Although it is frequently used and is highly valued in practice, background music in non-fictional media formats has shown a broad spectrum of ambiguous results in previous empirical research. Scholars have often even advised against the use of music in formats such as television news, news magazines, and documentaries. Discrepancies in the effectiveness of background music have also been found in film and advertising research. In these research areas, the congruence between music and medium has been shown to be especially relevant for predicting music’s effects. In this study, two experiments were conducted to investigate the influence of congruent and incongruent music in non-fictional media formats. The first experiment (N = 92) focused on music’s expressed and induced emotions, recipients’ memory performance, and the perceived credibility and general evaluation of the media format. Experiment 2 (N = 147) concentrated on attitude changes. As expected, carefully selected congruent background music (i.e., music expressing emotions and triggering associations fitting the media format’s topic) positively influenced recipients’ emotionalization, memory performance, and attitude change, as well as the perceived credibility and general evaluation of the media format. All of the measured effects can be considered medium or large (${\eta }^2=.11–.64$).

尽管它经常被使用并且在实践中受到高度重视，但非虚构媒体格式的背景音乐在先前的实证研究中已显示出广泛的歧义结果。学者们甚至甚至建议不要使用电视新闻，新闻杂志和纪录片等格式的音乐。在电影和广告研究中也发现了背景音乐有效性的差异。在这些研究领域中，音乐与媒体之间的一致性已被证明与预测音乐的效果特别相关。在这项研究中，进行了两个实验来研究同构和非同构音乐在非虚构媒体格式中的影响。第一次实验（N = 92）的重点是音乐的表达和诱发的情感，接收者的记忆表现，对媒体格式的感知信誉和一般评估。实验2（N  = 147）集中于态度变化。不出所料，精心挑选的全等背景音乐（即表达情感并触发与媒体格式主题相关的关联的音乐）对收件人的情感化，记忆表现和态度变化以及媒体格式的可信度和一般评价产生了积极的影响。可以将所有测得的效果视为中等或较大（${\eta }^{\mathrm{2个}}=。11–。64$）。