The influence of music on the human being

The abstract

Music is an art that shapes culture and is part of society. Over the years it has been the means of expression of the human being, some to express feelings, others to perform religious rituals, or also in the cinema to efficiently transmit a message.

So the music is an element that has not been given importance according to the magnitude of its effect, because not only serves to express or transmit, but also that the messages it has effects on the person’s mood, and can even be a channel to influence the future actions of people, so much so that it can be used for therapy or specific treatments. Studies have even been conducted in which it has been shown that there is a relationship between personality traits and type of music. The multiple benefits of choosing the right type of music have also been proven.

Taking into account the above considerations, it becomes evident that music is an element that has not been sufficiently taken into account and that it can be used to better manage emotions as well as to know in depth the behavior pattern of individuals. 

Introduction

Since ancient times, in the history of humanity, there have existed a set of experiences and beliefs, known as “the culture” which triggers a series of elements that characterize a specific community. In that culture, there are a series of tools such as means of expression or communication as is the music, which initially was only “noise” but now is the element that allows to compose or join a series of tones, rhythms, and lyrics, being the channel of expression or imagination of the human being, as well as exerting an influence on it.

Music is an active element that represents what someone needs to express and flows especially, but once composed and established that message affects the listener, even influencing and generating thought or behavior patterns.

The question arises as to what is the relationship and influence of music on the human being and why we listen to certain types of music as a function of our state of mind.

All these concepts are related in some way, as I said before, music is an active element that flows at all times, even is not limited to single-use, is currently used to express itself, in cultures, theater, film, television, religious ceremonies, and more. 

Music (Epperson  2020), art concerned with combining vocal or instrumental sounds for beauty of form or emotional expression, usually according to cultural standards of rhythm, melody, and, in most Western music, harmony. In other words, music is an art that allows man to recreate himself and express himself through a combination of elements.

Music is a protean art (Epperson); it lends itself easily to alliances with words, as in song, and with physical movement, as in dance. Throughout history, music has been an important adjunct to ritual and drama and has been credited with the capacity to reflect and influence human emotion.

In India, (Epperson) music has been put into the service of religion from earliest times; Vedic hymns stand at the beginning of the record. As the art developed over many centuries into a music of profound melodic and rhythmic intricacy, the discipline of a religious text or the guideline of a story determined the structure.

Chinese music (Epperson), like the music of India, has traditionally been an adjunct to ceremony or narrative. Confucius (551–479 BCE) assigned an important place to music in the service of a well-ordered moral universe. He saw music and government as reflecting one another and believed that only the superior man who can understand music is equipped to govern.

History confirms that the human being since ancient times has been involved with music, not only in terms of enjoyment, but it is an element of art that has taken all the senses of life, in which there are motives and categories for everyone and it is an art that since it began has not stopped making history and influencing humanity even if it does so subtly.

UC Berkeley researchers( Anwar 2020)  have surveyed more than 2,500 people in the United States and China about their emotional responses to these and thousands of other songs from genres including rock, folk, jazz, classical, marching band, experimental, and heavy metal.

Discovering that the subjective experience of music across cultures can be mapped into at least 13 general feelings: fun, joy, eroticism, beauty, relaxation, sadness, daydreaming, triumph, anxiety, healing, discomfort, challenge, and feeling bloated.

According to the researcher, Adrian North, ( Cherry 2020) the reason people sometimes feel defensive about their taste in music might be related to how much it relates to attitudes and personality. North suggests that people do define themselves through music and use it as a means to relate to other people. His research points to the connection that people often make between who they are as an individual and their musical tastes.

The following are some of the personality traits the study linked to certain musical styles:

Fans of the top 40 pop hits tend to be extroverted, honest, and conventional. While pop music lovers are hardworking and have high self-esteem, researchers suggest that they tend to be less creative and more uneasy.

In spite of the stereotype that rap lovers are more aggressive or violent, researchers have actually found no such link. Rap fans do tend to have high self-esteem and are usually outgoing.

Country music fans are typically hardworking, conventional, and outgoing. While country songs are often centered on heartbreak, people who gravitate towards this genre tend to be very emotionally stable. They also tend to be more conservative and rank lower on the trait of openness to experience.

Despite the sometimes aggressive image that rock and heavy metal music project, researchers found that fans of this style of music are usually quite gentle. They tend to be creative, but are often introverted and may suffer from low self-esteem.

Fans of the indie genre are typically introverted, intellectual, and creative. According to researchers, they also tend to be less hardworking and less gentle. Passivity, anxiousness, and low self-esteem are other common personality characteristics.

According to researchers, people who prefer dance music are usually outgoing and assertive. They also tend to rank high on the trait of openness to experience, one of the five major personality traits. People who prefer fast-paced electronic music also tend to rank low on gentleness.

Classical music lovers are typically more introverted but are also at ease with themselves and the world around them. They are creative and have a good sense of self-esteem.

People who enjoy jazz, blues, or soul music were found to be more extroverted with high self-esteem. They also tend to be very creative, intelligent, and at ease.

Through the studies mentioned above, it becomes clear that music is more than we can think, is a resource that we could say has been subsumed, which has quietly established its dominance in society, being the most striking thing that is not a resource that limits some culture or fashion, because we are all somehow consumers of music, and knowing or not this exerts an effect on the daily activities that are executed.

