Impact of Musical Emotion on Designer’s Divergent Thinking

• Main Authors: Suen Wei-Jr, 孫維志
• Other Authors: Lu Chen-Hui
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/56644869567927380231

碩士 === 實踐大學 === 產品與建築設計研究所 === 94 === Modern businesses’ management must be based on humans. To channel employees’ advantages and potential into a business’s core abilities and attach importance to their emotion and creativity at work, this is absolutely the foremost condition to enhance an enterprise’s competitiveness. This issue concerns this study, which attempts to focus on background music which creates work atmospheres. The present work will discuss whether there are any differences in originality, thinking and development in their drawings between industrial designers under the influence of different musical emotions. It will draw on James A. Russell’s circumplex model for classifying musical emotions, with “positive valence,” “negative valence” and “arousal level” as manipulated variables. Moreover, a 2×2 between-subjects design will be adopted, and the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking will be used to determine industrial designers’ performance. Under different musical contexts, their fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration will be evaluated. In Experiment I aims to get an understanding of the relations between the characteristics of music and emotional response and to select music for experiment. It is found in qualitative interviews that rhythms might be the key factor that causes excitement or quiet, and that tones and melodies seem to be highly relevant to a sense of pleasure. Experiment II, on the other hand, mainly discusses the effects of “positive valence,” “negative valence” and “arousal level” in music on the four abilities of creative thinking. It is found in the analysis that, first, musical emotion of positive valence contributes positively on the scores of “fluency” and “flexibility,” whereas musical emotion of negative valence is not remarkably different from not listening to music. Second, effects of musical emotion on “originality” vary depending on the time pressure. At low time pressure, positive/negative valences will not have any effects on “originality.” The scores of high arousal levels are generally lower than those of low arousal levels and those of no music situations. At high time pressure, the scores of high arousal levels are generally higher than those of low arousal levels and no music situations. Effects of positive/negative valences on “originality” are dependent on the arousal level condition. Positive valence plus high arousal levels and negative valence plus low arousal levels both have better performance. Third, At low time pressure, different musical emotions have no noticeable effects on the score of “elaboration.” At high time pressure, positive valence plus high arousal levels and negative valence plus low arousal levels both have better performance. Finally, based on the research results, suggestions with regard to music properties in design work’s environments will be proposed to serve as a reference for future design workers and design companies. By getting an understanding of how to use music to adjust work emotion and creating a better physical and mental work environment, creative thinking can be stimulated.