3 curious effects of music on your behavior

Listening to music produces some changes in several areas of your psyche.

There are songs that produce relaxation, others that leave us a bit melancholic and others that charge our batteries and activate us.

Music changes your behavior

However, music does not only not only influences our emotional stateIt also alters and can determine our behavior. It can incite us to drink more alcohol, to buy more products than we need when we are in a store, or even to commit acts that go against our moral principles.

As we saw in a previous article, the music we listen to and our 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 tenacity and even gives us an extra dose of optimism to face challenges.It increases our tenacity and even gives us an extra dose of optimism to face challenges.

In an interesting investigation that was carried out by Stanford University and Boston College, several students were asked to play a video game. Before starting the game, some participants listened to neutral, upbeat or frantic music. The findings were revealing: those students who listened to frenetic music were better stimulated and reported better results.The findings were revealing: those students who listened to 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.

2. Music predisposes us to love

If your goal is to give a good image of yourself to a person you desire, a decisively positive element will be to to play romantic music in the background. Although it may sound like a popular myth or a cliché, the truth is that research from the University of Brittany-Sud confirms this maxim. Academics recruited young women and invited them to wait in a room. During this wait, neutral or romantic music was played over the hall's loudspeakers. After ten minutes, the women met the interviewer, who at one point in the interview flirted with each of the women and asked for their cell 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 report their telephone number.. The contrasts, as we can see, were very significant.

3. Music attenuates pain

There are known some little tricks to alleviate painand not all of them involve taking an analgesic. Many specialists recommend that the use of drugs should always be the 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 them 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 particularly liked. Thus, it could be seen that those who listened to music it could be seen that those who listened to music reported lower anxiety, lower perception of pain, and an increase in Pain tolerance with respect to the subjects in the other groups.The results showed that those who listened to music reported less anxiety, less perception of pain, and an increase in tolerance to pain compared to the subjects in the other groups.

Several studies prior to Bishop's have pointed out that people who listen to music on a daily basis 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-reducing effect. Therefore, everything seems to suggest that the key to the positive properties of music is personal preference and the enjoyment they cause to each person.

Bibliographical references:

• Guéguen, N. et. al. (2010) Love is in the air: Effects of songs with romantic lyrics on compliance with a courtship request" from Psychology of Music. Psychology of Music; 38(3): 303-307.
• Mitchell, L. A. et. Al. (2008) An investigation of the effects of music and art on pain perception. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts; 2(3): 162-170.
• Tamir, M. et. Al. (2008) Hedonic and Instrumental Motives in Anger Regulation. Psychological Science; 19(4): 324-328.