Music and Emotions on Teenagers
Good music has direct access to the emotions. As such it’s a fantastic tool for tweaking our moods. Saarikallio and Erkkila (2007) investigated the ways people use music to control and improve their mood by interviewing eight adolescents from Finland. The participants may be a small, very specific group, but they actually present a really useful list:
- Entertainment - At the most fundamental level music provides stimulation. It lifts the mood before going out, it passes the time while doing the washing up, it accompanies travelling, reading and surfing the web.
- Revival - Music revitalises in the morning and calms in the evening.
- Strong sensation - Music can provide deep, thrilling emotional experiences, particularly while performing.
- Diversion - Music distracts the mind from unpleasant thoughts which can easily fill the silence.
- Discharge - Music matching deep moods can release emotions: purging and cleansing.
- Mental work - Music encourages daydreaming, sliding into old memories, exploring the past.
- Solace - Shared emotion, shared experience, a connection to someone lost.
Isn’t true? There are loads of songs or waiting room music that remind me of ex’s, some of which make me sad, some sometimes make me smile. Loads of songs that remind me of the period where i listened to that song a lot (e.g killing me softly by fugees reminds me of hanging out with my friends from school one summer and playing that song in my back yard while we had a bbq)
Some genres can change my mood as well, like if im a bit pissed off, listening to DnB will set me off more, but if i was to listen to folk or something chilled out i would probably calm down a lot faster.