Impact of Music on Mood: Empirical Investigation
Music is one of the few aspects of human culture which is thought to be universal. Since we are all human beings we all experience joy, anger, sadness and other feelings like those.
We all have a ton of emotions that control how we act and what we say. Our emotions are triggered by many things. One of those things is Music. Music has the potential to influence mood, feelings, and thoughts; it has the ability to change the emotional and physical status of people, whether they are in bad, good, or sad moods.
Music is considered as a way of expression in which freedom is a privilege. It has many features and purposes like an extraordinary way of communication through art. Music can be a universal language that invokes different aspects of people until it grows on them.Emotion is a complex set of interaction between the subjective and objective factors, which may lead to emotional experience such as feelings, excitement, pain, pleasure and sadness.
Humans are able to experience wide range of emotional states. Emotions, sense of humor, passion and excitement interchangeably, although each is unique and distinct from others. People can be divided into several categories according to how they express and present themselves as an individual. Investigating the relationship between music and mood is an important topic of study as people are constantly surrounded by music which they choose to listen to as well as music they are exposed to involuntarily in their daily lives.
There have been many psychological studies conducted throughout the past century relating to music and emotion, and as a result there exist many different representations and interpretations of human emotion and its relation to music. The objective of this thesis research is to find out the effect of music on mood and human behavior. Webster and Weir (2005) attempted to gauge interactive of mode, texture, and tempo in a single experiment.An emotional state is often the result of many interrelated and underlying influences and one of them is music.
Music is a tool that can influence the emotion; it can change the mood and also leaves it effects on human emotions. And this effect can be shown in some ways. Like it can be shown visually, through facial expressions and also audibly through vocal expressions. It has been proved by many researches too.
As emotions are influenced by music in the same way activities are also influenced by music. A huge difference in one performance and task can be seen after and before listening to music. It is said that people work much better after listening to music than those who sit in silence or with no music.
Objectives of the Study
The specific objectives of the study are to find out:
- To evaluate the effect of music on mood.
- To find out the interest and views of the people toward music.
- To gain feedback on this issue.
Statement of the Problem
What is the effect of music on mood, what are the different views of the listeners about music? What determines music to be positive or negative? Does all kind of music will affect feeling? Is it right that People who listen to classical and pop music would report more positive moods, and those who listen to heavy metal and violent music would report more negative moods?
Hypothesis
All kind of music effect mood, feeling and emotions, and People who listen to classical and pop music will show more positive effects, and those who listen to heavy metal will show more negative moods
Literature review
According to Ganser & Huda (2010) Music has the power to influence mood in both ways positively as well as negatively. Antisocial lyrics and annoying music can cause negative effect on mood whereas uplifting music and pro-social lyrics can bring positive effects in mood.
The studies show that anxiety and depression can be reduced by classical music, and the music which is liked by the listener will invoke more positive state, one of their study shows when surgeon enjoyed the music their performance came to be improved, and autonomic reactivity was reduced. (McCraty etal, 1998)According to the studies of Hill (2007), the listener enjoys listening to soft rock because they feel happier, less angry, sad, disgusted, etc. Likewise, the listener does not like listening to hard rock because they feel angrier, sadder, and disgusted. The negative hard rock music was positively correlated with negative emotions and the soft rock music was positively correlated with positive emotions.
According to the study of Tropeano (2006), the violent music brings aggression in human behavior, it is considered to be a severe problem in society. The mood changes as the music like nonviolent music results in completely different behavior. Listening to violent music has a strong effect on violent tendencies.According to the research of Rea etal (2010) which was conducted on three subjects, they were given a task to listen to music for 10 minutes and the categories of music were pop, heavy metal and classical.
And it was concluded that who listened to classical and pop music reported in more positive way and who listened to heavy metal music reported in more negative way. So their hypothesis that was Music would affect mood was supported.According to the studies of Webster and Weir (2005), Music in major keys was rated happier than music in minor keys. Non harmonized, simple melodies were rated happier than more complex harmonized music.
As the tempo of music increased, ratings of happiness also increased.Webster and Weir said according to Garadi and Garken (1995), people associate descending melodies with sadness whereas ascending melodies with happiness. but kids do not make it reliable their level of association is different they do not respond in the same way but youngsters do.According to Thompson et al (2001) people perform special activities better after listening to music composed by Mozart than those who are sitting in silence.
In their research task The music Mozart sonata was appeared to be very pleasant to participant whereas the other participants were given a very slow and sad music but the results of Mozart were better and those participants scored higher on mood arousal and significantly lower on negative mood as Mozart effect itself is an artifact arousal of mood.According to Schäfer and Sedlmeier, (2009) music is a valuable mean for induction of emotions. In addition music is considered to be a diagnostic tool for investigating the development of adolescents their emotions i.e what they need, what they believe, what they feel and also their problems are mirrored in the music they listen to.
Thus it can be said that music has a strong impact on our emotions and activities.According to Panksepp and Bernatzky (2002) said through music person can be guided toward common social activities and the other task they perform in a social environment.Thaut and de l’Etoile (1993) found that people induced to a happy mood by inducing music scene with a piece composed in the major mode showed a significant increase in memory compared with people who had not been led to an experimental mood.A study by Stout, Leckenby, and Hecker (1990) on viewer reactions to music in television commercials found that ads with music in the major mode had more positive reactions than ads with music in the minor mode.
The commercials with music in the minor mode were resulted as more irritating and the commercials with music in the major mode were resulted as much relevant and newsworthy. And also, the products introduced with major mode music were found to be as more purchase worthy than those of a products that introduced with minor mode music.
