Do lyrics of a song influence perceived emotions?

A great deal of scientific research has proven music and emotions to be inseparable. However, few studies have looked into the aspects of music that causes these emotions. In this study it has been hypothesized that the lyrics of a song can change the degree to which an emotion matches a song. A within group experiment was set up to examine this hypotheses. The participants to this study were all students from Tilburg University. All of whom were aged between 18 and 30. First, students were asked to indicate on a 7 point Likert scale to what extent three different melodies of a song matched two different emotions. These emotions were opposing emotions, based on the Thayer model. The songs were in Dutch, and were expected to be fairly unknown to the general public. Next, the lyrics were added to the same songs and the students were once again asked to indicate to what extent the songs matched the same two emotions.  The results showed that 3 out of 6 emotions significantly differed in their applicability to a song, when lyrics were added to the melody. In other words, when a lyric was added to some melodies, emotions would match a song better or worse. These results indicate that there is no certainty on the influence of lyrics to the applicability of an emotion to a song. A limitation to this study is that one of the songs turned out to be quite well-known among the participants. Therefore, it can be assumed that the participants knew the lyrics to this song. As a result, they might have been incapable to match the two emotions to the melody alone. This could explain why average results of the emotion matching hardly differed for this song.

Development of OnRoute, an application for public transport

Increasingly, most of us find ourselves using a smart phone for everyday events. One could file their sports efforts, check their bank account and look up directions. Another daily event which could be considered a bit of a hassle is public transport. Several applications for smart phone use have been developed to solve this issue, but according to us none of those succeeds to actually do so. When using public transport, one needs to take in a lot of information. Looking at signs, asking staff, or consulting an application which takes forever to load might result in missing a bus or train. Existing applications lack in covering all types of public transport, reporting delays or having a clear interface. Literature has elaborately reviewed the absolute musts for effective interface design, but the existing applications failed to incorporate this. 

So we made it our objective to design a user-friendly travel application which combines different types of public transport. Secondly, it should allow people to get the necessary information they seek in a quick glance on their mobile phone. Lastly, it should provide walking routes on (large) train stations and alternatives on how to spent time while waiting. The design will be clean and functional for public transport scheduling. So, how should we accomplish this? 

Throughout the past few months we put ourselves to developing a prototype (www.eyetractive.nl/tap).. and it turned out to be quite the success. Thanks to Eugene, Jan and Etienne for implementing the prototype!

If you wanna know more about the design and research, just contact me and I'll provide you with our article on the topic :D

Why Facebook is so popular

I love Facebook! The social network site has everything such web site needs... but what do others think? Why is facebook so popular and how come it is still expanding like crazy? Below I gathered some pieces of mind of others to get my answer. I guess I caught some interesting thoughts!

 

It plays to people's vanity. People like to talk about themselves, especially when they think they have an audience. Many people post many updates every day on how their day is going. If they have 100 or more friends they may feel that all of their friends are keeping up to date with them, when in fact chances are they've all hidden that person from their News Feed.

Everyone's on it. Facebook reached a critical tipping point where it became wildly popular. It reached that point when it the number of people with a Facebook account, outnumbered the number of people without one. Nowadays, if you don't have a Facebook account you are pretty much a social pariah. The ability of Facebook to merge businesses and entrepreneurs in with individuals is something that other social networks like MySpace didn't do well. On Facebook there's tons of commercial potential, and users don't seem to mind it.

Upload photo’s unlimited. Facebook enables people to upload all of their pictures. You can show your creativity, beauty, strange things you did, beautiful journeys you made and whatever more you want. It could enhance your status and you can tell people through image what keeps you busy. 

Instant feedback. The structure of the social network site provides the possibility to give instant feedback on posts and photo’s. You can pick someone’s brain on some topic and share your views.

Those are some thoughts of random Facebook users and analytics, but this blog wouldn’t be complete without your opinion. If you’re willing, I’d be more than interested to know why you think Facebook is so popular. Personally I like Facebook for it being so complete. Sure thing that Facebook provides every means (pictures, text, video etc.) to express yourself. The option to get and give feedback on your thoughts, to connect with friends at any time, and to see what they are doing are key factors of success if you’d ask me!

Materialism and Happiness

Last year, a Doctor at Tilburg University decided to dedicate his time and efforts to doing research about materialism and happiness among Dutch students. As most of the students in his course were asked to answer the questionnaire related to this research, we wanted to know more about the purpose, the methods and mostly about the reason behind the research. We asked Dr. Harold Miesen, the researcher, to explain what definitions of materialism he used in his research.

In order to get more insight in the research, we interviewed Dr. Miesen and asked him several questions which illustrate the road from beginning to ‘end’. Below you can see the interview. His research is in progress, so we still have to wait for the actual results. In the interview he gives his views on the first results, and about the related paradigms.
Harold Miesen is an Assistant Professor related to Tilburg University. Besides doing research, he teaches several courses. Among other topics, he specializes in consumer behaviour, marketing communication, psychology and well-being. Previously, he publicised about happiness and relational goods, corporate reputation, and reading.
We found his research very interesting, and we’re looking forward to the final results. We would like to know your opinion… Are students materialistic? Are YOU materialistic?

Create or maintain? Online friendships

More research than you might suspect is done on online friendships. Communicating with others via applications on the Internet has never been such a great part of our lives as it is right now. The question now arises if real friendships can develop from this type of communication.

If you'd ask me, I would say that starting tight online friendships is possible. Though, it seems to be the exception when I look at my own friends and relatives. In deciding whether developing friendships is possible or not, we should know what 'friendship' actually is. For the one person it is of a different intensity than for the other. Personally I have high standards for calling someone a friend, and in this sense, I think it is hardly possible to develop friendships online.

In face-to-face communication there is a certain degree of commitment. It has been proved that about 90 percent of a message is transmitted non-verbal. Physical presence has so many cues and few (internet) applications are able to transfer these cues. There is a theory called the Social Presence Theory (Short, Williams & Christie, 1976), which proves this assumption to be right. "When there are less visual cues, this means less social presence."

Then again, according to me the use of computer mediated communication is good for strengthening and maintaining friendships instead of developing them. So why would the Internet be such a good medium to strenghten friendships? Here the aspect of hyper personal communication (Walther, 1996) does play a role; self disclosure will be way higher on the internet than in real life. Being connected via the internet gives many opportunities to strengthen friendships and to learn more about one another outside the offline environment.

So... what do you think?