Where psychology meets music: Classical plays a role

Where psychology meets music: Classical plays a role
By PIERRE RUHE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In a shop lined with shelves of pricey merchandise, the music is blaring and it's in your face. The lyrics are suggestive of sexual promiscuity and two-timing girlfriends.

But this isn't rock or rap thumping in a hip boutique, it's opera — Pavarotti singing the famous "La donna e mobile" — and the shop is EatZi's, a prepared-food market and bakery in a Dunwoody strip mall. From opening until close, the soundtrack is opera.

supervisor. In her four years with the Dallas-based gourmet chain, she says, "a few people have complained that it's too loud, but more people say they love it, they love this atmosphere. We're mostly a to-go place in a European style, so it's opera and it's loud. That's a part of our identity."

But there is more to this suburban sophistication than meets the ear, according to experts who study the potent intersection of music, marketing and psychology.

When peddling Provençal sea salt — or deterring crime, or boosting efficiency in a hospital's operating room — classical music seems to be played as much for its psychological properties as for the art-for-art's-sake aesthetic of the concert hall.

In retail, says James Kellaris, a marketing professor at the University of Cincinnati, "music can create moods and reinforce the store's image by associative learning — where 'classy' music implies 'classy' store."

Beyond these obvious effects, he adds, "music can help shape customers' time perception, lower sales resistance, and increase willingness to spend."

For most people, classical music is complex and relatively unfamiliar. So exposure to opera shrinks what psychologists call a person's subjective time, relative to what the clock says: By working harder than usual in a short period of time, your brain overcompensates by making you feel like you've spent less time in the shop.

Coupled with the music's sonic complexity, aggressive loudness can help lower a shopper's ability to critically evaluate beautifully packaged merchandise or a sales pitch. Together, these two factors can encourage longer visits, more impulse buying and more overall spending. (That is, unless the shopper happens to be a music connoisseur, since hearing even a snippet of a familiar song expands the subjective timer.)

EatZi's gets opera from a satellite radio service called DMX Music, which broadcasts everything from ambient background sounds to country and top-40 pop. EatZi's subscribes to the "Arias and Overtures" program, which the DMX Web site pitches to retailers this way: "Classical and ambient music invites customers to linger in upscale boutiques, [and] says 'distinguished' the moment you walk in ..."

Kellaris says such music also serves as an "aspirational reference," a soundtrack to fantasies of upward mobility.

"The deli is telling us, in effect, 'Our antipasto is expensive, but if you eat it you'll be as sophisticated and prosperous as people who vacation in Tuscany or hold season tickets to the opera.' "

A SWAT team of sound

It seems music that reduces brain power in one audience enhances gray matter in another — and some people find the stuff repellent.

On a recent sweltering afternoon on the dimly lit platform of the Decatur MARTA station, a warbly allegro from Handel's "Water Music" filled the air. While the quieter nuances of the piece were lost in the station's vast space, its bold rhythms and pomp came across clearly.

For $56 a month, MARTA subscribes to a satellite service from ambient music provider Muzak. Although the company is famous for fare such as the mind-numbing renditions of Beatles songs heard in elevators and waiting rooms, Muzak offers more than 100 different audio programs, from disco-fueled "HI-NRG" to contemporary Christian.

MARTA riders hear Muzak's "light classical" program. It's beamed into all 36 stations (although the audio equipment is broken in many locations).

Muzak describes the program as suitable for "banks, fine dining establishments, medical facilities, garden centers, grocery stores, museums, arts facilities, bookstores," and the target audience as 29-79, "not exclusively Classical aficionados, but comfortable to all."

What Muzak fails to mention is the program's apparent crime-fighting abilities.

The effect has been documented in England. In 2004, after gangs infested London Underground stations in some of the city's most crime-ridden neighborhoods, British Transport Police turned to a weapon of last resort. In six months, they cut robbery by 33 percent, staff assaults by 25 percent and vandalism by 37 percent.

Their ammo?A shock-and-awe assault of Mozart minuets and Pavarotti arias, pumped onto station platforms like sonic napalm — the very same repertoire that helps EatZi's sell a $12.99 applewood-smoked bacon and Jarlsberg cheese quiche.

MARTA deputy general manager Franklin Beauford says he hadn't heard of classical music's crime-deterrent potential, and doubts its efficacy. "It's my experience that criminals don't pay attention to what they're listening to, pickpockets and vandals don't care what the music is," he says. "And when the trains come though a station you can hardly hear it, anyway."

For MARTA, he says, the music is merely a means to provide "a pleasant environment and enhances the transit experience for our customers."

'Remarkable' effects

Then there's the medical use of classical music.

Marc Rynearson is a classical programmer at DMX Music. He created the "Arias and Overtures" heard at EatZi's and is developing music for hospitals.

"Waiting rooms get one sound, a chapel gets music that's very beautiful and reflective with a spiritual context, such as instrumental pieces from a Bach cantata," he explains. "In the maternity ward, tempos will be a bit faster, and we'll create a gentle atmosphere with cute instruments like the oboe and the harp, and include lots of lullabies. There's documentation that the effects of classical music on mind and body are remarkable."

The new DMX mix, however, won't include a "product" for operating rooms, where some doctors are playing deejay themselves.

On a typical day at the DeKalb Medical Center, Dr. Sidney Stapleton will reach into a satchel, pick out a CD and slide it into a small boom box. Then he scrubs and prepares for surgery.

Once his patient has been anesthetized, a nurse hits the play button. Music, such as Russian pianist Yevgeny Kissin easing into a Beethoven sonata, quietly but insistently fills the operating room, a counterpoint to the regular beeps of the monitors. Everyone in the room listens while they work.

Only about a quarter of surgeons at the center play music in the O.R. — the decision to do so, and the repertoire, is at the discretion of the senior surgeon. Most who do their cutting at DeKalb choose a soundtrack of light rock or country.

"I find classical music makes for a great environment in the O.R.," says Stapleton, 66. "Often, when the music's playing, there's less chatter, and everyone's more efficient, you can concentrate when you need to, and the time passes quickly."

He's learned to limit his choices. The tiled acoustics of the operating room forbids music with too wide a dynamic range — the quiet parts are inaudible, the loud parts unbearable — so big romantic symphonies, opera and choral music are off-limits, he says. Baroque orchestral music and a spectrum of piano music, from Bach to Prokofiev, usually gets the call.

Still, he concedes, "if the operation is too challenging, I won't bother with it and, anyway, it's not fair for me to hold the [O.R. staff] captive with my musical preferences."

When they're awake, patients usually like what they hear, he says. During a routine procedure not long ago, Stapleton put on one of his favorites: Pianist Dinu Lipatti playing a Bach-Busoni chorale.

"I got a thank-you note from the patient," he recalls. "She wrote: 'What a delightful experience to be ushered into anesthesia to the sound of Bach.' "