Effect of Pleasantness and Unpleasantness of Music on the Acceptable Noise Level

Introduction: Music plays a major role in life—it can be a favorite, annoying, or even a distracting noise. Previous research has suggested that the processing of brain hemispheres is affected by the pleasantness/unpleasantness of music, which could be utilized as a signal or noise in auditory neuroscience. By using the acceptable noise level (ANL) test, which is the quantification of noise tolerance while listening to a running speech, we investigated whether pleasantness/unpleasantness of music affects the ANL results under monotic-listening and dichotic-listening conditions.DesignBased on the subjective scale scores, pleasant and unpleasant music (10 songs, three genres of classic, pop, and rock music) were selected as alternatives to babble noise or running speech for testing 50 subjects for seven monotic and dichotic listening conditions.ResultsWhile pleasant music changed the ANL significantly under monotic listening conditions, the higher level of babble noise was tolerated, and both characteristics of music pleasantness and unpleasantness changed ANL significantly for various dichotic conditions. The range of the ANL for dichotic conditions is wider than that for monotic conditions.ConclusionMusic can affect the ANL results in terms of pleasantness and unpleasantness for both monotic and dichotic listening conditions, with a greater effect on dichotic conditions, indicating the role of hemispheric specification in emotional music processing.