What Music Does For Your Mind: Lessons From Music Psychology

The effect of music on our minds can seem somewhat mysterious. How do these arrangements of sound evoke such strong emotions? And why does listening to certain kinds of music seem to help us feel more like ourselves? Though those questions are far from fully answered, music psychology offers some intriguing insights into how rhythm and melody move us.

Listening to music activates regions all across the brain. Our response to it can involve our senses, emotions, social conditioning, capacity for pattern recognition, and self-reflective sense of identity. Perhaps because it can spark connections between so many different parts of the mind, music can also have important psychological benefits. See below for a more detailed look at what music psychology can tell us about the multifaceted effects of music.

Music might be linked to what makes us human

You may have heard the popular saying, “Music soothes the savage beast.” Though literature is full of stories about beautiful music taming wild animals, science suggests this may be impossible. How we respond to music may be directly connected to one of the most important qualities separating humans from “savage beasts” our capacity for language.

Researchers studying auditory processing found that harmonic tones — sounds containing musical pitch — produce a stronger reaction in certain parts of the human brain than ordinary noise. But this response was absent in the brains of macaque monkeys, our close evolutionary relatives. Since pitch is an important part of how we convey emotional tone when speaking, this difference may be a direct result of language development.

That notion is reinforced by additional research showing that language and music appear to be processed by many of the same brain systems. When you hear a wrong note in a song you know, your brain responds as though you’d heard someone say a sentence that made no sense. Off-key notes, meanwhile, seem to trigger the same parts of the frontal lobe that respond to errors in grammar.

Music arouses similar emotions across cultures

Your reactions to a particular piece of music might depend greatly on how familiar you are with a particular song, artist, or musical genre. Someone well-versed in jazz, for example, may bring a lot of cultural knowledge to the table when listening to an Ella Fitzgerald record that another person might lack. You might also have a personal history with a specific song that affects your experience of it.

But music psychology suggests that you’ll feel a similar emotional response to a given song no matter who you are. In a 2020 experiment, researchers played music for listeners raised in the U.S. and China and interviewed them about their emotions. Participants reported similar feelings regardless of their cultural background, both for Western and traditional Chinese music. 

The study identified 13 distinct ways that music could make listeners feel:

• Amused
• Annoyed
• Tense/Anxious
• Moved by beauty
• Calm and relaxed
• Dreamy
• Energized/“Pumped up”
• Titillated/Aroused
• Defiant
• Cheerful/Joyful
• Sad and depressed
• Fearful
• Triumphant

These categories aren’t mutually exclusive — it may be perfectly possible for a song to produce both “defiance” and “triumph.” However, some feelings were never found together, such as “sad” and “energizing.”

Another interesting finding was that although people from different cultures experienced similar emotions, their feelings about those emotions could differ. Your cultural background might influence whether you find listening to music evoking dreamy sadness enjoyable or unpleasant.

Why people listen to music

Music psychologists have long been interested in exploring people’s motivations for listening. Research has identified a wide range of reasons why people seek out songs, including:

• Enjoyment
• Finding consolation in sadness
• Getting energized for competitions or parties
• Aiding in concentration
• Feeling less lonely
• Connecting with friends

A 2013 paper published in Frontiers in Psychology suggested that the most common reasons for listening to music could be grouped into three broad categories:

1. Regulating mood or energy level. This could include listening to happy music to cheer up, fast-paced music to get excited, or ethereal music to block out distractions while studying.
2. Self-reflection or self-awareness. If you’ve ever sensed that listening to a song helped you gain a new perspective on yourself or the world around you, you’re probably familiar with this function of music. Many people believe that music helps them discover a sense of meaning in their lives.
3. Social bonding. This covers any use of music to facilitate social relations or bring people together, whether it’s singing along to pop hits at a party or marching in time to a military drumbeat.

Interestingly, the researchers found that Reason three, social bonding, was the least frequent answer given by participants in their study. This suggests that although music can be considered a type of language, we may use it more often to communicate with ourselves than others.

What music psychology might mean for your health

Many of us also turn to music as a source of comfort and healing in times of trouble. Research into the psychology of music shows that this may not be a simple placebo — listening to music may offer genuine health benefits. 

Music may reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety

Since we’ve seen that music can have predictable effects on mood, it makes sense that it might be able to help with mood disorders. Randomized controlled trials have found that music therapy can help alleviate feelings of anxiety and depression. It appears to work well as a supplement to psychotherapy and other standard care techniques.

While the study referenced above involved trained music therapists offering clinical treatment, some evidence indicates that simply listening to music can also help. The type of music may not matter as much as your own preference, so if you’re feeling anxious or depressed, listening to the songs and sounds you prefer may be a good way to find relief. 

What does appear to matter is the duration — while a single session might not make much difference, setting aside time every day or every week to enjoy your favorite tunes might reduce your symptoms.

Music can relieve pain

Psychological and physical pain appear to affect your brain in similar ways. So, it may not be surprising that music appears to act as a natural painkiller. Researchers tested the effects of music listening on fibromyalgia, a type of chronic pain disorder, and discovered that patients who listened to a music CD once per day had significantly less pain and depression than others.

These effects may hold true for temporary pain as well as chronic pain. A 2015 paper reported that listening to music appeared to assist people in recovery from surgery, lowering their pain and anxiety levels.

Music may give you better rest

Consistent, restful sleep can improve your life in many ways, from improving your mood and mental health to helping you recover faster from injuries. And finding the right lullaby might help you get more slumber. Experimenters compared the effects of listening to classical music, audiobooks, or nothing at all before bedtime and found that only music offered a significant benefit to sleep.

Music might help you think

Music psychology has also revealed some positive effects of music on cognition. For example,  one study noted that energetic background music improved participants’ performance on both spatial and linguistic processing tasks. This suggests that there may be something to the strategy of popping in your earbuds while you study.

These cognitive benefits might be helpful for people with certain kinds of mental disorders. Reviewing the scientific literature in 2017, one group of researchers concluded that there’s some evidence for music therapy as a tool to improve social functioning and mental health in people with schizophrenia.

Music could guard against illness

The human immune system appears to be highly responsive to psychological factors such as stress. As such, the mental relief that music provides may help your body stay healthier. Evidence from music psychology indicates that listening to music seems to reduce levels of stress hormones and boost markers of healthy immune system functioning.

Music may not be a substitute for therapy

Although listening to music can have many positive effects on your mental health, it likely can’t replace psychotherapy guided by a licensed professional. If you’re living with chronic stress, depression, anxiety, or other psychological difficulties, you may want to connect with a therapist. Online therapy can be a convenient way to improve your mental health since attending sessions is easier when you can do so from anywhere with an internet connection.

Web-based therapy can provide the same benefits as in-person counseling. Research has found no difference in effectiveness between traditional therapy and remote sessions for treating common conditions like anxiety, depression, and others.