PSYCHOLOGY OF MUSIC

Prepared by: Jenny Gapoy Geraldine Reyes Michael Bravo

Studies indicate that music can have profound physical and psychological effects not only on people but also on animals and plants.

Music psychology, or the psychology of music, may be regarded as a branch of psychology, a branch of musicology or as a field integrating with clinical music therapy. It aims to explain and understand musical behavior and musical experience. Modern music psychology is mainly empirical: music-psychological knowledge tends to advance primarily on the basis of interpretations of data about musical behavior and experience, which are collected by systematic observation of and interaction with human participants.

Music, Mice and Madness A student named David Merrill devised an

experiment to discover how music would affect the ability of mice to learn new things.

Music, Intelligence and Learning According to the Association for Psychological

Science, intelligence test scores grew higher in children who took lessons in keyboarding or singing. In another study, boys between the ages of 6 and 15 who took music lessons scored higher on tests of verbal memory than a control group of students without musical training.

Music and Pain Reduction Researchers found that patients who listened to harp, piano,

synthesizer, orchestra or slow jazz experienced less post-surgical pain than those who did not.

 Music Therapy and Autism Music therapy is particularly helpful for autistic students,

who have difficulty interacting with classmates and teachers and become agitated in noisy, changeable environments.

Music and Violence In a study of university students, participants listened to

seven songs with violent lyrics, while a control group listened to seven songs without violent lyrics by the same artists.

Music and Plant Health Experiments conducted by Dorothy Retallack to learn about

music's effects on plants are described in her 1973 book The Sound of Music and Plants.

Music psychologists investigate all aspects of musical behavior by applying methods and knowledge from all aspects of psychology. Topics of study include for example:

Perception of musical sounds Perception of sound patterns Memory for music Absolute pitch everyday music listening (while driving, eating, shopping,

reading...) musical rituals and gatherings (religious, festive, sporting,

political...) the specific skills and processes involved in learning a musical

instrument or singing in a choir musical behaviors such as dancing and responding

emotionally to music development of musical behaviours and abilities throughout

the lifespan the role of music in forming personal and group identities

preferences: the reasons why we like some music genres and not others

Social influences on musical preference (peers, family, experts, social background, etc.)

the structures that we hear within music: melody, phrasing, harmony, tonality, rhythm, meter, danceability, BPM, or quasilinguistic elements such as syntax

the psychological processes involved in musical performance, including:◦ music reading, including eye movement in music reading◦ improvisation◦ the interpersonal/social aspects of group performance◦ the composition/arrangement of music on paper or with

the aid of computers