Date of Award
8-1983
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Dr. John E. Nangle
Second Advisor
Dr. Dale Brethower
Third Advisor
Dr. Norman Peterson
Access Setting
Masters Thesis-Open Access
Abstract
An experiment was designed to study the effects of music on the quality of inspection performance, job attitudes, and observed frequency of non-work related conversations of workers engaged in a complex, repetitive industrial inspection task in a pharmaceutical company. Three middle-aged inspectors volunteered to participate in the ABAB designed experiment. Musical selections by Muzak and Mantovani were played via portable stereo cassette players with headphones. Quality was measured by testing subjects on two sets of 1,000 test vials with 10% planted defects and recording the number of false rejects and the percent of false acceptances. Certain job attitudes were measured from interviews and the frequency of non-work related conversations was measured by observations of the investigator. Results showed that while subjects were highly in favor of music and talked less during music, there was little change, for the most part, in measured quality for subjects.
Recommended Citation
Freiburger, Christopher D., "The Effects of Music Upon Job Attitudes and Performance in an Industrial Inspection Task" (1983). Masters Theses. 1605.
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/masters_theses/1605