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Ana Toscano

Professor Nelson

English 1302-104

16 October 2021

The Effects of Music on the Mood

In today's world Music is used to make us feel some sort of emotion and connection to

the genre of the music. A person would listen to music at any point of the day either when they

are alone or in a crowded room. Listening to music helps a person relieve any or all emotions

that they are holding within to feel either happy or sad. A person's current mood can affect the

quality of the music being played. Several researchers have studied that listening to music can

affect a person's emotions. In one of the articles, it states “it has been shown that current mood

states can influence the perception of the affective quality of music in a mood-congruent

manner” (Cohrdes, 22). In addition, in another article it states, “the major area of research is the

management of moods and emotions because moods and emotions are essential components of

everyday life that can have a significant influence on many aspects of psychological well-being

and cognitive functioning” (Campbell, 1133). Furthermore, these researchers in these articles

talk about how a person’s mood and attitude can be affected through the use of different types of

music.

According to the next few articles, many researchers can agree to say that music can

affect a person’s mood depending on the type of music being played. A person's mood can affect

what they do on a daily basis such as work, school, home, general tasks and among other things.

Many researchers like Caroline Cohrdes et al argue that listening to music does have an effect on

a person's mood when they are working (22). In addition, Elizabeth Campbell says that listening
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to music does affect an individual's mood even though they may not know it yet while they are

working on general tasks (5). This lets the person that may be affected by the music to know

what is going on with them during that time either if they are at work, school and or together

places that they listen to the music. In Annemieke J.M. Van den Tol and Jane Edwards article

they researched that older adults tend to listen to music depending on their mood and the tasks

they are doing at that moment and how they can get it done based on their mood such as things

like cleaning a room at home. A study that was done by Cohreds,Wrzus, Wald-Fuhrmann, and

Riediger showed that individuals had listened to certain sounds and certain types of songs,

mainly happy music in the backgrounds made to the person listening to the music to get small

tasks done. Cohreds, Wrsuz, Wald-Fuhrmann, and Riediger claimed that listening to happy

music the participants of this experiment were pleased. While others that were listening to sad

music were feeling down and some others felt aggravated (Cohreds, 26-28). That in which sad

music can make a person feel too mad or say while trying to complete their given task in this

experiment. Moreover, in Suvi Saarikallio’s article it showed us that playing happy music gave

a person a positive type of emotion such as joy, pleasure and calm. While playing sad songs gave

the listeners a negative emotion being aggressive, frustration and alone among other things

(Saarikallio, 12). This just shows us what a person can feel depending on what is being played

for them in these types of experiments as well as tasks given.

The following authors explain how when it comes to selecting music to listen to, the

participants prefer to listen to certain types of music no matter what their mood is. In addition,

more studies show that music shows us that no matter what the person's mood is, they tend to

listen to music that they want to listen to and not just by their mood (Garrido, 245). When it

comes to music giving us any type of emotions it can really happen to anyone at any time
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without them knowing. Authors Tom F. M. ter Bogt, Alessio Vieno and among other researchers

have claimed that listening to music helps a person to be comforted no matter what kind of music

that it may be but it's mainly a reference to sad songs (ter Bogt ,156). Unlike, in Sandra Garrido

and Emery Schubert research article it also states that sad songs just make a person feel sadder

than what they were before (Garrido, 245). A person that is always listening to music can

always change a person's mood constantly due to the types of music that is being played at any

time of the day. About 50 people out of 335 tested in this experiment said that sad songs make

them sad faster (Sandra Garrido and Emery Schubert, 245). Authors Sandra Garrido and Emery

Schubert state that during their experiment that they tested the results of the participants that did

not listen to music first versus the group that did listen to music (Garrido and Schubert, 251).

Moreover, authors Tom F. M. ter Bogt, Alessio Vieno, Suzan M. Doornwaard, Massimiliano

Pastore and Regina J. J. M. van den Eijnden all did a study with people of several different ages

to test out if they were to listen to sad songs and how much it does affect a person. The results

from this article are that music has been used as a means of comfort by the majority of youths

(69.8%) and millennials (69.2%) (Bogt,163). Furthermore, both males (58.3%) and females

(73.9%) all responded with low results of 71.6% but with about 65.2% telling us that they do use

music to comfort them, while the others don't think so (Bogt ,162-164). The information

produced in each of these research backs up the argument that music has a significant impact on

people's lives.

