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Ivy Lara

Professor Briones

ENGL 1302 222

3/4/2023

Does Music affect People Psychologically, Physically, and Emotionally?

Introduction

Music has been revolutionizing and becoming better every day as the years go by. It has

become something that everyone listens to and an everyday thing to someone’s ritual. There are

many genres and types of music all over the world. There is sad, happy, slow, and fast music and

whichever you prefer to listen to can all affect your overall being. Many of these genres have

been proven to show results for helping people. Some people don’t think so and think that music

is a distraction or people believe that it can create bad habits but in this instance it is the

complete opposite. Over time people have shown that music can help with many things like in

the medical field, psychologically and has shown that it can help with emotional support. Even

during Covid 19 it was proven to help people due to the isolation and how hard it was during

those times. Many of these findings have a positive effect on what music can do to people who

are sick, the elderly, or even getting surgery. It can also cause emotion for example listening to

sad music can be peaceful for people or happy music can cause excitement. Overall music is a

vital part in our everyday lives and can help people all over the world.

Emotional Effects of Music

Music is arguably a good thing for people to enjoy and even to help with emotions, and

anxiety. This can also help with depression. Depression is a type of mental health and music has

been proven to help with the effects that it gives. “Studies have shown that it has lowered stress
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and the emotional responses that it gives. Music therapy, when added to treatment as usual,

seems to improve symptoms of depression. Music therapy seems to be beneficial also for anxiety

which is a comorbidity of depression” (Aalbers et al. 26). This proves that emotions can be

controlled or can be helped by music. Some people don’t believe in depression, but it is a real

thing, and it does affect people on a very serious note. Depression can be helped with music and

most people who have or have had depression have shown results that music helps. On the other

hand, music can also be an effect for happy responses in people. It can create creativity in people

and help people feel happy. With happy music, people can feel the same as people who listen to

sad music. “A positive mood appears to be associated to improvements in divergent thinking”

(Ritter et al 3). It just depends on the person and how they think. Happy thinking is caused by

happy music which produces cognitive thinking. Even during these hard past few years with

covid, people have found that music helped during those troubled times. “The results showed that

mindfulness-based listening to calm and happy music effectively regulated young adults’

negative emotions induced by a COVID-19 video” (Xiaolin et al. 15). An important direction for

future research is to develop strategies that decrease negative emotions related to COVID-19 and

these strategies involve music (Xiaolin et al. 15). Music can also bring people to be empathetic

and show emotion. Singers use music to express themselves and this can be a way out from the

world and can be a coping mechanism. Music is a tool that people use for their advantage and

well being in this world. People all over have studied how it creates emotion but what really

happens in one’s head when listening to music. How does music work psychologically in our

brains?

The Psychological Part of Music

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We as people have shown that we respond well to music. Part of that is because most

people love to hear music. It creates cognitive thinking and helps with our emotions, but one of

the main things we need to think about is how it helps us psychologically. Most of these are

usually proven by tests on people to see how it affects humans and its functions of music like

said here “Works that refer to only one single functional aspect of music include possible

therapeutic functions for music in clinical setting” (Schäfer et al. 3). There are many functions to

the psychological part of music such as social functions, emotional functions, cognitive or self-

related functions, and arousal-related functions (Schäfer et al. 5). These are functions we can use

to see how music stimulates our brain. Music can also be psychologically proven to help athletes

with their game. “Many studies have shown that music has an impact on sports performance and

can improve sports performance” (Pang 3-4). It is proven to show that music helps athletes feel

less anxiety and show wakefulness because they are focused. The music stimulates the athlete

and makes the less anxious and more focused on their game rather than being with no music.

Other studies have shown to help people in with medical conditions psychologically. People with

cancer for example have been proven to show that when going through treatment listening to

music can reduce pain and change their focus on the music. It also provides them with less stress

and anxiety when going through this terminal condition. It has also been proven that music

therapy has been more effective that regular therapy and has shown better results for the cancer

patients. “There are inherent elements of music — such as rhythm and tempo, mode, pitch,

timbre, melody and harmony — that are known to influence physiological and psycho-emotional

responses in humans” (Bradt et al. 7). This proves that music helps stimulate the brain and holds

emotional responses to humans. It has helped many people today in this world, especially people

suffering from medical conditions. This proves how music helps us in a phycological way.
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Music in Medical Conditions

People all over the world have been suffering from medical conditions that can be helped

by music therapy or listening to music in general. People like the elderly, have been proven to

show better signs when they listen to music before surgery. It affects their heart rate, blood

pressure and anxiety levels. When listening to music their anxiety levels were shown to be lower

than an elderly who did not listen to music. “Perioperative psychological and music

interventions can reduce anxiety and postoperative pain in elderly patient” (Wang et al. 1101).

