aesthetic appreciation of paintings compared to their silent evaluation in all participants. More interestingly, the three-way interaction sex by music genre (classical vs. jazz) by art genre (figurative vs. abstract) was significant. Whereas in female participants music genre did not differently modulate liking of abstract and figurative paintings, in male participants figurative paintings were appreciated more if accompanied by classical music, whereas abstract paintings were appreciated more if accompanied by jazz. Our findings suggest that music may indeed affect visual aesthetic appreciation of artworks and that male participants are more permeable to the musical influence.