A person's mood can be affected by the types of music that they choose to listen to and or

forced to listen to. In many studies it shows us that an individual's mood can change based on the

music at hand. In Caroline Cohrdes article she states that there are certain features of music that

can affect such as the tempo and mode of the music that can affect a person's mood (Cohrds, 24).
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Emotional impact of listening to music can make a person dependent on many different emotions

that they may be experiencing (Campbell,1135). Furthermore, in Van de Tol and Edwards

article they state that music more particularly, it's possible some people would actively choose

music featuring strong aesthetic appeal to improve their emotions after such an unpleasant

encounter (Van De Tol and Edwards, 475). One among genre's main significant motivational

purposes for everyday life involves internal self, therefore musical hearing has already proved to

become an excellent tool for such a behavior (Saarika and Brattico, 28). Moreover, Garrido and

Schubert wanted to see how self-selected sad music by the participants can affect a mood using a

mood scale (Garrison and Schubert,259). Sarrika-Brattico and Garrido-Schubert both show us

how self-selected music does have both a positive and negative effect on a person's mood.

Just by reading about all these articles it shows us that music is quite the mood changer.

Due to the results and studies given to us from researchers it shows us in what ways music has an

influence on people of all ages in many ways. It's an exceptionally significant topic since many

individuals are unaware of the impact that music has on an individual. In a person's lifetime they

go through many emotions that are coming from many things in life, but the main thing that does

give them emotions always comes from listening to music. It's important for people to know

about how much music does affect one person's mood at any point during their life. Since they

will continue to choose to listen to music either to boost it or to lower it depending on the

situation as well as tasks at hand. When people choose to listen to music more often than others

may feel better since they are getting all types of emotion out. In the end the researchers of all of

these papers used other research work and built it on that a lot more in different ways to expand

information for their experiments that show us how different types of music does affect a

person's mood.
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Works Cited

Campbell, Elizabeth Ann,, Elizaveta Berezina and C M Hew D Gill “The Effects of Music

Induction on Mood and Affect in an Asian Context.” Psychology of Music, vol. 49, no. 5,

Sept. 2021, pp. 1132–1144, doi:10.1177/0305735620928578.

Cohrdes, Caroline,Wrzus,Wald-Fuhrmann, Riediger “‘The Sound of Affect’: Age Differences

in Perceiving Valence and Arousal in Music and Their Relation to Music Characteristics

and Momentary Mood.” Musicae Scientiae, vol. 24, no. 1, Mar. 2020, pp. 21–43,

doi:10.1177/1029864918765613

Garrido, Sandra, and Emery Schubert. “Moody Melodies: Do They Cheer Us up? A Study of the

Effect of Sad Music on Mood.” Psychology of Music, vol. 43, no. 2, Mar. 2015, pp. 244–

261, doi:10.1177/0305735613501938.

.Saarikallio, Suvi, Sirke Nieminen and Elvira Brattico. “Affective Reactions to Musical Stimuli

Reflect Emotional Use of Music in Everyday Life.” Musicae Scientiae, vol. 17, no. 1,

Mar. 2013, pp. 27–39, doi:10.1177/1029864912462381.

ter Bogt, Tom F. M.Alessio Vieno, Suzan M. Doornwaard, Massimiliano Pastore2 and Regina

J. J. M. van den Eijnden “‘You’re Not Alone’: Music as a Source of Consolation among

Adolescents and Young Adults.” Psychology of Music, vol. 45, no. 2, Mar. 2017, pp.

155–171, doi:10.1177/0305735616650029.

Van den Tol, Annemieke J. M., and Jane Edwards. “Listening to Sad Music in Adverse

Situations: How Music Selection Strategies Relate to Self-Regulatory Goals, Listening

Effects, and Mood Enhancement.” Psychology of Music, vol. 43, no. 4, July 2015, pp.

473–494, doi:10.1177/0305735613517410.