Just Something I Wanted to Write About: Psychology and Music Culture

This is not to be graded or anything. I just wanted to write about this because it is very interesting to me and maybe someone else might also enjoy it.

Psychology and Music Culture
January 9, 2011

I often listen to different kinds of music depending on my mood. When I’m happy I listen to happy music like Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”. When I’m feeling blue I listen to music by Evanescence. Even though I listen to music depending on my mood, it’s not always a good thing. Music has been shown in studies to have an impact on mood. So if I listen to sad music when I’m already pretty blue I’m likely to get even more depressed. If I listen to heavy metal when I’m already angry, I will likely get angrier. This is why I don’t listen to heavy medal at all. Heavy medal music is VERY stressful for me.


I believe the type of music a city, state, country, etc. listens to and performs may help indicate the values of that selected locale. Kind of like a national anthem, in a way. We can often distinguish 80s music from 90s music pretty easily. Why is there such a distinction? This is because society and everything else changes in time. Sometimes the cycle of what’s popular is faster than at other times. This has a big influence on music culture.


Music culture can also be influenced by social pressure like, for example, how a student in China with limited knowledge of the United States might want listen to North American music because they feel like they have to learn English and more about the North American culture in order to have a better chance to get into an United States university. Currently, it seems like much of the world is into the United States culture. I believe this might have to do with people believing the United States is a “superpower”.


I read this interesting article that mentioned an experiment done with mice. One group of mice was exposed for 24 hours to heavy metal music and the other group to classical music. The experiment was performed to see how the music affects learning ability. During the first attempt of the experiment all the mice exposed to heavy metal killed one another. So, the second experiment was done only for 10 hours. The second study showed that the mice exposed to Mozart had greater maze solving skills versus the mice exposed to heavy metal whose maze solving abilities actually became worse (Reference: http://www.suite101.com/content/the-psychology-of-music-a45967). So, if you’re about to do a test or just trying to figure out life, it may be a bad idea to listen to heavy metal. This is because heavy metal apparently clouds thinking. Instead maybe rock out to Mozart or one of your other favorite classical composers!