Popular ideas, such as the “Mozart effect”–the idea that listening to classical music improves intelligence–has encouraged the belief that “music makes you smarter”.
This interest in the relationship between musical aptitude on ability and intelligence has been around for some time. But despite these beliefs being pretty widespread, there is still no conclusive evidence to actually prove that listening to certain types of music really can improve your intelligence.
In 1974, music researchers Desmond Sergeant and Gillian Thatcher said that:
“All highly intelligent people are not necessarily musical, but all highly musical people are apparently highly intelligent.”
And “apparently” is the key word here, because the evidence regarding musical listening in itself is mixed. Research has shown that listening to music shows an improvement in certain kinds of mental tasks. But these are specifically short-term improvements involving “spatial-temporal reasoning” skills–puzzle solving type tasks.
Listening vs Playing
