Another myth has been proven to be false: the Mozart effect does not exist. Listening to Mozart does not increase your intelligence, according to a team from the Faculty of Psychology at University of Vienna. The team looked at 3,000 cases from a set of forty studies on the subject.
It all began in 1993 when researchers at the University of California claimed that teens who listened to Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major had performed better in reasoning tests than their counterparts who had listened to something else or nothing at all.
The publication of this study had a strong impact, driving parents and day care centres to play classical music for children.
Jakob Pietsching led the new study. He comments that the 1993 study only had 36 participants. He says that researchers measured cognitive abilities rather than spatial intelligence. In addition, he mentions that no matter what people listen to, performance is always better in the presence of stimulus.
Pietsching told Le Monde newspaper: "I recommend everyone to listen to Mozart but it will not increase the cognitive abilities as some hope."
Just last year, American psychologist Scott E. Lilienfeld ranked the Mozart effect sixth on a list of popular legends in his book 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology.