The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of music on emotions and the pulses of college students. Positive emotions enhance people to extend their resources for better adjustment to emotional disturbances. Music was found to elicit people’s positive as well as negative emotions under certain circumstances. In the current study, there were 52 college students (11 males, 41 females) who enrolled in a general study class voluntarily participated the test. The researchers were interested in how music would change the pulse and emotion after listening to four different styles of musical pieces, including a piece of light music, a western popular song, an old-time melody, and a Chinese popular song. The participants were explained the purpose of the test and asked to measure their own pulses before and after the researcher delivered the music repertory piece by piece. Each piece of music was playing around one minute with an interval of a few minutes for people to write down their comments to the emotional aspect of the musical piece. Toward the end of listening, the students were asked to measure their pulses again. A set of questionnaire was adopted to detect what the students used for emotional regulation while listening to music, either under a conscious or non-conscious state. The students were asked to answer what types of music, what kind of strategies, and the successful rate of the strategies for them to regulate emotions. The results indicated that students’ pulses decreased significantly after listening to music. Positive emotions were reported as a major proportion and most of the time in a non-consciously fashion to help the students to regulate their emotions. Relaxation and distraction were recognized as the mostly adopted strategies for emotional regulations of the students. The pieces of the Chinese popular song and the western popular song were rated as the most favored musical styles by the students. A follow-up study will be conducted with further evidence on the findings of effects of music on emotional regulation of college students.
關聯:
2018 International Psychological Applications Conference and Trends, p. 47