Ayşe Zeynep Kaya
Research Paper
Research Question: To what extent music has an important role in cultural movement? Choose specific genre/ culture to discuss. ROLES OF MEHTER MARSH FOR OTTOMAN EMPIRE’S CULTURAL MOVEMENT: PSYCHOLOGICAL BEHAVIORISM The music is one of the most impulsive and universal factor on human psychology to determine the human behavior. Actually, that is called ‘’psychological behaviorism’’ and it has got few different branches: ‘’methodical, radical, teleological, theoretical, biological and psychological’’. Moreover, music’s influence is investigated by these branches of behaviorism. Thus, music can activate a vast population’s behaviors for a cultural goal thanks to its moral contexts. Such as ‘’anthems’’ like Mehter Marsh by Ottoman culture. It has got a power to impress psychological and behavioral which are foundations of the cultural movement for all people during war periods. This is the reason why music is more powerful issue for human’s behavioral psychology. First and foremost, music is relevant with the behaviorism in the paradigm of psychology’s basis. Initially, the behaviorist movement arose with John Watson. Moreover, the behaviorism approach is solely connects with observable stimulus-response behaviors, and clarify all behaviors are learned according to interaction with the environment. Furthermore, definition of stimulus is something like an abstract or tangible which perceive by a person’s chordotonal organs to cause a behavioral response. Also, every human is sensible for all stimulus because it is come from disposition to survive on the world. In the other words, stimulus set a person’s impulse (reflex behavior) in motion. Thus, music is one of stimuli so that effects a person’s behaviors according to its types. . For instance, thirty subjects were shown with a group of musical excerpts which were happy or sad in the experiment. After listening to the sections, a photograph of a face that the subjects were shown and few person choice a happy face while others choice a sad or neutral facial expression. (Changizi, 2009, p. 1) Thus, researchers proved that music strongly attract the emotional ratings so happy music created happy faces while sad music created hyperbolical melancholy. Besides, a music’s influence on emotions normally can be stable for ‘’one day’’ or ‘’few hours’’ and it can observe from the person’s behaviors. That’s why music’s effect is temporary for human’s mind. For this reason, if people want to cherish their specific emotion or thought such as hostility, they have to listen repeatedly a music which help to recreate that emotions or events.
36
