Listening to music relieves stress
Luise Heine has been an editor at since 2012. The qualified biologist studied in Regensburg and Brisbane (Australia) and gained experience as a journalist in television, in the Ratgeber-Verlag and in a print magazine. In addition to her work at , she also writes for children, for example for the Stuttgarter Kinderzeitung, and has her own breakfast blog, “Kuchen zum Frühstück”.
More posts by Luise Heine All content is checked by medical journalists.Eating chocolate, drinking alcohol - there are many strategies people can use to try to reduce stress. Researchers have now found a new method that also relaxes and does not endanger health: listening to music.
Music influences people - its rhythm gets into the feet, its melodies can touch the inside. Researchers from Magdeburg led by Professor Urs Nater have investigated how well music is suitable for reducing stress. 55 students served as test subjects. It was important for the scientists to examine their test subjects in the “natural environment”. That's why the students were given a device that they could use to answer questionnaires at home. In the package with 25 of the students were tubes to give saliva samples.
Sad or beautiful?
Equipped in this way, the test subjects went to self-experiments at different times, once at the beginning of the semester and a second time towards the end. To do this, they each filled out a questionnaire for five days, six times a day. Among other things, it asked how the participants felt and whether they had heard music. In addition, they provided further information, for example whether they had found the music to be sad, beautiful or activating. In addition, the reasons for listening to music were asked. The test persons could tick whether they had listened to the music for “relaxation”, “activation”, “distraction” or “to reduce boredom”. They should also assess their subjectively perceived stress level.
Stress indicators such as cortisol or alpha-amylase were then measured in the 25 students who had collected saliva samples over the week.
Music is especially effective in the evening
Music has a relaxing effect - this was shown by the subsequent analysis of the data. Whenever the students listened to stress-relieving melodies, they were actually more relaxed afterwards. This was confirmed by both the subjective reports and the values of the stress markers in the saliva. The researchers reported that the calming effect was particularly great in the early afternoon and evening. It did not matter what kind of music the students were listening to - the main thing was that it was listened to with intent to relax.
Heard less music during stress
However, there was a catch when the scientists compared the two study dates. Because the found, calming effect took hold especially in the rather unstressful beginning of the semester.
“It seems that in phases of more stress, simply listening to music cannot have a relaxing effect,” explains the biopsychologist Nater. But there is another possible explanation: In the stressful period, however, significantly less music was heard. From this one can also conclude that there is less time to reduce stress in phases of increased stress.
Nevertheless, the scientists see listening to music in everyday life as a promising method for reducing stress - especially for people who want to relax in a targeted manner.
Source: German Society for Psychology - press release from August 4th, 2015
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