It fends off overwhelming feelings of grief by enhancing calmness and, in some cases, even pleasure. Sad music can also stimulate the production of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Strongly associated with both pleasure and rewards, dopamine is considered to be the “feel good” hormone.
A study suggests that listening to sad music when you're feeling down doesn't make you feel worse but actually improves your mood.
Unconscious reflexes in the brain stem; the synchronization of rhythm to some internal cadence, such as a heartbeat; conditioned responses to particular sounds; triggered memories; emotional contagion; a reflective evaluation of the music — all seem to play some role.
Music Genres and Depression
The top genre for depressed listeners is rock, followed closely by alternative, pop, and hip-hop/rap. On the other end of the spectrum, blues is the least popular genre for people hoping to improve their moods.
Our study showed that even when people reported feeling more depressed after listening to sad music, they still tended to argue that the music had helped them. Other studies too have shown that some people persist in listening to music that is actually making them feel worse.
Sad music does not — as many people believe — make you feel worse. In actuality, it can help you feel better. It makes logical sense that, when you're sad, you would feel better by changing your mood.
A key reason we enjoy sad songs is because they profoundly “move” us. This experience is sometimes called kama muta, a Sanskrit term meaning “moved by love.” Feeling moved can involve chills, goosebumps, a flood of emotions (including romantic ones), a warmth in our chest, and elation.
Research shows that listening to happier music can make you feel happier, especially if you try to lift your mood while listening. There's also evidence that formal music therapy can help with depression when used alongside other therapies. Reduce stress.
It has long been suggested that music can help reduce or manage stress. Consider the trend centered on meditative music created to soothe the mind and inducing relaxation. Fortunately, this is one trend supported by research. Listening to music can be an effective way to cope with stress.
There are studies that show, however, that music can impact our mood long-term, increasing depression or anxiety. Certain songs, certain lyrics, certain genres of music are more likely to intensify depression or anxiety, sometimes as much or more as outside stressors and environmental factors.
“Music that is perceived as sad actually induces romantic emotion as well as sad emotion. And people, regardless of their musical training, experience this ambivalent emotion to listen to the sad music.” This reasoning makes sense.
The phenomenon, also called 'Florence Syndrome', is named after the French author Marie-Henri Beyle , who wrote under the pen-name of 'Stendhal'.
Why do we enjoy consuming sad stories when sad stories make us sad? A popular explanation is catharsis, that we cherish sad stories because they provide relief from the accumulated effect of negative emotions.
Previous research has shown that an attraction to sad music is correlated with personality traits like empathy, Absorption, and rumination.
Indeed, when people listen to sad music, only around 25% say they actually feel sad. The remainder experience other, often related emotions, most commonly nostalgia. This feeling of nostalgia can help increase our sense of social connectedness, mitigate feelings of meaningless, and reduce anxiety.
The strong appeal of sad music to people with MDD may be related to its calming effects rather than any desire to increase or maintain sad feelings.
Many people with ADHD gravitate to instrumental music because it generally has a very structured rhythm that helps people focus. 3 In addition, instrumental music is more common because it doesn't have words that can be distracting.
If you are in need of a mood-booster, listen to classical music instead of metal or electronic music, according to Openmind. Another impact of music on mental health is a reduction of stress and anxiety. While upbeat music is best for instilling motivation, reducing stress requires a calm genre of music.
When you start paying closer attention to how music impacts your life, your feelings and your presence, you can use music to help you process experiences, understand emotions and heal from trauma.
The limbic system, which is involved in processing emotions and controlling memory, “lights” up when our ears perceive music. The chills you feel when you hear a particularly moving piece of music may be the result of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that triggers sensations of pleasure and well-being.
A study done in 2020 showed that music seemed to improve focus and attentiveness in children diagnosed with ADHD. Music therapy has been effective for people with ADHD because they crave the type of structure that music provides.
They're courtesy of your brain reacting to the music and releasing dopamine, a neurotransmitter that helps control our reward and pleasure centers. And those seemingly incongruent tears are a response to being moved by the music and a way of helping you balance feelings of intense emotion.
Most experts seem to agree that losing interest in music is common in people experiencing depression not actually because of music itself in particular, but because depression causes people to lose the ability to feel pleasure in general.
It helps us to channelize our emotions. Our brain releases prolactin hormone which is associated with crying and helps curb grief. This brings in calmness or peacefulness that helps us to deal with mental stress.