Listening to music can be entertaining (Cherry 2019), and some research suggests that it might even make you healthier. Music can be a source of pleasure and contentment, but there are many other psychological benefits as well. Music can relax the mind, energize the body, and even help people better manage pain.

The psychological effects of music can be powerful and wide-ranging. Music therapy is an intervention sometimes used to promote emotional health, help patients cope with stress, and boost psychological well-being.

A new study from the University of California (Cohut 2020), Berkeley has identified and mapped the 13 subjective experiences that different kinds of music can evoke in people. The research, which doctoral student Alan Cowen led, used more than 2,000 music samples to gauge how different types of music influenced emotion in cohorts from two different countries and cultures: the United States and China.

For their study, the researchers recruited 1,591 participants from the U.S. and 1,258 participants from China, who listened to a total of 2,168 samples of different types of music. A first experiment involved a subgroup of U.S. and Chinese participants who listened to a music library of 1,841 samples, which they rated on 11 scales assessing for broad affective features.

This primary investigation allowed the investigators to come up with a long list of possible emotional experiences that different types of music could evoke.

It also allowed the researchers to verify how participants from different cultures perceived the same subjective experiences that the music tracks elicited. “People from different cultures can agree that a song is angry but can differ on whether that feeling is positive or negative,”. Further experiments eventually led the researchers to identify a range of 13 emotions associated with music, which participants from both countries recognized.

There are two possible ways that music might be beneficial in the workplace (Gorvett 2020): by making us smarter, or by making us feel good, and therefore helping us to plod on with otherwise boring tasks.

The best-known example of the first is the “Mozart effect” – broadly the idea that listening to a piano sonata devised by a genius can make you one too. The phrase was popularised after a 1993 paper claimed that people perform better on certain spatial tasks, such as folding paper, after listening to Mozart for 10 minutes.

The concept has spawned a whole industry of products (Gorvett), such as headphones that mothers can use to play Mozart to their unborn children. It sounds farfetched, but more recent studies have hinted that there might genuinely be something unusually beneficial about his music.

For example, research conducted in 2015 compared the impact of Mozart’s “K. 448”, a composition for two pianos, with Beethoven’s equally celebrated “Für Elise”, a solo piano piece. It turns out that while Mozart’s sonata increased “alpha band” brain waves – which have been linked to memory, cognition and problem solving – Beethoven, oddly, had no such power.

There’s also the discovery that mice who were subjected to 10-hour recitals of Mozart’s K. 448 for 10 weeks were significantly better at navigating a complex maze than ones which had to listen to Beethoven’s Für Elise instead.

“Activation theory” (Govertt)  was thought up in the 1960s, amid concern that people may struggle to remain productive in dull jobs, such as assembly line work in factories, for long periods of time. It’s broadly the idea that people need a certain amount of mental arousal in order to be able to function effectively.

The method applied in this research is based on the bibliographic review, the study of the experiences that have been made in the subject, and its results.

The purpose is to enrich the level of knowledge on this subject so that we can be aware of the effects that music can generate in the life of the human being.

Despite the diversity of studies, they all lead to the same general conclusion and that is that music is an element of great influence in people, a silent element because it is involved in most of the activities that real people do.

The research and bibliographical review were carried out to know and verify the magnitude of the effect of music on the mental state of people.

Since the beginning of humanity and from the conception of only “noise”, the human being has been immersed in diverse actions involving music, as is the case of ancient India and China, where the form of beginning music was taken as an end in their cultural rituals.

Likewise, through the analyses carried out, it was confirmed that music can be an excellent reference to determine or at least know in great part the characteristics of an individual’s personality. And in the same way, it shows how people when exposed to certain activities, despite belonging to different countries, can respond in a similar way.

It is important to emphasize that one of the most striking issues is that music can be a means, through music therapy, to generate psychological well-being and manage certain situations.

Thus, it is clear that music is a reality that influences all living beings, it can be used to stimulate or induce people to behave in certain ways, however, it is a topic that should be further developed developed   further, taking advantage that we all consume music in some way through television, movies, theater when exercising, or simply driving somewhere.

I consider the topic that requires more research is the one that corresponds to therapies because taking into account all the positive effects that can be in the human being and as it is a fluid process because music influences people but these depend on their state of mind to choose the music, so it is a cycle, which if well structured and planned can lead to great changes in people’s behaviors.

 Bibliography

Anwar. (2020). Greater Good. Recovered in 2020, from How Many Emotions Can Music Make You Feel?: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_many_emotions_can_music_make_you_feel

Cherry. (2019). Verywell mind. Recovered in 2020, from How Listening to Music Can Have Psychological Benefits: https://www.verywellmind.com/surprising-psychological-benefits-of-music-4126866

Cherry. (2020). Verywell mind. Recovered in 2020, from Music Preferences and Your Personality: https://www.verywellmind.com/music-and-personality-2795424

Epperson. (2020). Britannica. Recovered in 2020, from Music: https://www.britannica.com/art/music

Gorvett. (2020). Worlife. Recovered in, from  Does music help us work better? It depends: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200317-does-music-help-us-work-it-depends

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