Vo - Psych 317 Final Lab Report
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Running head: MUSIC MEDICINE ON STRESS FACTORS
The Effect of Music Medicine on Stress Factors
Michelle Vo
V00888715
Virginia Commonwealth University
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MUSIC MEDICINE ON STRESS FACTORS
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between music medicine and heart rate and stress levels, and it was hypothesized that those who use music medicine as a stress reset, compared to those who do not use music medicine as a stress reset, would express slower heart rates and lower stress levels. Undergraduate students completed a short stress state questionnaire (SSSQ) measuring the relationship between their heart rates and their stress levels. After analyzing the questionnaire data, there were significant differences between those who used music medicine and those who did not. Comparing these findings to previous research, perhaps future research could use more accurate forms of gather data in order to limit the amount
of human error with self-reported heart rates. (124)
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MUSIC MEDICINE ON STRESS FACTORS
The Effect of Music Medicine on Stress Factors
Since as long as people can remember, music has had an essential part in human life for many different reasons. Music is a universal language for all over the world, and everyone will understand you through your music. Music initially intrigued philosophers and writers who tried to understand its positive effects on the human body and emotions. Every person has their own styles and genres of music that they listen to frequently, which can affect a person’s emotions and feelings for the day. However, there has been research and studies that make some connections between music and reducing stressors and the individuals heart rate. Music can also have a therapeutic effect with music therapy where a music therapist will discover and optimize music for their patients in order to increase positive emotions. Therefore, as a person listens to relaxing music while experiencing stress factors, it can be possible that the music can reduce the feelings of stress the individual is feeling. The current literature supports the argument of an association between music medicine and the individuals heart rate and stressors reducing. For the experiment conducted by Knight (2001), the effect of relaxing music on the participants’ subjective and physiological response to stress was explored and tested with close attention to methodological factors and variables that could affect the results of this study. The participants of this study were undergraduate students (43 female and 44 male) who were exposed to a cognitive stressor task that involved preparation for an oral presentation with the presence of music in the background. The source of music that was used for this experiment was Pachelbel’s Canon in D major, while the control group was in silence during their preparation. The variables that were measured where the subjective anxiety, heart rate, blood pressure, cortisol, and salivary IgA, which were collected both during rest and after the presentation of the induced stressor. The stressor of the presentation caused significant increases in the subjective
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MUSIC MEDICINE ON STRESS FACTORS
anxiety, heart rate, and systolic blood pressure in both the male and female control groups. The results of this experiment concluded that the presence of relaxing music was able to reduce, or even prevent, all of the previously mentioned stress-induced variables measured. This effect was
also independent of the gender of the participants. The results of this experiment were able to provide experimental support in claiming that relaxing music is an effective method of reducing the amount of anxiety in a person during a stressful work factor.
The experiment conducted by Witte (2020) tested the effects of music therapy for stress reductions. Music therapy is increasingly being practiced more often as an intervention for stress reduction for both the medical and psychiatric field. Music therapy is typically tailored towards the individual patient in order to create a music intervention for the stressors in the patient’s life. There has been some empirical evidence that shows that music activities in a group can result in better synchronization among the group members, which can further lead to positive feelings of togetherness and bonding. Some of the physiological and psychological stress-related arousals that are being tested in this experiment include state anxiety, nervousness, blood pressure, heart rate, and hormone levels. The results of this experiment concluded that the presence of music therapy on stress-related outcomes was a medium-to-strong effect. This indicates that the participants that received music therapy benefited more than the control group. The conclusion of this experiment is that music therapy is an effective treatment for reducing stress-related symptoms in both mental healthcare and the medical setting.
