Psychological Effects Of Music And Stress

Stress is generally defined as an increase in the physiological or emotional responses of the body to protect it from some perceived internal or external threat (Yehuda, 2011). Stress plays an important role in the lives of individuals. It, like so many other things, is pivotal of the nature of success. It drives individuals to succeed, pushes the body to accomplish and grow, and helps to maintain the growth of not only individuals, but also systems and societies. But stress, like so many other things in life, needs to be balanced and kept at a functional level (Franks, 1994). If the body or mind becomes overstressed, then the stress level begins to become dysfunctional, and begins to be detrimental to the individual. As such, it is important …show more content…
In a study testing the effects of music as a treatment for depression in comparison to psychotherapy, researchers found that using music as a treatment for depression was a viable course (Castillo-Perez, Gomez-Perez, Velasco, Perez-Campos, & Mayoral, 2010). While there were admitted flaws in the experimental design, this experiment addressed a specific psychological condition and its relationship with music. In a mixed factorial design experiment Labbe, Schmidt, Babin, and Pharr (2007) found that music statistically increased the rate of relaxation of participants that had previously been exposed to a stressor. Specifically they tested the effects of classical, self selected music, heavy metal music, and no music on the physiological and emotional responses participants that had previously been exposed to a mental stress test. Results indicated that there was significant reduction of stress for the classical and self selected conditions. There was some evidence that the self selected condition decreased stress levels faster than the classical condition, but it did not prove to be statistically significant. Also, participants in the heavy metal condition reported that they experienced an increase in emotional stress; despite exhibiting a decreased level of physiological …show more content…
With it begin a precept relatively new to the experimental field, researchers decided to test exclusively on women to eliminate extraneous variables. In this study one group of participants listened to music prior to the stressor, and after the stressor as well to see if that had any effect on the stress response. Experimenters measured stress by comparing the level of cortisol, norepinephrine, and heart rate at various stages of the experiment. Results indicated that while music did help to reduce the stress reaction prior to exposure to a stressor, the condition where participants listened to nature sounds had the greatest reduction in stress. Also, participants that listened to music prior to the stressor had a much more significant spike in the stress response during the stressor, believed to be because they were more relaxed before the testing started (Thoma et al.,