Music or Misconception?

Have you ever experienced a break up, a family split, a dying loved one, or just a bad day? Follow up question, have you listened to sad, melancholy music to make you feel better? If you have, trust me, you're not the only one. You listen to the blues, Secondhand Serenade, and maybe even Johnny Cash. You sang every word and sat there thinking about how the singer feels just as bad as you. You cry a bit, too. After you're done, you feel a small weight has lifted off your shoulders, and you can breathe a bit easier. Why does this happen? In the last post, I explained how the amygdala in the gray matter of your brain controls emotion expression and emotional memories. Even so, in this article in the Huffington Post, they disregard this scientific assumption for another one. A study with a sample of 220 participants all got asked the same request: think about a particularly sad event in your life, and what sad music did you listen to and why. Dr. Annemieke van den Tol told the Post, "We found in our research that people's music choice is linked to the individual's own expectations for listening to music and its effects on them" (Patel, 2014). This is explained as though people who listen to sad music first think about their situation as the begin the music. Thus, the effects are subconsciously self-induced, with your brain being the culprit behind the curtain. They also found that this experience "had a negative impact on creating a better mood" (Patel, 2014). Thus, this had no real benefit whatsoever to the listener. This does not mean that the music doesn't play a part; the "value", one would call it, of the music depended on the listener, and made it to feel like it truly did something. However, this is just one study, and many people believe otherwise. But what do you believe? Sources: Patel, A. (2014, February 24). Music And Health: Do Sad Songs Actually Make Us Happier? Retrieved December 04, 2017, from http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/02/24/music-and-health_n_4847373.html