It has long been known that music has a significant impact on our mood and emotions. In fact, even sad music can bring pleasure and comfort to some.
But first… why do we listen to music?
- Regulate our mood and stress
- Achieve self-awareness
- Express social relatedness
A psychological survey conducted this and shown that the first two are more important. Music is said to be deeply personal and it is used to improve motivation and focus. A lot of people would play music in the background to regulate mood and ease stress.
It’s because the brain and nervous system are hard-wired to identify music from noise and to respond to rhythm and repetition, tunes, and tones.
The Mozart Effect
The Mozart effect is a popular mental influence of music due to an observation of musicians having an unusual mathematical ability. The University of California, Irvine, investigated how music affects cognitive function. The first study had participants divided into three groups.
The first group listened to Mozart piano sonata for ten minutes, the second group set listened to a relaxation tape, and the third group waited in silence before they took standard IQ test questions. The results showed that the participants in the first group who listened to Mozart gained the highest scores.
The researchers wanted to know if the effect was specific to classical music or if any form of music can help enhance mental performance. Mozart’s music was compared to Philip Glass, and the researchers found that Mozart still had a significant impact.