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Keywords:
Music preference
Sedative music
Stimulative music
Stress reduction
Tension and state-anxiety levels
a b s t r a c t
To examine the effects of sedative and stimulative music and music preference on stress reduction when
participants are exposed to a stressor, 144 female music education students performed a stressful, mental
arithmetic test. After the stress was induced successfully, participants were randomly assigned to four
experimental groups. They listened to preferred sedative music, preferred stimulative music, unpreferred
sedative music, and unpreferred stimulative music, respectively. Tension and state-anxiety levels were
obtained after listening to music. The results revealed that participants who listened to sedative music
showed signicantly lower tension and state-anxiety levels than did those who listened to stimulative
music when music was unpreferred. However, there was no signicant difference of tension and stateanxiety levels between listening to sedative music and stimulative music when music was preferred.
These ndings demonstrate that the effects of sedative and stimulative music on stress reduction depend
on music preference. Our study has important implications for the practice of clinical music therapy since
it provides strong support for the use of preferred music when working to reduce patient stress.
2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Introduction
It is well known that stress is considered to be a causal factor in
many physical and psychological illnesses. Excessive or prolonged
stress can lead to many kinds of emotional disorders and psychosomatic diseases, such as anxiety disorders, heart disease and high
blood pressure. Stress reduction has therefore been considered one
of the major goals of music therapy (Elliott, Polman, & McGregor,
2011).
There is virtual consensus that music, like language, has the ability not only to convey or express emotions (e.g., Collier, 2007; Juslin
& Laukka, 2004; Vieillard et al., 2008), but also to inuence emotions (e.g., Hunter, Schellenberg, & Schimmack, 2010; Khalfa, Roy,
Rainville, Dalla Bella, & Peretz, 2008; Koelsch, Fritz, Cramon, Mller,
& Friederici, 2006; Lundqvist, Carlsson, Hilmersson, & Juslin, 2009;
Pereira et al., 2011; Trost, Ethofer, Zentner, & Vuilleumier, 2012).
Numerous studies have shown that listening to music can be an
effective means of alleviating tension and anxiety. On the other
hand, not all music is appropriate for stress reduction (Chan, Roy,
Gerin, & Christenfeld, 2004; Yehuda, 2011). The selection of music
is therefore an important consideration for music therapists (Elliott
Corresponding author at: Music College, Shanghai Normal University, 100 East,
Guilin Road, Shanghai 200234, China. Tel.: +86 21 64322990; fax: +86 21 64322935.
E-mail addresses: cunmeijiang@126.com, cunmeijiang@shnu.edu.cn (C. Jiang).
0197-4556/$ see front matter 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2013.02.002
et al., 2011; Pelletier, 2004). Interest in the use of music for stress
reduction has grown in the past few decades and research which
provides evidence to support this practice is needed.
Some studies compare the effects of different music genres on
stress reduction, and suggest that classical music has higher effects
on stress reduction compared to non-classical music such as hard
rock music and heavy metal music (e.g., Burns et al., 2002; Labbe,
Schmidt, Babin, & Pharr, 2007). Atonal music makes participants
feel signicantly less relaxed than romantic music and stimulating
classical music (Stratton & Zalanowski, 1984), while no signicant
differences were found between classical, jazz and pop music in
reducing the levels of relaxation and state-anxiety (Chan et al.,
2004).
Music has also been classied as sedative and stimulative in
terms of level of arousal. Stimulative music is commonly characterized by fast tempos, loud volume, and rhythmic patterns, while
sedative music is slow, soft, with little rhythmic activity (Iwanaga,
Ikeda, & Iwaki, 1996; Pellitteri, 2009; Radocy & Boyle, 2003). Listening to sedative music and sitting in silence can reduce tension more
than listening to noise or stimulative music (Hasegawa, Uozumi,
& Ono, 2003; Iwanaga, Kobayashi, & Kawasaki, 2005; Lingham &
Theorell, 2009; Sandstrom & Russo, 2010). Similarly, participants
who listened to sedative music reported lower state-anxiety level
than those who listened to noise and sitting in silence (Hasegawa
et al., 2003; Knight & Rickard, 2001; Moradipanah, Mohammadi,
& Mohammadil, 2009), although Stratton and Zalanowski (1984)
Table 1
The characteristics of the four groups.
PSeM group
PStM group
USeM group
UStM group
Age
Years
19.69 (1.09)
19.86 (0.99)
19.33 (0.99)
19.72 (1.26)
6.69 (5.03)
6.10 (3.73)
5.42 (3.81)
6.83 (3.96)
Methods
Participants
172 female music education students were recruited by means
of advertisements in a bulletin board system. Out of 172 students,
28 students whose stress was not induced were excluded. As a
203
Fig. 1. Mean tension ratings for the four groups in (a), and mean state-anxiety score for the four groups in (b). Error bar indicates 1 standard error.
levels of tension and state-anxiety were obtained again after listening to music. The entire experiment took approximately 30 min.
Results
Efcacy of the stressor
Means and standard deviations of tension and state-anxiety levels before and after the mental arithmetic task are displayed in
Table 2. As can be seen, the participants in the four groups showed
increased tension and the state-anxiety levels after the mental
arithmetic task. A mixed factor two-way ANOVA was employed,
where time (pre-test and post-test) was the within-subjects variable, and experimental group (PSeM, PStM, USeM and UStM)
was the between-subjects variable. For tension level, the results
revealed a signicant main effect of time (F(1,140) = 735.51, p < .001,
2p = .84), but the main effect of group and the interaction effect
between time and group were not observed (all p > .05). Likewise,
we found a signicant main effect of time for state-anxiety level
(F(1,140) = 504.89, p < .001, 2p = .78), but the main effect of group
and the interaction between time and group were not signicant
(all p > .05). The results indicate that the mental arithmetic task
increased the participants tension and state-anxiety levels.
Effect of music on stress levels
Fig. 1 shows the means and standard errors of tension and stateanxiety levels by music type and music preference, respectively. As
shown in Fig. 1, listening to unpreferred sedative music resulted
in lower levels of tension and state-anxiety relative to listening to
unpreferred stimulative music, whereas there were no different
effects on stress reduction between listening to preferred sedative
music and preferred stimulative music. This was conrmed by the
two-way ANOVAs taking music type (sedative music vs. stimulative music), and music preference (preferred music vs. unpreferred
music) as the between-subjects factors were employed for tension
and state-anxiety levels, respectively.
Table 2
Means and standard deviations for the tension and state-anxiety levels before and
after the mental arithmetic task for the four groups.
Tension
PSeM group
PStM group
USeM group
UStM group
State-anxiety
Pre-test
Post-test
Pre-test
Post-test
1.25 (0.44)
1.19 (0.47)
1.28 (0.45)
1.22 (0.42)
3.08 (0.77)
3.08 (0.84)
3.03 (0.77)
2.89 (0.82)
33.94 (7.17)
33.67 (7.57)
34.28 (7.20)
35.56 (7.47)
54.31 (9.22)
54.61 (7.52)
52.64 (11.71)
51.72 (11.22)
205
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