Marin Manuela M, Schober Raphaela, Gingras Bruno, Leder Helmut
Department of Basic Psychological Research and Research Methods, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Department of Psychology, University of Innsbruck, Innrain, Innsbruck, Austria.
PLoS One. 2017 Sep 11;12(9):e0183531. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0183531. eCollection 2017.
Several theories about the origins of music have emphasized its biological and social functions, including in courtship. Music may act as a courtship display due to its capacity to vary in complexity and emotional content. Support for music's reproductive function comes from the recent finding that only women in the fertile phase of the reproductive cycle prefer composers of complex melodies to composers of simple ones as short-term sexual partners, which is also in line with the ovulatory shift hypothesis. However, the precise mechanisms by which music may influence sexual attraction are unknown, specifically how music may interact with visual attractiveness cues and affect perception and behaviour in both genders. Using a crossmodal priming paradigm, we examined whether listening to music influences ratings of facial attractiveness and dating desirability of opposite-sex faces. We also tested whether misattribution of arousal or pleasantness underlies these effects, and explored whether sex differences and menstrual cycle phase may be moderators. Our sample comprised 64 women in the fertile or infertile phase (no hormonal contraception use) and 32 men, carefully matched for mood, relationship status, and musical preferences. Musical primes (25 s) varied in arousal and pleasantness, and targets were photos of faces with neutral expressions (2 s). Group-wise analyses indicated that women, but not men, gave significantly higher ratings of facial attractiveness and dating desirability after having listened to music than in the silent control condition. High-arousing, complex music yielded the largest effects, suggesting that music may affect human courtship behaviour through induced arousal, which calls for further studies on the mechanisms by which music affects sexual attraction in real-life social contexts.
关于音乐起源的几种理论强调了它的生物学和社会功能，包括在求爱方面的功能。由于音乐在复杂性和情感内容上具有变化的能力，它可能作为一种求爱展示。对音乐生殖功能的支持来自最近的一项发现，即只有处于生殖周期排卵期的女性在选择短期性伴侣时，比起简单旋律的作曲家，更喜欢复杂旋律的作曲家，这也与排卵转变假说相符。然而，音乐可能影响性吸引力的确切机制尚不清楚，特别是音乐如何与视觉吸引力线索相互作用，并影响两性的感知和行为。我们采用交叉模式启动范式，研究了听音乐是否会影响对面部吸引力的评分以及对异性面孔的约会意愿评分。我们还测试了唤醒或愉悦感的错误归因是否是这些效应的基础，并探讨了性别差异和月经周期阶段是否可能是调节因素。我们的样本包括64名处于排卵期或非排卵期（未使用激素避孕）的女性和32名男性，他们在情绪、恋爱状况和音乐偏好方面经过精心匹配。音乐启动刺激（25秒）在唤醒程度和愉悦感上有所不同，目标是表情中性的面部照片（2秒）。分组分析表明，女性在听音乐后对面部吸引力和约会意愿的评分显著高于安静的对照条件下，而男性则不然。高唤醒度、复杂的音乐产生的影响最大，这表明音乐可能通过诱导唤醒影响人类的求爱行为，这就需要进一步研究音乐在现实社会环境中影响性吸引力的机制。
