Does listening to Mozart, or taking music lessons, make children smarter?

Where the idea came from

The "Mozart effect" began with a 1993 study by Rauscher, Shaw and Ky, as Jakob Pietschnig and colleagues describe it: a short-lived improvement on spatial tasks in standardized tests after listening to the first movement of Mozart's sonata for two pianos in D major (K. 448).

The finding was about a brief change in one kind of test score after a few minutes of listening. In popular retelling it grew into something much larger: that classical music makes babies and children smarter. A related and more durable belief is that learning an instrument builds general intelligence and raises achievement in subjects like math and reading.

What the research says

Pietschnig, Martin Voracek and Anton Formann's 2010 meta-analysis pooled nearly 40 studies with over 3,000 participants, including unpublished research. Listening to the Mozart sonata gave a small boost on spatial tasks compared with silence or a non-musical sound, but listening to other music gave a boost of about the same size, and the difference between Mozart and other music was negligible. There was evidence of publication bias, which means the true effect is likely smaller, and studies by the original research group found noticeably larger effects than studies by others. Their conclusion: little evidence remains for a specific Mozart effect.

Music training is a separate question, and it's been studied more carefully in recent years. Giovanni Sala and Fernand Gobet's 2020 meta-analysis pooled 54 studies and 254 effect sizes with 6,984 children. Once the quality of each study's design was taken into account, the overall effect of music training on general cognitive skills, literacy and math was about zero, and consistent across studies. Small positive effects appeared only in studies that didn't randomly assign children and didn't give the comparison group another activity, the weakest designs.

Why it hangs on

It's a hopeful, easy idea. Playing music costs nothing and feels good; it would be wonderful if it made children smarter too.

Correlation looks like cause. Children who take music lessons may differ from other children in many ways, such as family time, money and support, so they may do better in school for reasons that have nothing to do with music. Sala and Gobet found the small positive effects only in studies without random assignment, where those differences aren't controlled.

One striking study is easier to remember than many mixed ones. Pietschnig and colleagues describe the original finding as very hard to replicate, with many conflicting results since. The single dramatic result is the one people remember.

What to do instead

Teach music because music is worth learning: it's part of a full education and a source of joy, skill and community. Don't justify it, or cut it, on the grounds of test scores in other subjects.

If background music helps a class settle during independent work, use it; just choose it for mood and focus, not to raise intelligence. For raising achievement in reading and math, put the time into practices with evidence, such as retrieval practice, explicit instruction and repeated reading.

Questions teachers ask

Should I play classical music during class?

If it helps your class work calmly, there's no harm in it. Just don't expect it to raise intelligence: the Mozart effect was a small, brief change on spatial tasks, and other music did about as well.

Do music lessons improve math or reading?

Not according to the most careful meta-analysis we found. Sala and Gobet found no effect of music training on children's literacy, math or general thinking skills once study quality was accounted for.

So is music education a waste of time?

Not at all. These studies only ask whether music training spills over into other subjects. Music is valuable in its own right, and that's the case for teaching it.