| The purpose of this study was to examine music's influence on subjective perception of wait time. Subjective perception of wait time is defined as the perceived duration of a time interval. A convenience sample of forty-one undergraduate and graduate college students (N=41) participated in the study. The participants were divided into three groups: no amplitude, low amplitude, and high amplitude. A laboratory experiment was designed to replicate a service setting in which the participants experienced a wait time of 10 minutes. The researcher designed a 15-minute compact disc of pre-recorded music representing the vocal jazz genre (Diana Krall) to be used during the music conditions. After the delay, data were collected using a questionnaire consisting of three parts: problem-solving task (Part I), demographic questions (Part II), questions regarding perception of time and preference for the music (Part III). The impact of music amplitude and participants' sex on subjective perception of wait time was examined using a two-way independent analysis of variance (ANOVA) test. The experiment consisted of two independent variables: music amplitude and sex of the participants. The dependent variable was the participants' subjective perception of wait time. Although results were not significant, results of this experiment lend support to previous finds that participants in high volume music conditions, both male and female, estimate the longest subjective perception of wait time. |
