Does Music Training Really Make Children Smarter? Psychologists Say We’ve Been Asking the Wrong Question

Music lessons are less likely to make children smarter and more likely to reveal the curiosity and discipline they already have.

Music lessons are sometimes sold as a sort of cognitive training. Put a child in front of a piano, the story goes, and they’ll get smarter. Mainstream news headlines have helped fuel the belief, promising sharper minds and better grades if only children stuck with their scales and arpeggios.

But when psychologists started asking uncomfortable questions about who actually takes music lessons — and why — the tune changed. The data began to suggest that music doesn’t so much foster intelligence as it reveals something deeper about curiosity, discipline, and the kinds of children who are already primed to thrive.

How Music Became a Stand-In for Intelligence

The idea that music training boosts intelligence didn’t come from nowhere. Starting in the late 1990s, researchers reported that musicians and music-trained children tended to outperform non-musicians on tests of IQ, memory, and language.

Some findings were striking. In one influential experiment, children randomly assigned to a year of music lessons showed greater increases in IQ than children assigned to drama lessons or no lessons at all. The effect — about three IQ points — was small but significant.

That 2004 study by psychologist E. Glenn Schellenberg became a cornerstone of the argument that music training causes cognitive growth. The conclusions often sounded confident. One famous Nature paper declared that “music training improves verbal memory.” Another 2009 study concluded that “extended musical experience enhances executive control.”

But there was a catch.

Most of these studies were correlational. They compared kids who already took music lessons with kids who did not. They did not randomly assign children to years of violin practice or trumpet drills. And without random assignment, cause and effect blur together.

As psychologists Kathleen Corrigall, Nicole Misura, and the aforementioned Schellenberg surmized in a 2013 paper, “the prevailing view is that music lessons enhance cognitive abilities, a consequence of inferring causation from correlation.”

Who Chooses Music Lessons in the First Place?

Corrigall and her colleagues flipped the usual research question on its head.

Instead of asking whether music training changes cognition, they asked whether pre-existing differences in intelligence, family background, and personality predict who takes music lessons and for how long.

This is a solid research angle to follow because music lessons are not randomly distributed across society. Children who take lessons are more likely to come from families with higher incomes, more educated parents, and greater access to extracurricular activities. Those same factors already correlate with higher academic performance and IQ.

The researchers conducted two large studies. One followed 118 university students. The other examined 167 children aged 10 to 12. In both groups, they measured IQ, family background, school grades, and personality traits using the well-established Big Five framework.

Then they did something unusual in this field. They treated music training as the outcome, not the cause.

IQ Matters — Until Personality Enters the Room

At first glance, the familiar pattern appeared again.

Adults who had played music for more years tended to have higher IQs. Children who took music lessons longer also scored higher on IQ tests and earned better grades.

But the story changed once personality entered the analysis.

In adults, openness to experience — a trait associated with curiosity, imagination, and appreciation of art — predicted how long someone played music, even after controlling for IQ and parental education. In fact, openness predicted musical involvement at least as well as IQ did.

In children, the effect was even stronger.

When the researchers accounted for personality and family background, cognitive ability no longer predicted how long children stayed in music lessons. Openness to experience did.

As the authors summarized, “personality variables are at least as good as cognitive variables at predicting music training.”

In other words, children did not persist in music lessons primarily because they were smarter. They stuck with music because they were the kind of people who enjoyed novelty, exploration, and creative challenge.

Why Musically Trained Kids Get Better Grades

Music training still correlated with academic success. Even after controlling for IQ, children who took music lessons tended to earn higher grades.

But once again, personality reshaped the explanation.

When the researchers added conscientiousness — the trait linked to self-discipline, organization, and persistence — the direct link between music lessons and grades disappeared. Conscientiousness explained the academic edge.

The implication was subtle but powerful. Music lessons did not magically improve school performance. Instead, the same traits that help children practice an instrument week after week — focus, effort, follow-through — also help them succeed in school.

As the authors concluded, “individual differences in conscientiousness helped to explain school grades when IQ and music training were held constant.”

Music and Brain Plasticity

None of this means music has no effect on the brain.

Neuroscience studies show that intensive musical training reshapes sensory and motor regions. Violinists, for example, have enlarged cortical representations of the fingers they use most. Music training improves listening skills and can enhance aspects of speech perception.

But these gains are nothing like the large IQ gaps seen in correlational studies. And they fade unless training continues.

The authors of the 2013 study led by Corrigall argue that “small and intermittent causal effects cannot account for the large cognitive differences between groups” reported elsewhere.

Music does seem to introduce changes the brain but it does not overwrite the overwhelming effects of personality, genetics, or socioeconomic context.

Both intelligence and personality show substantial genetic influence. Each Big Five trait has a heritability around 50 percent, similar to IQ. Over time, people gravitate toward environments that suit their predispositions.

Psychologists call this niche-building. Curious, open-minded children tend to seek out music. Disciplined children persist at it. Those same traits shape academic outcomes and cognitive test performance.

From this perspective, music training looks less like a cognitive miracle drug and more like a magnifying glass. It amplifies existing differences rather than creating new ones from scratch.

What About the “Mozart Effect”?

Any discussion of music and intelligence is bound to lead to a small study from 1993, which reported that college students briefly performed better on a spatial reasoning task after listening to Mozart. The effect lasted about 10 minutes. The authors were careful, some reporters were not.

The original paper, by Frances Rauscher, Gordon Shaw, and Katherine Ky, appeared in Nature under the restrained title “Music and spatial task performance.”

The finding itself was narrow: a short-lived improvement on a single type of task after listening to one kind of music. But within a few years, the result had escaped the lab and entered popular culture as a sweeping promise. Play classical music to babies, this promise went, and you could raise their IQ. CDs marketed cognitive enhancement. Some governments even funded classical music programs for infants.

Replication attempts quickly deflated the idea. Later studies showed that the effect, when it appeared at all, likely reflected arousal and mood, not permanent boosts in intelligence. Any engaging stimulus — music you enjoy, a good story, or even quiet rest after stress — could produce similar, temporary boosts.

By the early 2000s, psychologists broadly agreed that there was no evidence Mozart — or listening to music more generally — produced lasting increases in intelligence.

So Should Kids Still Take Music Lessons?

Absolutely — just not for the reason many people expect.

Music offers joy, expression, social connection, and aesthetic depth. It trains attention and listening in ways few other activities do. It may provide small cognitive benefits, especially for language-related skills.

But the promise that music lessons will reliably raise IQ oversells the evidence.

As Corrigall and her colleagues write, “the burden of proof should rest on those who claim systematic far-transfer effects from music lessons to cognitive abilities.”

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The smarter question is not whether music makes children smarter. It is why certain children fall in love with music and why some persist to the highest levels of artistry.

Music does not turn children into geniuses. But it attracts curious minds, rewards persistence, and reflects deep aspects of personality.