Lecture on ‘How a brief exposure to music influences our judgment and decision making’ by Prof. Joydeep Bhattacharya

The talk was conducted on 18 November 2020 by Dr Bhattacharya from Goldsmiths University of London. He covered the following in his talk:

Abstract: Decision making is an integral part of our lives; we make judgments and decisions at every step in our lives. It ranges from mundane perceptual decisions to complex cognitive ones. Traditionally it is assumed that our decision making is purely cognitive and rational, devoid of emotional influence. But recent evidence suggests that emotion and cognition are intricately related. In this talk, I will discuss and present experimental findings on how music could influence various types of judgment and decision making. Specifically, I will show how listening to brief musical excerpts could influence how we perceive faces, judge complex pictures, process words, and even judge brightness. I will argue that music, even short excerpts, can indeed influence a wide range of decision-making process, and such cross-modal transfer of musical emotions are largely implicit, i.e. occurring under our level of conscious awareness.