The Mozart Effect: A Good Money Maker?

In the field of psychology, researchers and experts spend a tremendous amount of time conducting studies and experiments in order to uncover some new helpful information on child development. Many theories and tips on how to properly raise a child from the time the fetus is in the womb to the stage of adolescence have been presented. One of the most absurd theories dealing with development is the “Mozart Effect,” which is a term created for the theory that an increase in brain development occurs in children under the age of three when they listen to the music of the great composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The idea originated at the University of California, Irvine with physicist Gordon Shaw and Frances Rauscher. They began studying the effects of listening to the first ten minutes of the Mozart Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major on a few dozen college students. Next they conducted the Stanford-Binet Intelligence test and they found a temporary enhancement of spatial-temporal reasoning. Since the original findings were presented, the "Mozart effect" phenomenon has been widely discussed in both the scientific community and media.

There have been various attempts to replicate Shaw and Rauscher’s original findings, however they have been unsuccessful. This fact has caused many in the scientific field to deem the theory false and that there is no evidence that shows a correlation between listening to the music of Mozart and cognitive development. One of the primary rules of psychology and the scientific method is to enforce the results of an experiment or study by conducting similar experiments and coming up with similar results. If the results are not duplicated, then there is really no significance to the findings. In this situation, there should have been no claims that Mozart tunes causes an increase in brain development if the results were not significant because they were not reproduced.

The media is to blame for the small claim to be spread to the entire nation. They took the invalid results of one particular study and exaggerated the implications. The media caused society to believe that children would gain a great deal of intelligence if they were exposed to the music of Mozart during the first three years of life, especially while in the womb. The media reports also distorted the original findings with the college students and generalized the effect towards children, none of which are true. This media outburst has caused an opportunity for individuals to make money and new programs to be implemented. The governors of Georgia and Tennessee started new programs that give a Mozart compact disc to every newborn. Florida’s legislature also passed a law that requires every state-funded childcare to play classical music daily. Suddenly, there has also been a tremendous amount of books, tapes, and compact discs that deal with the Mozart Effect. Along with the production of these materials comes the money as more parents are becoming sold on the Mozart claims. Individuals are increasing the size of their wallets by making a fool out of caring parents. Kenneth Steele, associate professor of psychology at Appalachian State University, stated “the Mozart Effect is pretty much on the wallet of the parents buying the CDs, there’s no special effect on the baby.” Could the money used to establish these programs and buy the tapes, compact discs, and books be better spent? The answer is a definite yes.