The Influence Of Music Listening On Stress And Anxiety

The Influence of Music Listening on Stress and Anxiety Levels Anxiety is essentially the human body’s reaction to an occurrence that causes an individual to feel threatened due to a lack of resources needed in order to achieve a necessary outcome (Merriam-Webster, 2016). It triggers different stress systems throughout the body such as the sympathetic nervous system and the hypothalamus-pituitary adrenal, effectively causing stress levels to rise (Thoma et al., 2014). A limited amount of stress is beneficial for an individual since it may keep him or her sharp and alert, too much stress could be destructive towards the body’s health. Since an excess amount of stress can be extremely harmful, many different methods of relieving stress exist …show more content…
Between 45 and 61 California State University students participated depending on the variables and years. Each participant was required to choose a song to present to the class, and after each classmate’s song was presented, to fill in a survey regarding how the music made them feel. Although music didn’t have a significant influence on certain students, results showed that music listening generally relieved participant’s stress (Ferrer et al., 2014). This study demonstrated that there is a negative correlation between music listening and stress in a classroom environment. Overall, all three studies highlighted participants’ stress or anxiety levels and emphasized the usage of music listening to relieve them. Although they all shared the common negative correlation between music therapy and stress or anxiety, each study was highly specific to its respective setting. There was still substantial opportunity for additional research on this relationship as a whole. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between music listening and stress or anxiety. It was hypothesized that music listening has a negative correlation with stress and anxiety levels since the act of listening to music caused a significant decrease in stress …show more content…
Thoma and colleagues (2014) conducted a study on dental patients’ stress levels before and after a regularly scheduled dentist appointment. They determined that the group of participants who were exposed to calm music prior to their treatment’s stress levels dropped significantly (Thoma et al., 2014). Ferrer and colleagues (2014) examined music’s ability to relieve stress in a college classroom environment and came to the conclusion that music listening relieves students’ stress. In the current study on music’s influence on stress, all participants either moderately or strongly agreed that music could be used as an effective stress reliever. Both this study and the 3 previously mentioned studies all ultimately follow the general consensus that music listening and stress or anxiety levels have a significant negative