Probably most of us here love music and we listen to different types of music. I’m the kind of person that listens to music depending on my mood. Also, music changes my mood and I started to wandered why. Why does music have such a great impact in our mood?
According to some studies, when we listen to music the heart starts synching with the rhythm. Also, with the tone, when you listen to a “major key” it makes you cheerful and when you listen to a “low key” it makes you not cheerful. There has been a couple of studies that has prove this. First a study in the University of Missouri, said that listening to music can change your mood in just two days. Also, in two other studies by Yuna Ferguson it proved the same. Here’s a 2 minute video that explains better how music affects your brain.
I found kind of a reverse causation in this, because you could also listen to music depending in how you feel. If you feel happy you’ll probably listen to upbeat music, but if you are sad you are going to find yourself listing to Taylor Swift old songs for the entire day. Maybe its true and music does has an effect on you, but we could also pick the music depending on how we feel. It could also be by chance, you are listening to music, you feel sad, and after that on the radio a random sad song comes on.
For me, I listen to music all of the time. I select the type of music depending on how am I feeling or my mood. But, if I’m happy and suddenly a couple of sand songs come to the radio, I start thinking about sad things or simply the songs bring me bad memories about stuff that had happened in the past. According to the studies showed above, music in fact, does affect your mood.
References:
http://bestbinauralbeats.org/how-music-affects-our-mood/
Although this article brings up ideas that I find consistent with my life, all these findings are completely observational. Only the participant can tell the researcher when they are feeling the emotion they are feeling. In addition, reverse causation could be highly probable in these studies because music can effect the mood of an individual, but also the mood that an individual is already in can determine what kind of music he/she listens to. However, if music could determine a person’s thinking it could alter their thinking. If a person listens to angry or heavy metal music, they could become very angry and violent.
I think that every person has their own opinion on music. Some people will listen to certain genres depending on what mood they are currently in and other people will change their mood to match the genre of music that is playing. In either case, it has been proven that music will boost your mood no matter what type of genre you are listening too. Depressed patients are often recommended to listen to music as their therapy and it has a positive effect on them. I found this to be very interesting. I guess music as a whole has a positive effect on anyone who is listening. Now, there are definitely exceptions to this since each person has different preferences on what they like to listen to but overall, the conclusion does make sense.
http://www.healthychildren.org/English/healthy-living/emotional-wellness/Pages/Music-and-Mood.aspx