Love songs increase chances of a date

LONDON - There’s cheering news for those unable to find a date. French researchers suggest that women are more willing to give their number to an ‘average’ young man after listening to romantic background music.

There’s plenty of research indicating that media affects our behaviour. Violent video games or music with aggressive lyrics increase the chances of aggressive behaviour, thoughts and feelings.

This prompted researchers Nicolas Guéguen and Céline Jacob from the Université de Bretagne-Sud along with Lubomir Lamy from Université de Paris-Sud to test the power of romantic lyrics on 18-20 year old single females.

The researchers used questionnaires including neutral and romantic songs. They chose ‘Je l’aime à mourir’, a well-known love song by French songwriter Francis Cabrel, and a neutral song ‘L’heure du thé’, by Vincent Delerm.

The researchers set up a scenario where 87 females spent time in a waiting room with background music playing. They were then asked to spend a few moments with a young man, who used a standard chat up line: “My name is Antoine, as you know, I think you are very nice and I was wondering if you would give me your phone number. I’ll phone you later and we can have a drink together somewhere next week.”

The love song in the waiting room almost doubled Antoine’s chances of getting a woman’s number - 52 percent of participants responded to his advances under the influence of romantic song, whereas only 28 percent of those who had heard the ‘neutral’ song by Vincent Delerm offered their details.

“Our results confirm that the effect of exposure to media content is not limited to violence and could have the potential to influence a high spectrum of behaviour. The results are interesting for scientists who work on the effect of background music on individuals’ behaviour,” says Guéguen.

These findings appear in the Psychology of Music, published by SAGE.