This experiment conducted by Chafin (2004) tested whether or not music interventions were able to reduce the magnitude of cardiovascular responses to stress. There were 75 participants used in this experiment where they had to perform a challenging three-minute mental arithmetic task and then randomly assigned to sit in silence for the control group or listen
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to one of three genres of music chosen: classical, jazz or pop. The 75 participants were undergraduate students from the University of California that included 52 females and 23 males with the average age being 20 years old. None of the participants reported being poor in health or
taking any medication that could affect cardiovascular measurements in the experiment. The participants systolic and diastolic blood pressures and heart rate were collected using a blood pressure monitor throughout as the experiment was conducted. The classical selections that were used during this experiment included Pachelbel’s ‘Canon’ and Vivaldi’s ‘The Four Seasons: Spring, Movement I’. The jazz selections that were used during this experiment included ‘Flamenco Sketches’ by Miles Davis. The pop selections used during this experiment were collected from the “top 40 ‘popular’ music at the time and a questionnaire was distributed to 30 students in an undergraduate psychology course. The songs that were chosen from the questionnaire responses included ‘Angel'' by Sarah McLachlan and ‘Crash into Me’ by Dave Matthews. All of the music selections from each category were arranged on high-fidelity cassette
tapes and were played on a stereo cassette recorder at a low-medium volume. The results of this experiment concluded that for the participants' systolic blood pressure, there was a significant effect of music condition on recovery, with classical music having the participants' systolic blood
pressure return the closest to the participants baseline than the control condition. However, for this experiment, they concluded that there was not a significant difference in heart rate between conditions.
After reviewing the previous journals about music medicine and its effect on a person’s heart rate, it can be predicted that music medicine has a positive association in relation to the reduction of a person’s heart rate if exposed to stress factors. According to all of the referenced literature, the experiments that they conducted all had a reduced heart rate when the testing group
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was listening to classical music during their stress factors. With all of these reference findings, it suggests that music medicine does have a positive association with the reduction of an individuals’ heart rate while listening to classical music while experiencing a stress factor. Therefore, practicing music medicine will result in a greater decrease of heart rate. Method
Participants
The number of participants were 100 PSYC 317 undergraduate students who study at Virginia Commonwealth University, where 5 participants did not complete the full questionnaire, which brought the number of participants to 95 in total. These students were recruited to participate from an upper-level psychology course. The data was collected from the students who completed the “Stress Resets” experiments and completed the corresponding questionnaire. The range of the students’ ages was 18-43 years old (
M = 22.2, SD = 3.9
). Out of all of the participants, 24 identified as male, 71 identified as female, and 5 identified as nonbinary. There was no collection of Race or Ethnicity in the questionnaire. The form of sampling from these students was convenient for this experiment because all of the participants were students that are already enrolled in this psychology course. The participants of this study were randomly assigned into one of these four stress reset groups. The students were not compensated for their participation in this experiment, but rather, they were given a grade for the
course whether or not they completed the questionnaire. Five students were excluded from the experiment
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MUSIC MEDICINE ON STRESS FACTORS
Measures
Student Stress.
A Short Stress State Questionnaire (SSSQ; Helton, 2004) was conducted in order to collect data for this experiment. The Qualtrics software was used and was assessed before and after the Stress Reset activity, with the questionnaire being 11 questions in total. The stress and anxiety of the participants were measured by the participants on a scale to which they felt a certain emotion. The range of how much an emotion was felt was measured on a scale range from 1 to 5; 1 = not at all, 2 = a little bit, 3 = somewhat, 4 = very much, 5 = extremely. For
collecting the data of the participants emotions, it depended on which group the student was in. This would be the predeterminer for which Stress Reset they were to partake in. In total, the SSSQ consisted of 11 items which asked the participants to rate a specific emotion on a Likert scale of 1-5 with 1 being “not at all” and 5 being “extremely.” The same questionnaire was used for the pre-manipulation and the post-manipulation (Helton, 2004). The Cronbach’s alpha for the
total SSSQ was a = .70 for the pre-manipulation assessment. This was done before the participants completed the Stress Reset that they were randomly assigned. An “a” of .70 is a representation of a good internal consistency. The Cronbach’s alpha for the total SSSQ was a = .78 for the post-manipulation assessment. This assessment was completed after the participant completed the Stress Reset they were assigned. An “a” of .78 is a representation for a good internal consistency. The answers that were given on the questionnaire indicated the participants particular emotion before and after their Stress Reset test.
