Similarly, a separate group were asked to listen to another advert describing how participants could cheat on a seminar paper for college using a website. Again, half of those who listened to the advert also heard James Brown’s I Got You (I Feel Good) playing in the background. In both cases, those who listened to the advert with the background music tended to be more accepting of the unethical, cheating behaviour encouraged in the adverts. In some instances the participants even reported seeing it in a positive light.

Gently callous

Another set of studies, published in the journal Psychology of Music, pushed the participants further – by asking them to be callous to another human being.

This time Ziv and her team asked them to do them a favour after completing a grammar test while listening to music in the background. Some heard James Brown's famous hit, others were played a Spanish dance hit called Suavemente by singer Elvis Crespo and a control group heard no music at all.

While the music was still playing, the researchers asked some of the participants to call a female student who needed to take part in the study to earn credits to complete her course, and tell her she could no longer participate. The researchers simply said: “I don’t feel like seeing her.” Another group were asked to tell a student who had missed the past semester due to a sickness that they couldn't have the course material she had been promised after all.

The majority of those who did not listen to music refused the request, which is hardly surprising: who wants to do someone else’s dirty work, especially when it is will harm another person’s chances of completing their studies? Yet Ziv found that in the first test, 65% of those who had music in the background when asked for the favour agreed to do what the researchers asked. In the second test, 82% of the group asked with music agreed.

“It was quite shocking,” says Ziv. “They were being asked to do something that involved hurting someone else and many of them said they would do it.”