The Effects of Music on Teenagers’ Emotions

In the human brain there is a chemical called EEG when activated, changes a person’s emotions. According to a recent study, “the positive affect is associated with greater relative left frontal EEG activation and negative affect is associated with greater relative right frontal EEG activation” (Field and others 109). In that study they took fourteen chronically depressed female adolescents and played rock music to them for twenty-one minute sessions. Then they took another fourteen chronically depressed female

adolescents and had them sit and relax their minds and muscles for the same time period (Field and others 109). “EEG was recorded during baseline, music, and post-music for three minutes each, and s

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The problem, said Rauscher and Shaw, was that other researchers were not following their exact same procedures” (Scheel and Westefeld 243). “Exposure to ten minutes of Mozart’s music does not seem to enhance general intelligence or reasoning,” he concluded, “ although it may exert a small improving effect on the ability to transform visual images” (Scheel and Westefeld 243). Chabris took the results of 16 studies and combined them mathematically, using statistical techniques that average out the differences among procedures. “Since 1993, several research teams have repeated the original experiment but failed to get any effect. He said that he uses the music particularly with teenagers, because he knows how much some teenagers like to listen to music. So when a person is in a bad mood or that person isn’t feeling very well, then just listen to some soothing, up-beat, relaxing, positive music and that person should be in a better mood in no time at all.

(Brynie 38)

There are some studies that show listening to classical music increases a person’s IQ level by eight or nine points. In 1999, Kenneth Steele and a team at Appalachian State University tried again, following directions from Rauscher and Shaw. “Heavy metal fans had less strong reasons for living (especially male fans) and had more thoughts of suicide (especially female fans)” (Brynie 38). Then all the students

took a test of their abstract reasoning ability. “Part of the difficulty, says Harvard researcher Christopher Chabris, “is confusion about what abstract reasoning ability means” (Scheel and Westefeld 243). Especially with today’s music scene, lyrics have become a very sensitive subject with parents. The results showed that listening to the Mozart sonata produced no differential improvement in spatial reasoning (Scheel and Westefeld 243).

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Approximate Word count = 1274
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

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