William,+Scott

Big Picture Question: What makes students in different society happy?

Specific Question: Between visual art (photo) and auditory (music), which medium will receive a higher ranking on a happiness scale? Ranked from one to ten (ten being the happiest and one being unaffected).

Hypothesis:

We hypothesize that people will be more happy when listening to music than looking at a picture. We believe this because pictures contain only one possible impact towards the people, they will think it is well taken, or funny, etc. However, music has multiple impacts, such as the lyrics, and the melody, which can play a role in making people think that it has provided more happiness.

Objective:

Our objective is to see whether people feel happier while listening to music, or looking at a picture.

Method:

Our very first step will be, "Hey (Hello), can you help me?". If the person agrees, we explain to him or her that I am doing an experiment, to see which one; music or picture, makes people more happy. If he or she agrees to help, then we first show them an A4 paper with a picture printed ( picture will have 1 in. border, and will cover the rest of the A4), for the time equal to the length of music. Then, we ask them to circle adjectives (happy, angry, sad...etc) on a sheet of paper. We record their ansers, and let them listen to the music next, by giving them an MP3 with a headphone, so that he or she will be fully engaged. After, we let them circle adjectives again. Then, we can compare whether they ranked music higher, or picture higher; the concluding result would be "picture", or "Music". We will conduct the same experiment to 30 other high school students, that we are close with, as asking friends will be less authoritative to the subject, therefore will be able to give an answer that most resembles themselves in a normal environment.

1. Hey, can you help me? 2. I am conducting a research about how music or picture make people happy. Will you participate in this research? 3. (if they say no, go back to 1, with a different person) (if yes, then go to #4) 4. I first want you to look at this picture, for 1 minute. 5.Hand them the sheet with the adjectives on it, and ask them to circle the ones they feel best describes the piece shown to them. 6. Now, listen to this music. (give them the head phone) 7. (repeat 5) (see if they ranked higher on picture or music, or same. As people will have different idea about their scale of grading, we will use relative results, instead of absolute.) 8. Thank you for your help! you can go now. 9. (go to a different person, and conduct this on 30 people)

Potential Errors:

As people all have different perspectives and different values, the results could be biased. For example, if a person likes Avant-Garde music, then letting them listen to a normal classic would not influence them as much as letting them hear Avant Garde music. Same thing goes for the picture. If the person is going for art major, then he or she will be more attracted to the picture than the music. However, this counts as the differences in the cultures between KIS and UHS. Other than this, is that our friend could play jokes on us, and give fake answers. However, we can assume that it is part of the culture, and use the result. Lastly, the problem is that we cannot compare music and a picture. But, that is why we are going to use classic, which most people will not be familiar to, and we will take our own picture, so that they would not have seen it.

Literature Review:

1. //Music, Happiness, and the Brain//, by Emily Lewis explains that different kinds of music cause different kinds of emotions. The emotions that are generated depend on the composition and the harmony of the music; when the music is dissonant, it causes people to frown, and feel confused, therefore unhappy. However, when the music is in harmony, and have progressions, it could possibly motivate people, and cause happiness. This provides a reason for the music to be used in our project to be harmonic, as the project's intention is to make people happy. It is true that there is a small fraction of the people who would like Avant-Garde music, yet as stated above, it is only a small fraction of the people. The project should be targeted for the majority, so harmonic music will be used.

2. //Psychologists Now Know What Makes People H ////appy//, by Marilyn Elias is about how people can get happy. The main point of this article is this: being happy or not depends on one's mentality. If one does not believe one is happy, then one is not happy. However, when one thinks one is happy, one is happy. Another point that this article put an emphasis on was the point where one will feel happy about what one enjoys. These sum up to explain that the experiment that is going to be conducted is valid; it measures how society acts as a counterpart in deciding the people's perspective of enjoyment, and how different medium can affect the mentality of the subjects, either neutral or positive. Also, as society has gone towards more arts, with more people getting interested in the art, music and picture would be of what people actually do enjoy and know about. It will not give biased information, if happiness is truly made by what the article mentions.

