Brent Rau Jon McAllister Scott Quay Stephanie Bross Andrew Rennels
EDP 101 Section A April 20, 2007
Music: A Strong Influence on Human Emotions
As we know, human emotions can be greatly expressed by music. Depending on how an individual is feeling, a person can express his/her feeling by simply utilizing music. This music can be perceived by other people and this can instantly cause the person perceiving the music to experience an emotion. These emotions may range from happiness and fear, to sadness and anger. Certain music does not spark the same emotions in all people. One individual may perceive the music in one way which causes him/her to become sad, while another individual may feel empowered to express happiness. Although these emotions vary, one underlying phenomena is that both individuals experienced an emotion that wasn’t present before the music was heard. Music has the incredible ability to spark a range of emotions and in this paper we shall discuss how music influences the emotions of anger, happiness, fear, and sadness.1 Anger: The topic that I chose to discuss is the relationship between anger and music. I chose this topic because there have been many times in my life when music has caused me to generate an angry feeling. There have also been numerous times when I dealt with my anger by listening to calming music if I want to become solemn, or by listening to upbeat and loud music when I feel that I need to get rid of my anger in this manner. In the textbook, we learn about the auditory system and how we can interpret different types of music and sound waves. The exact system of audition is described from the gathering of sound by the outer ear to the auditory nerve, which transmits the auditory information to higher brain centers (Davis & Palladino, 2006, pp102-103). The textbook also characterizes anger by faster heartbeat, tensed muscles, and higher rates of breathing (Davis & Palladino, 2006, pg 258). In This is Your Brain on Music, Daniel Levitin states that, “the cerebellum is central to something about emotion- startle, fear, rage, calm, gregariousness” (Levitin, 2006, pg 183). He also states that, “music is clearly a means for improving people’s moods. Music appears to mimic some of the features of language and to convey some of the same emotions that vocal communication does, but in a nonreferential, and nonspecific way” (Levitin, 2006, pg 187). In brief summary, Levitin relates music and emotions to the auditory system, further validating his claims. In a book titled, Deeper than Reason, the author states that, “much music evokes emotional responses, and by cognitively monitoring or reflecting upon these responses, we can come to grasp the structure of the music as well as what it expresses” (Robinson, 2005, pg 348). He later quotes an author named Peter Kivy, who stated, “we must keep apart the claim that music is expressive (of anger, fear, and the like) and the claim that music is arousing in the sense of moving…. A piece of sad music might move us (in part) because it is expressive of sadness, but it does not move us by making us sad. The emotions expressed are quite different from the emotions aroused (if any), and independent of them” (Robinson, 2005, pg 351). This idea is agreed upon by some and also disagreed upon by many others. Another quote that I found stated, “Music evokes moods by means of effecting autonomic changes, motor activity, and action tendencies, so as to put listeners into a mood state, a state in which they more readily ascribe emotions to themselves. Different listeners label their states by difference to different contexts, and that is one big reason why different people say they feel somewhat different emotional states in response to the very same music” (Robinson, 2005, pg 405). All of the above quotes can easily be applied to and associated with the emotion of anger. I partially agree with Kivy on the statement about separating the claims, but I also partly disagree. There have been plenty of times where I have been moved by a sad song and not felt sadness, but on the other hand, the song I’ll Wait for You by Joe Nichols made me actually feel sad the first time that I heard it. This also ties into the idea that different listeners interpret the same song differently. My friend, Tyler sees the Joe Nichols song as one that is happy and promising. On a website that I found, and many similar to it, many people use music as a psychiatric aid and anger suppressant. The psychiatrist states, “I began to draw upon my own experiences, and discovered a very powerful technique that allows me to use music, something people already listen to and identify with, as a way to help people heal. Here, I am going to look specifically at how music can be used to help those who have difficulty with their anger” (Bush, 2007). On a more personal note, I am moved by many types of music, but I must talk specifically about anger. There are songs that I listen to that anger me simply by the lyrics. There are many racist and sexist songs out there that can cause me to become greatly upset. Also, many artists sing about things of which they have no idea about, singing about these things solely to sell an album. I strongly disagree with this, and obviously, it makes me very angry. I also, from time to time, get angered by the memory that a song may cause me to recollect. These songs are usually not intended to anger people, but simply remind me of a specific time in which I was angry about something or with someone. Like many other people, I use music to cope with anger, along with many other emotions. Sometimes, when angered, I listen to rock music or heavy music. This keeps me in a state characterized by a higher heart rate, tensed muscles, and higher respiratory rate, as mentioned before, which I use to lift weights or punch a punching bag in order to expend the anger that I am feeling. The result of this is a feeling of a “runner’s high” experienced by a release of endorphins to the brain. The feeling that follows this workout, which I have found to be very effective, takes the place of the anger and replaces it with a relaxed and collected feeling. On the other hand, I can also deal with anger by listening to slower-paced, relaxing music. This also takes me out of the angry state that I may be in and replaces it with a calm feeling, bringing me back to my normal happy state. Though this tactic works for me most of the time, along with many of my friends, I find that there are times when the “punching bag” method better solves my anger. In discussion of this topic with my friends Chris and Tyler, they found the same ideas to hold true.
