In a new study, San Diego researchers find that people's perception of sharks can be strongly shaped by music. The scientists say the ominous music so frequently paired with shark footage makes people more likely to view sharks negatively, and that could harm shark conservation efforts.
If there's any sound that defines sharks in the public imagination, it's probably the dread-inducing soundtrack from the movie "Jaws." Nature documentaries also tend to soundtrack footage of sharks with spooky, foreboding music.
Scripps Institution of Oceanography assistant researcher Andrew Nosal, co-author of the study, said depicting sharks alongside scary music has become cliché.
"Even if the sharks are just swimming harmlessly — not eating or doing anything scary — it seems like they're always set to scary background music," he said. In contrast, Nosal often sees footage of dolphins featuring playful and majestic background music.
"I often wondered, is this subconsciously affecting the way we see sharks?" he said.
It is, Nosal and his colleagues discovered in a recent series of experiments.
The researchers recruited more than 2,000 study participants over the internet. They had some participants watch footage of sharks paired with ominous music, while they had others view the exact same footage paired with uplifting music or no music at all.
They asked other participants to listen to the three different soundtracks absent of any shark footage. All of the participants were then asked to complete a survey about their perception of sharks.
"What we found was that participants who saw the video clip set to uplifting background music rated sharks significantly less negatively and more positively than participants saw the typical video clips set to ominous background music," Nosal said.
The participants who listened only to the music, with no accompanying images, did not significantly differ in their perceptions of sharks. That proved to Nosal that perceptions are swayed by the combination of shark footage and emotionally leading music, not just the music itself.
Over the long-term, all of the negative associations with sharks conjured by this music could end up hurting shark conservation efforts, he said. The public isn't likely to support — or give money to — efforts to protect sharks when they have such a negative view of the creatures, he reasons.
"For many people, documentaries may be the primary source of information about sharks," he said. "If that's what they're exposed to their whole lives — this scary background music that's biasing their perception — you have to wonder what the long-term effect of that is."
Previous research has shown that people tend to greatly overestimate how often sharks attack humans. Around a quarter of shark species are considered to be under threat of extinction.
