When is Music Used to Change Mood

Andrea K. McCullough
Missouri Western State College
April 30, 1997

Abstract

Is music used more often than other things to change an unwelcome mood. Music can be a tool used to cope with sadness, stress, and apathy. surveys were given to 39 participants, ages 18-47. The three focus unwelcome moods assessed were; sad, stress, and neutral. A one way repeated measure analysis of variance showed a significant difference between categories. Post hoc paired samples t-tests showed music was significantly more likely to be used to alter sad or stressed moods than other things. No significant difference was found in the apathy category. No other significant difference were found in the frequency of uses of music between music categories. People may use music to pick themselves up when things are not going as well as possible. Music could also be used to unwind and relax after a stressful day.

Introduction

Music has been a part of people's lives almost since the beginning. Today music is not just listened to it is studied and applied to many situations. Music has been found to be effective in pre and post-operative situations as a means of relaxation (Wigram, 1995). Music has also been shown to aid in memory. The melody makes the text eaisier to remember. This increases if the melody is simple and repeated (Wallace, 1994).

It is not just the music and melody that has an effect on some aspect of people according to Tuner, Fernandez, and Nelson (1996) the amplitude has an effect on the response time to unexpected visual events. The lowest and loudest amplitudes elicited the slowest response time. This may have been because if the music was to low the participants were working harder to hear it and if it was to loud they missed the que. Moderate music levels did however make the response time faster than if there was no music.

Music and the affect of music on IQ have also been considered. It was suggested that Mozart made you smarter. However, according to Stough, Kerkin, Bates, & Mangan (1994) Mozart was not shown to significantly increase spatial IQ. They did find that there was a small mean difference between Mozart and silence in the direction of increased performance.

Music has also been used in commercial setting. "A positive correlation was found between liking for the music and liking for the atmosphere in the cafeteria, (and) subjects desire to return..."(North & Hargreaves, 1996, 61). The more the music was liked the more they wanted to return to the situation. The opposite was true if they did not like the music, in one case physical violence was threatened if the music was not turned off. It is suggested that this situation may be predicted based on the complexity of the music, the less complex the music the better (North & Hargreaves, 1996).

Music has also been looked at in terms of consumer and sales person. It was found that the more pleasure and arousal that the music elicited from the consumer the more they desired to have buyer-seller interaction, this does not mean that they bought more goods. The seller would have a better chance of selling to a consumer that was willing to interact. The study also showed that peak arousal that was either very relaxing or very exciting did the best ( Dube, Chebat, & Morin, 1995).

Tempo has also been shown to effect task performance. Mayfield and Moss (1989) found that a fast tempo worked well to increase the speed people performed simple tasks. The faster tempo did effect the participant in another way, it acted as a stressor. The slower heartbeat music had a calming effect on the participants, slowing their work speed down.

The lyrics of music has also been looked at in terms of personal relevance when sung verses when just read. Females were more likely to find the words of the song relevant and males were more likely to find the words written to be more relevant. It was suggested that this was because females are more emotion motivated than males (Iversen, Reed, & Revlin, 1989) .

Nolan (1994) found that improvisational music experiences improved the level of functioning of people in a care-provided environment. The music could be used to bring the patients out of their shell and make them more friendly and agreeable.

The purpose of this study is to determine if and when students use music to change their mood.

Methods

Participants

There were 39 participants. Approximately 25 participants were students from a general studies course and an advanced psychology course at Missouri Western State College. The remaining participants were Chillicothe, Missouri area youths. Females made up 59 percent of the sample. The mean age of the participants was 26. Missouri Western College has a relatively small campus with much of the population being non traditional students. It is located in Saint Joseph, Missouri. It is a small city with farmland in the surrounding regions. Saint Joseph is within an hour of Kansas City. Chillicothe, Missouri is a small rural community with a population of about 10,000.

Apparatus

Participants were be given a single page survey. Which included twenty questions with a likert type scale, the survey also asked age and sex. The survey will rate the participant in 4 categories. 1) Change mood when sad 2) Change mood when stressed 3) Change mood when neutral 4) Change mood with other things (see Appendix).

Procedure

The survey was handed out to students in a general studies course, students in an advanced psychology course, and a few young adults from the Chillicothe area. The students in the general studies course were be given extra credit for participation. The area young adults and the advanced psychology course were not given any incentive. All surveys were collected immediately after they were completed.

Results

A one-way repeated measure analysis of variance showed a statistically significant difference between categories F (114, 3) = 3.99, p = .01.

A paired sample t-test showed a non-statistically significance between the sad and stress categories t (38) = -1.11, p >.05. The mean was -.17. Participants did not use music to change their mood more in one category than the other.

A paired sample t-test showed a non-statistically significance between the neutral and other categories t (38) = 1.77, p>.05. The mean was .24. Participants did not use music to change their mood from neutral more than they use other things.

A paired sample t-test showed a non-statistically significance between the neutral and sad categories t (38) = .47, p >.05. The mean was -.06. Participants did not use music to change their mood more in one category than the other.

A paired sample t- test showed a non-statistically significance between the neutral and stress categories t (38) = -1.67, p > .05. The mean was -.23. Participants did not use music to change their mood more in one category than the other.

A paired sample t-test showed a statistically significant difference between other and stress categories t (38) = -3.69, p = .01. The mean was -.48. When participants were stressed they were more likely to use music to change their mood than other things.

A paired sample t-test showed a statistically significant difference between other and sad categories t (38) = -2.16, p = .037. The mean was -.31. When participants were sad they were more likely to use music to change their mood than other things.

Discussion

This study showed that the participants used music when they were sad to help cheer up. Music was also used to cope with stress. Music was not used to change a neutral or apathetic mood. The participates did not use music more when sad than when stressed, and visa versa. In the sad and stressed category other types of coping strategies were not used as much as music as was used.

Some of the limitations in this study were the small sample size, and a limited age range. Another limitation was the fact that part of participants got extra credit for participation and part did not.

This information can be used by others as a coping resource that they have access to and is inexpensive. This could be used as a first step in a health and stress management program.

References

Dube, L., Chebat, J. C., & Morin, S. (1995). The effect of background music on consumers' desire to affiliate in buyer-seller interactions. Psychology & Marketing, 12, 305-319.

Iversen, J., Reed, H., & Revlin, R. (1989). The effect of music on the personal relevance of lyrics. Psychology, A journal of human behavior, 26, 15-22.

Mayfield, C., & Moss, S. (1989). Effect of music tempo on task performance. Psychological Reports, 65, 1283-1290.

Nolan, P. (1994). The therapeutic response in improvisational music therapy: What goes on inside? Music Therapy Perspectives, 12, 84-91.

North, A. C., & Hargreaves, D. J. (1996). The effects of music on responses to a dining area. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 16, 55-64.

Stough, C., Bridget, K., & Mangan, G. (1994). Music and spatial IQ. Personality and Individual Differences,17, 695.

Turner,M. L., Fernandez, J. E., & Nelson, K. (1996). The effect of music amplitude on the reaction to unexpected visual events. The Journal of General Psychology, 123, 51-62.

Wallace, W. T. (1994). Memory for music: Effect of melody on recall of text. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, memory, and Cognition, 20, 1471-1485.

Wigram, T. (1995). The psychology and physiological effect of low frequency sound and music. Music Therapy Perspectives, 13, 16-23.

Appendix

Please read the following statements and respond to them.

age_____ sex_____

1) A fun game will always put me in a good mood.