2 Overall, music and anger, along with many other emotions, have a high correlation. This is true whether the anger is caused or subdued by the music. Many people find that music causes the arousal of many emotions, and most of the time, these emotions depend on the lyrics. If it weren’t for music, I believe that the world would be much less expressive and emotional, positive or negative, and we would be deprived of one of the best “medications” known to man.2 Happiness: Happiness is defined as the quality or state of being happy; good fortune; pleasure; contentment; joy, dictionary.com (2007). People relate many different things to happiness. Different experiences, objects, and even things such as food can make people happy. However, one specific experience, object, or food that makes one person happy can have a totally different effect on another person. For example, when I go out to eat sushi I get relatively excited and happy that I am going to go eat this food that I like; but on the other side, my brother had one bad experience with sushi and now any time someone mentions sushi, he cringes at the sound. Many things that make a person happy are based on learned behaviors from experiences that they have been through. This concept goes hand-in-hand with music. There is music out there that can entice a whole array of different emotions in different people. In keeping with the topic of happiness, different music, obviously, makes different people happy. Some people relate happiness to the soothing sounds of classical music and some find happiness through the exciting sounds of rock. No matter what the sounds happiness is still involved. This is the one emotion that [I think] is most common among all music. In doing research on this topic I have found that there is some common ground that relates music and happiness. There were studies that found certain types of music were directly responsible for eliciting the emotion of happiness in some people. In a journal found online titled “Feel the Music!!” many interesting points were brought up about emotions and music. It starts out by explaining how emotions are very personal. We can not experience another person’s emotions only our own. We can share truths with each other such as the fact that the state capital of Ohio is Columbus, but emotions are a different story. Therefore, emotions need to be studied in a scientific manner and from this; emotions in relation to music can be further understood. The journal went on to discuss how people feel physical effects of music such as “chills” and “thrills”. When I read this I immediately related it to the feeling of happiness of when you are watching a movie and the music during the movie heightens the emotions that you are feeling making you smile and experiencing those “thrills” and “chills”. Studies at Bowling Green State University in Ohio by Jaak Panksepp reported that the stronger the emotional content of a piece of music, the more likely one is to experience “chills”, Weinberger (2001). Further they explained how the same piece of music was played on a guitar but at different speeds and loudness’s. The study analyzed this performance and found that happiness was related to a fast tempo and a staccato articulation (very brief notes, separated by brief silences), Weinberger (2001). The last point I took away from this study was that happiness was most related to louder music. In researching the topic further, another study was found that related happiness to calmer music. Now this contradicts the other article but it makes sense because different people are affected by different music. The results of the study found that calm
3 music increased happiness and happiness was lowered with aggressive music. The study was looking for differences in moods based on different types of music. Calm music had the biggest effect on mood; happiness and calmness increased while playing calm music. McQuinn & Nesslage (2006) Another article that was found in a kid’s health journal put the whole topics of music and emotion in very simplistic terms. Like the definition says, happiness in the state of being happy so why not listen or play music that makes you feel happy. There are lots of music sites on the Internet so you can try out all kinds of music to find out what you like and what makes you feel happy, Kids Health (2007). Now, this does not help to explain why you feel happy when you listen to music but it shows a simplistic view on how you can relate music to happiness. “Music activates the same parts of the brain and causes the same neurochemical cocktail as a lot of other pleasurable activities like orgasms or eating chocolate -- or if you're a gambler winning a bet or using drugs if you're a drug user. Serotonin and dopamine are both involved” stated Daniel Levitin in an interview when asked about music and emotion. This statement really articulates the science behind music and emotion. You can look at this and see that different people get excited and happy about different things such as gambling, using drugs, or listening to music. This is because something physically happens in your body and brain that makes you feel this happiness about a certain event. No matter what type of music it is one thing for sure can be said about music, emotions, and happiness; that certain types of music do in fact make people feel happy.3 Fear: Why do people get sweaty palms, raised heartbeats, and tense their muscles when a certain song plays in the background? Nothing has happened yet. The song alone brings out the emotion of fear. A great example of this is in movies. Directors might play a “scary song”, even when the scene is not scary, yet people still feel frightened. They anticipate that something bad is going to happen from the music and get scared, even though nothing has happened at all. This happens because of a number of reasons. One major reason we know that music and fear are related is through association. For example, when we hear an eerie song during a scary scene in a movie, we tend to remember it. If we hear the song at a later time, such as later that night before bed, we are likely to experience similar feelings of fear. The music acts as a trigger to evoke fearful emotions. The impact music has on the emotion of fear is hard to measure because it is very subjective; however, there are techniques that allow the effect to be proven. Many have been intrigued by this subject of how people can be scared from the sound of music. Neuroscientist/sound engineer Daniel Levitin describes metrical extraction, which is knowing the pulse and expecting it to occur, as a crucial part of musical emotion. He also attributes musical emotion to connections between prediction systems and emotional reward systems. When music has an unexpected pitch and rhythm, it keeps the audience on edge. Levitin describes timing as the key to conditioning and associative learning. Therefore, the timing of pitch and sound can be manipulated to draw the emotion of fear (Levitin, 2006).
