However, the music Not only does our emotional state influence, but also alters and can determine our behavior. It can encourage us to drink more alcohol, to buy more products than we need when we are in a store, or even to commit acts that violate our moral principles.
As we saw in a previous article, the music we listen to and personality can be strongly related. There is no doubt that music affects the way we perceive the world: it is much more than mere entertainment.
1. Frenetic music optimizes your performance
We usually conceptualize anger as a negative emotion, but this feeling can also be channeled to obtain positive results. Anger makes it easier for us to stay focused on the reward increases our determination and even gives us an extra dose of optimism to face challenges.
In an interesting research that was carried out by Stanford University and Boston College, several students were willing to play a video game. Before starting the game, some participants listened to neutral, lively or frenetic music. The conclusions were revealing: those students who heard frenetic music were better stimulated and reported better results being more predisposed to the task.
According to the academics, the improvement in performance caused by this type of music is only effective in competitive performance contexts.
If your goal is to give a good image of yourself to a person you love, a decisively positive element will be play romantic music in the background Although it may sound like a popular myth or cliché, the truth is that research from the University of Bretagne-Sud confirms this maxim. The academics recruited young women and invited them to wait in a room. During these waits, neutral music or romantic music was broadcast through the living room speakers. After ten minutes, the women met the interviewer, who at one point during the interview flirted with each of the women and asked for her mobile phone number. What happened?
Only 28% of the women who had heard the neutral music before the interview gave the number to the interviewer. However, 52.5% of women who had listened to romantic music did agree to provide their phone number The contrasts, as we see, were very significant.
3. Music eases pain
They are known some little tricks to relieve pain, and not all of them involve taking a painkiller. Many specialists recommend that taking drugs should always be a last resort, since there are other techniques to feel better. Research conducted at Bishop University showed that listening to music has pain-relieving properties.
On this occasion, the researchers recruited eighty people, to whom they administered stimuli that caused mild emotional pain. While this was happening, some remained silent, others could look away and contemplate some famous paintings, and a third group listened to music that they especially liked. Thus It could be seen that those who listened to music reported less anxiety less perception of pain, and an increase in tolerance to it compared to subjects in the other groups.
Several studies prior to Bishop’s have pointed out that people who listen to music daily are less likely to show symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorders. None of the studies could prove any relationship between the style of music and its positive effects on the listener’s mood, nor its pain reduction effect. Therefore, everything seems to suggest that the key to the positive properties of music is personal preference and the enjoyment it gives each person.
