The participants were primed with extracts of 19-century classical music, some high intensity and others low intensity. The music varied in "pleasantness". Participants were then presented with photographs of members of the opposite sex and asked to rate them based on their appearance. They were also asked if they'd consider dating the person photographed.
The control group was asked to judge the faces without listening to music.
While the music had absolutely no effect on the men rating the female faces, women judged the male faces more attractive if they'd been musically primed. They were also more likely to say they'd date the man in the picture. The more stimulating and complex the music, the greater the influence was. The fertility of the woman, however, didn't have any effect.
Discussing the results, the researchers suggest it could be because "men generally use courtship displays to attract women, and not vice versa, as implied by previous studies focusing primarily on how women are attracted by men’s musical engagement or abilities.”
This isn't the first study to link music to attractiveness – one study found that just holding an instrument can help you score a date. However, it is interesting that passive listening can have such an effect.
So, what now?
"Our goal is to replicate these results in a larger sample and to modify some aspects of the experiment," says Bruno Gingras from the Institute of Psychology at the University of Innsbruck. "For example, we would like to clarify whether musical abilities and creativity can compensate partially for deficiencies in terms of physical appearance and fitness."