Heart Rate. The participants heart rate was self-reported based on the American Heart Association guidelines. The participants counted the beats they felt within a 15 second time frame and then multiplied that number by 4 in order to estimate how many times their heart beat
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per minute. The Stress Resets manipulation was completed through a random assignment to 1 of 4 groups in the experiment. Procedures
The purpose of this experiment and study was to learn which Stress Reset had the most successful way of calming down the participant’s heartbeat, stress, and anxiety. This research paper is focusing more on the effects of the “music medicine” Stress Reset and how it has a positive effect on reducing one’s heartbeat, stress, and anxiety. The study’s participants were recruited by the students already being enrolled in this upper-level psychology course and being assigned a homework assignment that had them partake in this experiment. The participants were
then instructed to read the directions provided by the professor and complete the Stress Reset that they were randomly assigned. For the participants who were assigned to the music medicine group, they were asked to choose a song that they find comforting and less than or equal to five minutes in duration. After choosing a song, they had to listen to the song entirely while also closing their eyes. These participants were also instructed to try and not use a song that reaffirms their anxiety or negative feelings, but rather a song that makes you feel comforted and relieved. Before and after conducting their Stress Reset, the participants were instructed to take the questionnaire, which included answering eleven questions pertaining to their initial and final heartrate, stress level, and anxiety level. Every participant that took part in this study answered the same questions on a computer-based questionnaire that was through a computer program, Qualtrics. Results
It was hypothesized that heart rate and stress levels would decrease as someone was exposed to music medicine as a stress reset procedure. A t-test was conducted in order to see
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how the stress reset groups differed from each other: music medicine (1), cool off (2), pace your breathing (3), and anchoring (4). For this experiment group, a paired samples t-test was conducted in order to measure the effects that music medicine would have on heart rate and stress level. Using the data collected from the SSSQ (Helton, 2004), we were able to gather the necessary information to find the differences between the heart rate for the pre-test and the post-
test. The alpha level used in all of the statistical testing was set to
= 0.05. In total, there were 21 participants out of the 100 participants completing the music medicine stress reset manipulations and their heart rates and stress levels were tested before and after conducting the experiment. The mean score for the heart rates of the participants was M = 4.76 (SD = 6.45)
and the mean score for the stress levels of the participants was M = 0.32 (SD = 0.41)
.
For heart rate, the paired samples t-test was significant with the differences being t (21) =
3.38, p = 0.003
, eta
2
= 0.64. Since the test was significant, we acknowledge the eta
2
as well. With
the collected data, there is evidence that there is a significant difference in heart rate between the pre-test and post-test. Further looking at the data, the pre-test heart rate had a M = 78.71 (SD = 11.00)
and the post-test heart rate has a M = 73.95 (SD = 9.30)
. This data shows that there is a statistical significance in music medicine on people’s heart rate.
For stress levels, the paired samples t-test was significant with the differences being t (21) = 3.61, p = 0.002
, eta
2
= 0.97. Since the test was significant, we acknowledge the eta
2
as well. With the collected data, there is evidence that there is a significant difference in stress levels between the pre-test and post-test. Further looking at the data, the pre-test stress levels had
a M = 2.03 (SD = 0.55)
and the post-test stress levels had a M = 1.70 (SD = 0.43)
. This data shows that there is a statistical significance in music medicine on people’s stress levels. Discussion
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The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between a stress reset manipulation and heart rate and stress levels. For this discussion, we are only looking at the effects of the first group, music medicine and its corresponding data. The purpose of music medicine as that by listening to calming music, such as classical music, it can lower your heart rate and stress levels. The hypothesis of this paper is that the post manipulation heart rate and stress levels would be lower than the pre manipulation. This study’s findings did support this hypothesis and had significance. This shows that the music medicine stress reset did work in the way that the experiment intended it for. The p-value for heart rate and stress levels were both less
than 0.005, which means that they were both lower than the alpha value of 0.05 and concludes that both predicted outcomes of the experiment will be supported. These results do support a relationship between music medicine and heart rate and stress. As stated in the introduction section, people who were exposed to music medicine, specifically classical music, tended to have lower heart rates and stress levels. The results of music medicine are also able to provide experimental support in claiming that relaxing music being used for music medicine is an effective method of reducing the amount of anxiety in a person during a stressful work factor (Knight, 2001). There is also evidence in that music medicine used during music therapy is being practiced more often as an intervention for stress reduction for both the medical and psychiatric field. Music therapy is primarily tailored towards the individual in order to create a music medicine plan specifically for that individual’s stress factors (Witte, 2020). These experiments results show that there is a significant value based on the data that was collected. As this study was to compare the different ways that someone could effectively decrease their heart rate and stress levels through the practice of music medicine, this study was able to
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add to scientific literature and help support the given hypothesis in the paper. People who were exposed to music medicine during stressful times in their life were able to lower their heart rates and stress levels, however, this is all depending on the type of music that is chosen for the music medicine. For this research, the effect that music medicine had on a person’s heart rate and stress
levels implies that there is a difference in both of these variables in order to constitute it as being relevant. However, understanding that not all genres of music can be used as a stress reliever for music medicine and that everyone can react differently to the same music. This factor makes this
study important to scientific literature. Applying this to the real world, people may be able to effectively find a stress reset that will help their heart rate and stress levels to decrease. In the context of this study, these results cannot be applied to all age groups as the majority of the participants were in their late teens and early 20s. The participants were only from an upper-level psychology course offered at Virginia Commonwealth University, which was the most convenient form of sampling for this study. With the limited selections of participants, this could affect the data as the participants were aware of the course work that comes along with this stress reset study and that there was only a fifth of the participants that took part in the music medicine group. With such a small amount of the participants in this group, it does not represent the large population well. Another conflict that this study could have is that the data of the experiment is relied on self-report heart rates and stress levels instead of monitors or devices to record this data. Many people could never have been trained to record their own heart rate, which could skew the data from inaccurate measurements. For future research for this study, the sample could cover a larger range of age groups and a larger sample of people from outside of this upper-level psychology class. If this was to occur, it would allow the results to be able to apply to a larger, more generalized population of
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people. Participants in this future research can also have their heart rate and stress levels professionally measured in order to eliminate any human error in gathering data. The current literature on this topic does support the relationship between music medicine and heart rate and stress levels. There was a significance relationship between music medicine and the participants heart rate and stress levels decreasing. Moving forward in this experiment, it could be found that different types of music that are not particularly categorized as “calm” could be beneficial in practicing music medicine.
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References
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Chafin, S., Roy, M., Gerin, W., & Christenfeld, N. (2004). Music can facilitate blood pressure
recovery from stress. British Journal of Health Psychology, 9(3), 393–403.
Helton, W. S. (2004). Validation of a Short Stress State Questionnaire. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 48(11), 1238–1242. https://doi.org/10.1177/154193120404801107
Martina de Witte, Ana da Silva Pinho, Geert-Jan Stams, Xavier Moonen, Arjan E.R. Bos &
Susan van Hooren (2020) Music therapy for stress reduction: a systematic review and meta-analysis, Health Psychology Review, DOI: 10.1080/17437199.2020.1846580
Wendy E. J. Knight, Nikki S. Rickard, PhD, Relaxing Music Prevents Stress-Induced Increases
in Subjective Anxiety, Systolic Blood Pressure, and Heart Rate in Healthy Males and Females, Journal of Music Therapy, Volume 38, Issue 4, Winter 2001, Pages 254–272, https://doi.org/10.1093/jmt/38.4.254
Yehuda, N. Music and Stress. J Adult Dev 18, 85–94 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10804-
010-9117-4