Student Research Report: Music and Mood
In Spring 2021, students in Dr. Emily Stark’s Research Methods and Design course completed multiple hands-on data collection projects. They were also assigned a blog paper where they discussed one of the topics they chose to research and explained their findings to a general audience. The goal of this was to give students an opportunity to explore a different form of writing from APA-style research papers. Some of these blog papers will be featured here throughout the summer to showcase the students’ findings. Please feel free to contact Dr. Stark through the contact form on this site for additional information about this course or the assignments used.
By Isabella Pearson
Have you ever found yourself in a good mood after listening to your favorite music? Or on the other hand, do you find yourself feeling down after listening to a sad song? Some psychologists are interested in diving deeper into these questions and finding out why this may occur. Hogue, Crimmins, & Kahn (2016) discusses a study in which they tested a group of college students to try to predict if the students liked either music that induces happiness or music that induces sadness. This experiment involved a survey in which students were asked about things such as gender, age, depression, and absorption in music. The study found out that depression increased with liking for music that induces sadness for both men and women, but the depression increased much more for the men than it did for the women. Not only did this study investigate different kinds of music, but it also explored how men and women might be affected by certain music in different ways. Psychologists are also very interested in the possible benefits that things such as music related therapy may offer to people suffering from mood disorders. Raglio, et al. (2015) focused on this area, reporting that the use of music therapy on people who had anxiety or depression along with a neurological disorder was effective as treatment.
One of the factors that could contribute to how people feel after listening to certain songs is the song’s tempo, or the speed of the song. Although this isn’t always true, many of us tend to associate fast songs with feelings of happiness or excitement, and slow songs with sadness or calmness. As someone who is a musician and who personally listens to music to boost their mood, I wanted to look at how people’s mood could be influenced by a song’s tempo. For my experiment project in PSYC 211W Research Methods and Design, myself and three other fellow students decided to design an experiment that would examine this. Along with tempo, we also wanted to know if the gender of the person listening to music played a role in how their mood was affected.
Due to COVID-19, we decided to create and distribute a survey rather than observe people in-person. One of the most difficult parts of creating our survey was choosing which songs to have the participants listen to. If we chose popular songs, there would be the risk of people’s mood being influenced because they already knew the song, and perhaps either really liked or disliked it beforehand. There was also the question of how specific genres and lyrics might play a part. If we had someone listen to a slow song with lyrics that could be perceived as sad, then how would we be able to tell if it was the tempo or the lyrics that altered their mood? In the end I selected two classical pieces of music to be used in the survey, as I thought there was a good chance that our participants, who were college students, likely don’t listen to classical music very often. For the slow song, I chose the piece Concerto Grosso No.6 in F Major, Op.6: I. Adagio by Arcangelo Corelli. The fast song I decided on was Trio Sonata in G Major, RV 820: VII [Allegro] by Antonio Vivaldi. We measured tempo by using beats per minute, or BPM, with the slow song being 40 BPM and the fast song 190 BPM. In our survey, the first question asked participants to tell us what their current mood was. The question was multiple choice, with the options of happy/excited, sad/bored, nervous/annoyed, and relaxed/calm. After that, people were given either the fast or the slow song to listen to, and afterwards were asked to tell us how the song impacted their mood. Here, they could choose from very negatively, slightly negatively, slightly positively, or very positively. We also had them report their gender.
After opening the survey for a few days, we ran statistical tests after receiving responses from 75 people. Ultimately, our results showed that the tempo of the song didn’t have a significant effect on people’s mood, and that the participants’ gender didn’t significantly affect mood either. Additionally, the song tempo didn’t influence the mood of one gender more than the other.
Although these results may seem uninteresting, it’s important to remember that our experiment had limitations, and not only has there already been numerous psychological studies on music, but there will also be many more in the future. Future studies might look at elements that we didn’t, such as different music genres and more than two different tempos. The next time you find yourself listening to music, pay attention to how you feel afterwards! Do you feel happier? More depressed? Why do you think that is? Music can shape us in many ways, both positively and negatively.
References
Hogue, J. D., Crimmins, A. M., & Kahn, J. H. (2016). “So sad and slow, so why can’t I turn off the radio”: The effects of gender, depression, and absorption on liking music that induces sadness and music that induces happiness. Psychology of Music, 44(4), 816-829. doi: http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.mnsu.edu/10.1177/0305735615594489
Raglio, A., Attardo, L., Gontero, G., Rollino, S., Groppo, E., & Granieri, E. (2015). Effects of music and music therapy on mood in neurological patients. World journal of psychiatry, 5(1), 68–78. https://doi.org/10.5498/wjp.v5.i1.68