4 Music can also bring out feelings of fear, even if the person has not heard the song before. This happens mainly through dissonance. For example, rapid tempos together with dissonance are shown to cause fear. The varying degrees of dissonance cause an increase in activity in the paralimbic regions of the brain, which deal with emotional processes. Many soundtracks of suspense or horror films have songs that can evoke fear because of the music. Brilliant composers know how to write music to fit the scene and bring out the emotions they desire the audience to feel. Davis and Palladino report that the three main physiological changes that result from fear are a faster heartbeat, tensed muscles, and faster breathing. Therefore, experiments can be done that play music and see the physiological results of how the subject responds. Music has been shown to raise heartbeat, raise breathing rate, and tense muscles, further showing that it can evoke the emotion of fear. In a study that was written by Daniela Sammler, pleasant and unpleasant emotions were induced by consonant and dissonant music. Music that would evoke fear was shown to result in a significant increase in heart rate. Different kinds of music bring out different emotions. The study was largely based on biological changes in emotion, as they used measures such as heart rate, tapping, and other EEG measures. Heart rate was described as showing the greatest significance as an index of emotional processessing. Other imagery techniques such as PET scans can be used to show emotional responses in the brain (Sammler, 2007, 293-304). Overall, there are many ways in which music can be proved to cause the emotion of fear.4 Sadness: The idea that music expresses emotion comes from the psychological research that listeners often agree about what type of emotion is expressed in a particular piece of music. Music produces different emotions in individuals and also evokes different emotional reactions to people at different times. The four emotional states created by music include feelings of sadness, happiness, anger and fear. To create sadness musicians use a slow, legato tempo with a softer sound compared to the faster more upbeat tempo and louder music used to convey happiness or anger. “Emotivists hold that music elicits real emotional responses in listener, cognitivists argue that music simply expresses or represents music”(Scherer and Zentner). Other researchers argue that both views can be right because music produces emotional effects but it goes beyond the cognitive expression. Researchers have questioned if music really creates emotions or if the listener can correctly guess the intended emotion. When listening to music that may create an emotion of sadness listeners had a large change in heart rate, blood pressure and skin temperature. These results were concluded during a physical test to determine the effects of emotions. “A piece of ‘sad music’ does not normally leave the listener depressed; rather, it induces something of the physiological state which is associated with sadness, or makes us feel that we are in the presence of sadness” (McGath). Music can evoke similar feelings that we would experience of sadness without actually feeling the loss or pain. It can give us a safe experience with these feelings that will help us better deal with these emotions. “A piece of music affects us not by standing for something else, but in a more direct way. Our nervous systems respond in certain ways to certain types of sound. The reasons for this are biological ones. In addition, we recognize certain sounds as characteristic of the expression of certain
5 emotions”(McGath). For sad music this may be a small feeling in ones stomach or the chills compared to an uplifting experience of a more happy tone. When questioned if sad music actually makes one sad emotivists argue that negative emotional responses play a role in music, but sadness is a natural and essential response to sad music. “The cognitivist position, as argued variously by Carroll Pratt, Elsie Payne and, most extensively, by Peter Kivy,[2] holds that while a musical piece or passage might be expressive of a negative emotion like sadness, the listener's experience consists primarily not of sadness but of a more generalized state of being moved by the beauty of the music”(Manuel). Many listeners can identify with the sadness in the music because of a personal experience with a certain song or hearing the soft tempo affects your emotions. Music creating a sadness in listeners usually has a soft, lower tempo creating a calming affect and can be easy to listen to. Music evoking certain emotions can be similar in certain aspects. A listener can feel relaxed listening to both happy and sad music, both can include a more peaceful tempo. When experiencing sadness and fear in music a listener might produce physical effects such as the chills. Music can be seen to create an emotion of sadness depending on how you hear it. If