Effect of Music on Mood and Behavior: How do different types of music influence emotions and cognitive performance?
Dating back nearly 40,000 years ago, music has been used to evoke emotions, influence moods, relate to cultures and overall be a timeless form of communication. Through catharsis, the release of pent-up emotions due to artistic expression, individuals often get influenced by different types of music, making them either resonate with their feelings, or cognitive processes. Overall with the influence of one’s personal taste, the tempo, genre, lyrical content, etc of a particular song different types of music can have a profound impact on their emotions and cognitive performance..
Research indicates that music can influence one’s emotions as it is known to increase blood flow to different regions in the brain. The specific system is called the limbic system, which is involved in processing emotions and controlling memory through different tests. It has been seen to light up when our ears perceive music highlighting different emotions being active. Furthermore, it has been proven that shared musical experiences can strengthen social cohesion and attachment amongst individuals. This can be because music has been seen to stimulate the brain triggering the release of dopamine promoting relaxation and generally uplifted moods. However, though music generally promotes uplifted moods, tempo in particular is typically regarded as the most important factor of the melody which influences the emotions released, example of fast tempo is excitement and slow tempo is sadness.
Moreover, there have also been different case studies related to music and its effect on emotions. For example, over half a century ago, Leonard Meyer presented his theory that ‘emotional responses to music arise through expectations set up by musical patterns’. He presented that since some chords are expected to follow others in certain musical structures, the medallic fragment sets up expectations for how it will continue, and that the low probability realizations is what gives rise to psychological responses such as change and heart rate breathing and potential emotional responses. Throughout the case studies, it showed that people based their expectations or the emotions that arise based on the rules of western musical theory, whether or not they are explicitly aware of these rules or not.
Music can also be seen to affect cognitive performance in humans. Findings have suggested both opinions of music improving cognitive performance, as well as evidence contradicting those results. An example of this is the Smith and Morris case study which evaluated the effects of sedative and stimulative music. The study mainly focused on the effect these genres of music had on cognitive performance and anxiety. In the experiment, participants were required to listen to their favorite genre while repeating a set of numbers backwards. The results indicated that the participants performed at a lower level while listening to their preferred type of music, whereas in no music conditions participants performed the best. These specific case studies findings suggested that music can be a distraction when people are performing cognitive performances. However, other studies like the Ferrari L 2013 showed an improvement in cognitive tasks and episodic memory when background music is played.
Moreover, another case study conducted by Manual Gonzalez of Baruch College and John Aiello of Rutgers University suggested that Music's effect on cognitive performance is very subjective per individual. For some listening to music is a strategy that helps boost cognitive performance, but for others, it achieves the opposite effect. It can be inferred that people with a high requirement for stimulation that tend to get bored easily often do worse when listening to music while engaging in a mental task which requires a high level of cognitive performance, however, people without the need of external stimulation tend to improve their mental performance with music.
Overall, it can be safe to infer that music's effect on both the mood and cognitive performance is very subjective and personal to each individual rather than generalizable to the general public.
Works Cited - Bibliography
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