Do “Groove” Inducing Sounds Need to be Perceived as Music for Individuals to Show Movement?

Since rhythm can be found anywhere in the world, generated by humans, animals, and machines, a question arises about what makes us move to music. If an individual knows that the sounds they hear are music, do they move differently than if they do not think that the sounds are music? To address this, we designed an experiment with two between-subjects conditions in which all participants will be administered the same musical stimulus. One group of participants will be told that the stimulus is music, whereas the other group will be told that the stimulus is merely ambient sound that a musician did not create. Before this experiment could be conducted, it was first necessary to run a pilot study ensuring that this stimulus could cause individuals to move when it was construed as music—without evidence of movement to the stimulus under these conditions, we could not test whether this movement was affected when participants no longer believed the stimulus was music. The pilot study found that our stimulus evoked movement within participants, setting the stage for the additional preliminary testing necessary before the planned full experiment can be implemented