Older people are more sensitive and with music it can help them with their aging and procedures

they have to get done while getting older. Other studies prove that music helps people with

patients going through femur fracture surgery. “Perioperative recorded music is an attractive

intervention specifically in this patient group as it is safe, well liked, and reduces sedative and

opioid medication requirements” (Fu et al. 1). It showed that the people going through it had

very good effects on it because of these results. It can be very helpful in the medical side of

things and works to help people. When people go through surgery it causes a lot of pain. This

article proved that people had less pain with music. This helps the patient heal faster, feel less

pain and probably even helps psychologically. Music ties everything together and helps people

even when the person doesn’t know it.

All Tied Together

Music ties all the things said above all together. It shows how important music is to these

parts of our minds. When we listen to music it can affect our wellbeing, which is our emotions. If

our emotions are affected, then it hits us psychologically which then becomes a medical problem.

If we implement music to one of these things, we can see that they can all be solved by music.

The articles found show how well music affects all these things. Music helps and is our solution
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for all of these. Yes, there are other solutions but music is the best and easiest one for

phycological, medical and emotional effects.

Conclusion

In conclusion music does help people emotionally, psychologically, and medically.

People find music exciting, sad, happy and overall good for mental stimulation. It has done so

much for people all over the world, like medical conditions, emotional responses and the

psychological parts of things. People show how well music affects people’s wellbeing, and it has

shown way more positive effects than negative. It is so important to have music in our lives

because of the benefits it brings people. People have been against these facts but even articles

prove that music help people by the tests and experiments conducted. It is very popular with this

generation because of how music helps every aspect of life whether you are feeling down, happy

or for the use of medical help. Even people during covid said that music helped them with their

emotions especially during the isolation. All these important parts of our mind have been proven

to show how music improves everyone’s wellbeing. This proves how music affects our world in

a good way and how it has been shown to be a great tool for our minds.
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Works Cited

Aalbers, Sonja, et al. “Music Therapy for Depression.” Cochrane Database of Systematic

Reviews, no. 11, 2017, pp. 1-87. Wiley,

https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD004517.pub3. Accessed 4 Apr. 2023.

Bradt, Joke, et al. “Music Interventions for Improving Psychological and Physical Outcomes in

Cancer Patients.” Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, no. 8, 2022, pp. 1-221.

Wiley, https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD006911.pub3. Accessed 4 Apr. 2023.

Fu, Victor X., et al. “Effect of Music on Clinical Outcome after Hip Fracture Operations

(MCHOPIN): Study Protocol of a Multicentre Randomised Controlled Trial.” BMJ Open,

vol. 11, no. 12, 2021, pp. 1-9. ProQuest, https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2021-049706.

Accessed 4 Apr. 2023.

Liu, Xiaolin, et al. “Regulation of Mindfulness-Based Music Listening on Negative Emotions

Related to COVID-19: An ERP Study.” International Journal of Environmental

Research and Public Health, vol. 18, no. 13, 2021, pp. 1-19. MDPI,

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18137063. Accessed 4 Apr. 2023.

Pang, Peijie. “A Method of Personal Music Psychological Recognition Based on Psychological

and Physiological Signals.” Scientific Programming, vol. 2022, 2022, pp. 1–7. Hindawi,

https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/8577034. Accessed 4 Apr. 2023.

Ritter, Simone M., and Sam Ferguson. “Happy Creativity: Listening to Happy Music Facilitates

Divergent Thinking.” PLoS ONE, vol. 12, no. 9, 2017, pp. 1-14. PubMed,

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0182210. Accessed 4 Apr. 2023.

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Schäfer, Thomas, et al. “The Psychological Functions of Music Listening.” Frontiers in

Psychology, vol. 4, 2013, pp. 1-33. PubMed, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00511.

Accessed 4 Apr. 2023.

Wang, Yisha, et al. “Perioperative Psychological and Music Interventions in Elderly Patients

Undergoing Spinal Anesthesia: Effect on Anxiety, Heart Rate Variability, and

Postoperative Pain.” Yonsei Medical Journal, vol. 55, no. 4, 2014, pp. 1101–05. PubMed,

https://doi.org/10.3349/ymj.2014.55.4.1101. Accessed 4 Apr. 2023.