The Surprising Effects of Music, Revealed!
Are you a fan of music? Do you have a favourite music to listen to while working or studying? If you are, look around you and you will see you’re not alone. Most people nowadays are music fans, too. They have earphones plugged into their ears as soon as they wake up. They keep their minds in tune with their favourite sound to start the day right.
Clearly, music plays a big part in most people’s lives. It’s got these significant effects on every listener, which interestingly happen in a very spontaneous manner – in that they seep into the human psyche without the knowledge of the listeners themselves.
Music shows in the face.
Certain experiments reveal that a piece of music affects a person’s facial expression. With this, you can easily guess if a person is listening to a happy or sad music. Why is this so? It is because human emotions are readily affected by music. However, the type of emotions produced by music is not felt, only perceived. This somehow explains why a depressed person can feel lightness in mood by simply listening to a happy music.
Music mirrors a person’s personality
Your type of music can give others a clue of your persona and interests. This proves to be true specifically among adults. A person’s character is already set come adulthood. Thus, what an adult likes – in this case, music – can typically tell whether he has high or low self-esteem, introvert or extrovert, hardworking or laidback, gentle or harsh, and so on. According to experiments, an adult who listens to classical music is creative and introverted but has high self-esteem. An adult who loves heavy metal music, on the other hand, has low self-esteem but could be as creative.
Music improves creativity.
Believe it or not, music can improve a person’s creativity. Need some inspiration to finish an artwork or literary piece? Play a soft classical or instrumental music on your computer or phone! Listen to loud or upbeat music, and you may get distracted. Then again, there are few people who are able to concentrate more with loud music for a background tune.
Music stimulates bodily movements.
Another activity that’s heavily stimulated by music: exercising! A person listening to music while exercising is less likely to quit working out easily – and this is because music drowns the brain’s perception of fatigue, which stems from any physical activity. To back this up, an American researcher named Leonard Ayres found in his study that a group of cyclists who had listened to music pedaled faster than they usually would without any background music.
Music furthers logical and motor skills.
Some are not content with just listening to music. They train in playing a musical instrument of their choice. Doing so is very beneficial, especially for children whose faculties are in the development stage. Contrary to common belief, both our hands and ears are not the only parts at work when playing a musical instrument. The brain, eyes, muscles, and even emotions are set to work in harmony in order to create a great piece of music. Consequently, the music player acquires auditory discrimination abilities, fine motor skills, improved vocabulary, and non-verbal reasoning skills.
Listening to music can be disadvantageous too.
There are other activities which are best performed without any background music – and one of them is driving. Music doesn’t always necessarily have to be very loud, as that might distract a newbie or veteran driver. In 2013, BGU Director of Music Science Research Dr. Warren Brodsky, along with researcher Zack Slor, conducted a study to asses how certain music preferences trigger distraction: a group of teens were first instructed to drive while listening to music of their choice in low volume. The result? Majority of the teenage drivers made mistakes. They were then instructed to drive without music, and the outcome showed a huge decrease in the previously recorded errors and miscalculations. Nonetheless, some drivers still prefer to play some music in their cars when traveling long distances -- mostly to keep themselves alert for anything that may come their way.
Does music influence a person's behavior?
There are a lot of things we can tell about other people by knowing what music they listen to. Similarly, there are heaps of other stuff we discover about ourselves just by perpetually having a pair of headphones glued to our ears. The thing about music is it’s all around us -- it’s beyond powerful! It can make us feel good. It can make us cry. And some days, it can make us feel emotions we never thought we had, or impact us in ways we never thought it could. Bottom line is: I can’t go on a day without music. Can you?