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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 growing and developing for many years. 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 S et al. Pg 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 pg 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 Liu et al. Conclusion 5). An

important direction for future research is to develop strategies that decrease negative emotions

related to COVID-19 and these strategies involve music (Xiaolin Liu et al. Conclusion 5). 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” (Thomas Schäfer et al. Pg 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 (Thomas Schäfer et al. Pg 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” (Peijie Pang Pg 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 J et al. Pg 7). This

proves that music helps stimulate the brain and holds emotional responses to humans. It has
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helped many people today in this world, especially people suffering from medical conditions.

This proves how music helps us in a phycological way.

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” (Yisha Wang et al. Pg 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” (Victor Fu et al. Pg 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.
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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

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, vol. 2017, no. 11, 2017, pp. CD004517–CD004517,

https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD004517.pub3.

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

Cancer Patients.” Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, vol. 2016, no. 8, 2016, pp.

CD006911–CD006911, https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD006911.pub3.

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. e049706–e049706, https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2021-

049706.

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, p. 7063–,

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18137063.

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

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

https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/8577034.

Ritter, S. .., and S. Ferguson. “Happy Creativity: Listening to Happy Music Facilitates Divergent

Thinking.” PLoS ONE, vol. 12, no. 9, 2017, pp. e0182210–e0182210,

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0182210.

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

Psychology, vol. 4, 2013, pp. 511–511, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00511.

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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,

https://doi.org/10.3349/ymj.2014.55.4.1101.