3. //The Secret of Effortless Happiness //, by Guy Finley suggested quite a curious idea. The article stated that happiness cannot be achieved; It is something that we can not generate. The author of the article believed that happiness is a life without stress; we cannot do anything to completely get rid of the stress. He sounded like a Taoist, who believes in nature. The problem is this: we cannot achieve happiness, according to the article. This indicates that the project which would be conducted are in completely wrong direction. Music and pictures are like drugs; they do give pleasure, but it cannot be considered happiness. Even if we do come to a conclusion of the experiment, the outcome cannot be used to describe to the happiness factor. It gave me an idea that even though we tried to target specific age group, there would be a person who is really miserable, and is pessimistic; nothing cant evoke happiness.

Scott Feid:

1. The first piece of literature I came across in my research was an article titled “Music: A Link Between Cognition and Emotion” and the author Carol L. Krumhans, talked about how cognition and emotion are linked in music and how cross-cultural comparisons of music show that certain psychological principles of expectation are quite general, but that musical cultures emphasize these differentially. One more main point I read about in this article focused on how words in songs carry emotion, however we respond to songs in languages that we don’t even understand, and thus musical sounds may inherently have emotional meaning. This article helped me in understanding that when my partner and I conduct our research we have to understand that its not only the words that have emotional meaning, and that since we respond emotionally to music in languages we don’t understand, we must take into account that regardless of the language, they style and sounds will also evoke an emotional response out of our subjects. __[]__

2. The second article I came across was titled “Intensity of Emotions Conveyed and Elicited by Familiar and Unfamiliar Music” by S. Omar Ali, and Zehra F. Peynircioǧlu. It talked about how in an experiment preformed by the University of California, their results demonstrated that familiarity of the music increased the intensity of emotional responses to music. In addition, ratings were higher when subjects were asked to judge the emotion conveyed by the music than when they were asked to judge the emotion elicited by the same music. The findings suggested that familiarity with the music plays a role in regulating a listener's emotional response to music. By reading this article I found out that familiar music caused a higher emotional response so my partner and I must use music each culture would be unfamiliar with. Furthermore, I learned that one can get different results based upon what question is asked by the person preforming the experiment, so when experimenting my partner and I must be asking the same questions to get the results we are seeking. __[]__

3. The third article that I found helpful was titled “The Journal of Marketing” by Gordon C. Bruner II. It went in depth about how music has long been considered and efficient means for triggering moods and communicating non-verbally. The author goes into more depth by saying “music is an especially powerful stimulus for affecting moods, and it’s attested to throughout history by poets, playwrights, and composers.” In the article there is a table that demonstrates how emotional expressions ascribed to various components of music, and in that table it discuses how pitch and loudness can affect the emotional responses of subjects. I found this evidence helpful because of the relation to triggering moods and non-verbal communication, and how he relates it to poets, playwrights and composers. By relating moods to those three areas I felt like my mind was opened more in the aspect that I now had to consider lyrics, pitch, tone, and if the music may have been used in a play and how it was used in that play, because in a play the music is often what sets the audiences mood for that scene. __[]__

Scott Feid's Results: How many people (out of 25) selected the following words when surveyed about the photo. Angry: 3 Loving: 14 Aggressive: 2 Playful: 18 Amazed: 13 Relaxed: 16 Down: 1 Eager: 5 Joy: 21 Scared: 1 Tense: 1 Happy: 17 Kind: 8 Sad: 1 Irritated: 3 Surprised: 2 Courageous: 7 Thrilled: 3 Prideful: 6 Content: 7 Stressed: 1 Shocked: 2 Obnoxious: 1 How many people (out of 25) selected the following words when surveyed about the song. Angry: 1 Loving: 9 Aggressive: 2 Playful: 10 Amazed: 4 Relaxed: 15 Down: 0 Eager: 4 Joy: 10 Scared: 0 Tense: 0 Happy: 11 Kind: 5 Sad: 6 Irritated: 2 Surprised: 3 Courageous: 1 Thrilled: 1 Prideful: 4 Content: 13 Stressed: 0 Shocked: 2 Obnoxious: 0

Final Product: