Using music for psychological and physiological wellbeing

<p dir="ltr">Multiple historical societies and cultures used music to achieve certain moods and in the modern day to help regulate emotions. Researchers have argued music reduces measures of physiological stress as well as improves psychological well-being. However, the evidence often demonstrated is unsuited to determine specific contextual factors that determine the effect. This is because research largely uses no music as a comparative stimulus and often uses music in a specified high stress population during a form of acute stress. Also, while subjective measures of mental wellbeing are important, physiological well-being have greater implications for individual health and are not used as much as psychological methods in the literature. This prompts the question is music a unique stimulus to attain these states of well-being and lower measures of physiological stress? And are the effects of music present in a typical population when sampling is repeated? As such, this PhD aims to provide a better understanding of music as a physiological stress reduction and mood improvement tool.</p><p dir="ltr">1 meta-analysis and 3 empirical studies are demonstrated. The meta-analytic review aimed to identify the effect of music on physiological measurements when compared to a control group. Study 2 aimed to identify the long-term mood improving effects of prescribed relaxing music. Study 3 examined the acute effects of a listening intervention with a larger sample size as well as multiple forms of audio. Study 4 employed a social stress task to compare the physiological effects of music compared to an auditory control.</p><p dir="ltr">The meta-analysis demonstrates music does reduce measures of physiological stress; however, the literature is lacking in demonstrating the effects in a typical population, using a cortisol biomarker and repeat sampling overtime. Study 2 found that music does improve psychological wellbeing with repeat sampling however, not more so that the control. Further issues arose when the longitudinal nature of the research reduced the power of the research due to participant attrition. However, study 2’s findings demonstrated music was better at reducing psychological stress than control acutely. To follow up on these findings study 3 used a large sample single trial music intervention that was tested compared to multiple theoretically appropriate controls. The results demonstrated music was not better at improving acute mood or reducing psychological stress. However, fondness of audio predicted stress reduction indicating participant choice in music was necessary for finalisation of a music intervention paradigm. This music intervention paradigm was then tested as a pre-emptive mood stabiliser before social stress task.</p>