Anyone who has listened to music for long hours will understand that it has a deep impact on their mind. The harmony of sounds triggers various emotions and responses within us so that we are often lost thinking about our deepest feelings when listening to our favorite soundtracks. It has the ability to bring about drastic changes in human beings, from improving creativity to enhancing motor skills.
Music makes people more creative
Listening to ambient sound has the potential to boost creativity. Such moderate sound levels increase the brain’s difficulty to process various things. This forces us to start thinking abstractly, which eventually leads us into highly creative thoughts. However, this relationship only exists with moderate ambient sound. If you listen to sound tracks at high sound levels, the creative ability often tends to get suppressed since the mind is being overwhelmed so much that it struggles to efficiently process information.
Listening to ambient sound has the potential to boost creativity. (Image: via Pixabay)
Perception of neutral faces
The music you hear will also affect the way you perceive people, especially those who have neutral faces. Listening to upbeat music will make you see such people as being happy, while seeing them after hearing sad music will make you perceive them as being sad themselves. In short, you match their neutral expressions to the tone of the music.
Identify personality
It can also be a good indicator of your personality. In an experiment, new couples were asked to get to know each other for six months. They were also given access to each other’s top 10 songs and asked to judge their personalities. The experiment used five personality tests — extraversion, emotional stability, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and agreeableness.
“Overall, the results showed that music preferences were reasonably accurate in conveying aspects of personality. Of the five traits, it was a person’s openness to experience that was best communicated by their top 10 list of songs, followed by extraversion and emotional stability. On the other hand, music preferences didn’t say much about whether a person was conscientious or not,” according to Spring.
Shopping
The fact that music affects people’s shopping style has been known to store owners for many years. There is a reason the store you visit often plays slow songs — it tends to make people spend more money. In contrast, playing fast songs made people check out from the store quickly, which led to lower sales. People are also found to wrap up their meals swiftly at restaurants when exposed to fast music.
The fact that music affects people’s shopping style has been known to store owners for many years. (Image: via Pixabay)
Improve self-awareness
Jonathan Burdette, a professor of radiology, once conducted an fMRI scan of his patients as they listened to music. He measured them in two ways. The first time, he observed the patient’s reaction to their favorite music. The second time, the patients listened to music they disliked. Irrespective of which type they heard, patients were found to have developed stronger connectivity in a brain circuit associated with empathy and self-awareness.
Better reasoning and motor skills
Kids who have had three or more years of training in musical instruments have been observed to have better motor skills than others. Such children also scored higher on auditory discrimination skills. Their performance in vocabulary and the ability to analyze visual information was also found to be better. So if you have a child who is adamant about learning to play the violin, go ahead and grant their wish for lessons.
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