you relate a certain song to an event or a tragedy in your life then every time you hear that certain song it will bring up those similar feelings of sadness. An example would be songs played at a funeral. When you hear this sad music it will leave an impression and will always evoke an emotion of sadness for the loss of a loved one. Another example would be music played during a movie. Without this slower paced music you would not feel the same emotion. If you see kids running around playing and laughing with a slow tempo music you would have mixed emotions and confused on how you are supposed to feel. This shows that certain music only fits in certain spots and our world has been brought up with placing certain emotions with certain music or sounds. No matter how we hear music if it has a slower tempo most people will have a similar feeling of sadness not only because we feel we are supposed to but because of the emotional expressions we receive from the music.5 The research that we gathered seemed to be in agreement that music has a very strong influence on the human emotions. However, there is no one theory that all scientists and musicians agree on. Whether music is caused by the endorphins released by the brain, the “thrills and chills”, or other factors is largely a mystery. Geetanjali Vaidya, a researcher of this phenomena, well states, “The tremendous ability that music has to affect and manipulate emotions and the brain is undeniable, and yet largely inexplicable…there are many questions one could ask about the powerful link between music and the brain, but very few answers exist. How does music succeed in prompting emotions within us? And why are these emotions often so powerful? The simple answer is that no one knows. We are able to quantify the emotional responses caused by music, but we cannot explain them,” Vaidya (2004). What humans know for sure is that music influences many emotions. Certain music sparks emotions such as anger which may cause a person to expend the anger by doing activities such as working out or listening to a different genre of music. As Levitin suggests, certain tempos and rhythms have the ability to induce fear in an individual (such as the theme song from Jaws). Through this research we’ve also learned that no one single emotion is induced in all individuals by
6 one piece of music. The emotions that an individual experiences is directly related to the way that a particular individual perceives the music. By performing this research on how music influences certain emotions, we’ve all learned that the study of music is directly related to all of psychology. Our textbook and Daniel Levitin’s This Is Your Brain On Music go hand in hand for the understanding of music and its affects. From the emotional aspects to the physiological aspects in psychology, all can be related and understood through knowledge in how music has the amazing ability to greatly affect the human being.6
1. Introduction to the topic done by Brent Rau. 2. The emotion anger done by Jon McAllister. 3. The emotion happiness done by Andrew Rennels.
7 4. The emotion fear done by Scott Quay. 5. The emotion sadness done by Stephanie Bross. 6. The conclusion of the paper and the organization of the paper done by Brent Rau.
Works Cited
Bush, Matthew, J. (2007). Music Therapy and Anger Management. Retrieved April 18, 2007.http://www.enterthefreudianslip.com/music_therapy_and_anger_managem ent.htm
Davis, S.F. & Palladino, J.J. (2007) Psychology (5th Edition). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
"Happiness." Def. 1, 2. Dictionary.Com. 19 Apr. 2007
Kids Health, Child and Youth Health: Being Happy. Retrieved April 19, 2007 from
Levitin, Daniel J. "In Search of the Musical Mind", (2000) Cerebrum, Vol 2, No 4
Levitin, Daniel J. Interview with Wired News. Wired: Music Makes Your Brain Happy
Levitin, D.J. (2006). This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. New York, NY: Dutton.
Manuel, Peter. "Does Sad Music Make One Sad? An Ethnographic Perspective." Contemporary Aesthetics. 14 OCT 2005. 18 Apr 2007
McGath, Gary. "Why is There Music?." The Book of McGath. 26 OCT 1999. 18 Apr 2007
McQuinn, N. and Nesslage, J. (2006). Does Music Have An Influence On The Moods Of College Students? 23 Aug. 2006. 19 Apr. 2007
Robinson, Jenefer.(2005) Deeper Than Reason. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press
Sammler. (2007). Music and emotion: Electrophysiological correlates of the processing of pleasant and unpleasant music. Psychophysiology, 44(2), 293-304.
8 Scherer, Klaus R. and Marcel R. Zentner. "Emotional Effects of Music: Production Rules." Music and Emotion: theory and research 2001 361-386. 18 APR 2007
Vaidya, Geetanjali (2004). Music, Emotion and the Brain. Retrieved April 19, 2007. http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro04/web2/gvaidya.html
Weinberger, Norman M. (2001). Feel the Music!: Volume VII, Issue 1, Winter 2001.
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