Intermediary role of mood in the way music affects emotional reception of visual stimuli in adolescents

The role of music in everyone's, especially a young person's life is greatly important in their emotional perception of reality. The aim of this study was to determine the intermediary function of mood in the way music affects emotional reception of visual stimuli among adolescents. The experiment involved 388 adolescents (13-15 years old). We used a non-verbal tool to measure emotion and attention (The International Affective Picture System - IAPS), the Mood Chart and the Youth Questionnaire. Furthermore, we utilized recordings representing three various music genres (hip-hop, pop and heavy metal). Our results indicate that the participants' mood determined their emotional reception of presented visual material. Good mood was linked to lower emotional arousal during exposure to neutral images (after listening to pop and heavy metal music), and induced greater pleasure from looking at positive and neutral pictures. Viewing negative images while experiencing average or good mood caused less pleasure than looking at them in low mood. Hip-hop music and low mood correlated with higher emotional arousal in response to neutral pictures. None of the results indicated a correlation between adolescents' listening to heavy metal or hip-hop music (while experiencing low mood) and positive reception of visual stimuli. The study was an attempt to describe the link between the intangible factors that are mood, music and emotional reception of visual images by adolescents. Despite the methodological difficulties, this relationship was determined.