Sad music could tune in anxiety
Seems like it's time to change that melancholic tracks, a recent study suggests that listening to sad or aggressive music increase levels of anxiety and neuroticism in the listener.
Clinical music therapists know the power music can have over emotions, and are able to use music to help their clients to better mood states and even to help relieve symptoms of psychiatric mood disorders like depression.
But many people also listen to music on their own as a means of emotion regulation, and not much is known about how this kind of music listening affects mental health.
Researchers studied the relationship between mental health, music listening habits and neural responses to music emotions by looking at a combination of behavioural and neuroimaging data.
"Some ways of coping with negative emotion, such as rumination, which means continually thinking over negative things, are linked to poor mental health," said the main author of the study Emily Carlson, from University of Jyvaskyla in Finland.
"We wanted to learn whether there could be similar negative effects of some styles of music listening," Carlson said.
Clinical music therapists know the power music can have over emotions, and are able to use music to help their clients to better mood states and even to help relieve symptoms of psychiatric mood disorders like depression.
But many people also listen to music on their own as a means of emotion regulation, and not much is known about how this kind of music listening affects mental health.
Researchers studied the relationship between mental health, music listening habits and neural responses to music emotions by looking at a combination of behavioural and neuroimaging data.
"Some ways of coping with negative emotion, such as rumination, which means continually thinking over negative things, are linked to poor mental health," said the main author of the study Emily Carlson, from University of Jyvaskyla in Finland.
"We wanted to learn whether there could be similar negative effects of some styles of music listening," Carlson said.
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