Just about every song you listen to has a story. And the stories that accompany songs often have a narrative arc, meaning there’s a beginning, middle, and end. By understanding how people understand music in relation to their emotions, we can better understand our own emotions and behaviors. The correct sequence of the level of organization is?
But it gets more complicated than just learning how other people react to various types of music because each person has their own unique personality and set of experiences that impacts how they interpret that specific type of song from the perspective of its lyrics or sound.
1. Music Psychology and Emotion
Understanding how people process music emotionally allows you to use music as a tool of self-awareness, allowing you to get in touch with both the good and bad emotions that affect your daily life.
One study shows how people process the emotion of sadness differently depending on the type of music they were listening to when they experienced the sadness. The study took two groups of participants and had one group listen to jazz, while the other group listened to classical. (Leroy, 2013). They then played various clips that ranged from happy to sad, and fast-paced or slow songs. At random times throughout the experiment, participants were asked questions about their mood such as whether they’re feeling angry, upset or sad.
The participants who listened to classical music were shown to be more stable in their emotions, and had better problem-solving abilities. But the participants who listened to jazz were easily affected by the clips. Participants who listened to slow songs reported that they were feeling sadder than those listening to faster tempo songs.
Another study conducted by ( Johnson, 2002 ) also found differences in how people of different races processed music-related emotions.
2. How You Listen To Music Helps You Learn To (Do) Music Psychology
Music Psychology is an approach that teaches you how to develop a toolkit of behaviors based on what you hear and feel while you are listening to the music.
In order to do this well, you need to learn to listen for specific things in the music that create a feeling in the listener. Once you learn what causes those feelings, you can use that knowledge in your own musical expression.
You might not even realize it, but you do this all the time when you listen to music. Listening analytically means taking your emotions out of the equation and focusing on the notes and rhythms of what’s being played.
By removing yourself from your emotional response to a song, you are able to hear it more clearly as an objective observer.
Music psychology allows you to internalize the emotional response to a song, and that allows you to use that information in your own creative expression.
The musician who can create music that reflects the emotions of their listeners is doing so from a place of objectivity.
3. Music Psychology and ADHD
MUSIC PSYCHOLOGY for ADHD is about connecting what’s happening inside of your mind (emotions) with your body (physical responses) to the sounds, lyrics or melodies around you.
Music psychology is a part of the larger field of psychology, which means that if you’re interested in learning more about emotions, music and the brain, you’ll need to look into other things outside of music as well.
The best thing about learning about all fields of psychology is that it allows you to see how everything works in conjunction with each other. And just like the content inside of a song’s lyrics gives clues about the story or experience being written about, those clues also exist in everyday life.
The reason why music brings out such powerful emotions in us has to do with two factors: tempo and rhythm.
The Tempo of a song refers to how fast or slow the song is. The Rhythm of a song refers to the way that the notes are played. These two factors have different effects on us.
4. Music Psychology and Self-awareness
The power of music psychology has to do with the way that it allows you to see yourself in relation to what’s going on around you.
Here are some examples:
The lyrics of a song create a story which tells you something about how the artist feels and what they’re going through at that time. This helps you compare your own situation with someone else’s, which helps you learn more about yourself .
Listening to the same song repeatedly for a week or so will allow you to form an emotional response to the music. As you listen to the same song over and over again, your brain will start matching the music with your own emotions and memories, which gives you a sense of familiarity .
The female voice on the radio is different from the male voice because of how you respond to them. When we listened just once, our brains might not have responded as strongly to them because we haven’t yet associated them with anything. But if we listen repeatedly, our brains will attach that particular sound with specific emotions and memories.