“Ode to Joy” is a universally recognizable — and beloved — piece of symphonic music. But you might be surprised to learn it’s based on the same simple scale you may have practiced as a child.
What differentiates Beethoven’s masterpiece from your practice drill is, of course, the artistic genius of its maker — who knew the secret sauce of real music as having a combination of familiarity and repetition (as in basing a piece on the scale), along with unpredictability. The element of surprise in music, as in most arts, appeals to us because it mimics real-life emotional situations, says Daniel Levitin, a cognitive psychologist and neuroscientist at McGill University in Canada and author of “This is Your Brain on Music.”
Real emotional moments in life — such as forgiveness, anger, courtship, planning and parenting — don’t take place at precise clips like a robot, writes Levitin, who is a musician himself. Music reflects that and derives its power from certain changes: in tempo, rhythm, interpretation.
“Music reflects the dynamics of real life: These things are built into harmonic structures,” Levitin says. “Think about relationships: Some people like high-drama, and if there isn’t any, they create it. These [tendencies] are reflected in musical tastes.”
[See: 6 Reasons Going to Concerts Is Good for Your Health.]
What Your Musical Taste Says About You
For several years, Levitin and his colleagues have explored how our personalities and other cognitive characteristics affect our musical tastes. In one study, they looked at the musical tastes of five personality types, dubbed OCEAN: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extrovertism, agreeableness and neuroticism.
They found that people with personalities high on “openness to experience” preferred music from a wide array of genres. Those who were agreeable preferred more mellow music, and those who were neurotic preferred negative music, says David Greenberg, a music psychologist at the City University of New York and University of Cambridge in the U.K. “These traits are more ingrained and biological,” he says. “Through the musical process, you are reinforcing different parts of yourself.”
That may be why people seek romantic partners with similar musical tastes, he adds. “It’s not small talk: You’re communicating really important information about yourself — what your core beliefs are.”
Levitin agrees. “We are finding musical tastes reflect values: political views, family values … And at a superficial level, you want to have compatible musical tastes in the same way you want to have compatible tastes in food, music and movies.”
Greenberg also conducted a study last year looking at musical preferences based on two different cognitive styles: “systemizers,” analytical people who look at life through rules and patterns, and “empathizers,” who are more attuned to the mental states and emotions of others. While empathizers would prefer songs like Norah Jones’ “Come Away with Me” or “Hallelujah,” systemizers would be more inclined to turn on songs by the Sex Pistols or Metallica. Put differently, systemizers like intellectual depth and positive emotions in music; empathizers like mellow music that’s often sad.
[See: How Music Helps People With Alzheimer’s Disease.]
How Music Can Heal
Regardless of what kind people prefer, music has the power to evoke emotions such as self-esteem and strength, sadness and nostalgia, Greenberg says. By extension, it can have real therapeutic value. Even in clinical medicine, music has been found to improve recovery rates of surgery patients post-operatively. And some studies suggest music has greater anxiety-relieving effects than Valium, Levitin says, adding that music is also used in guided imagery to relieve trauma. “It helps promote that dream-like state that allows you to free associate and find creative solutions to problems,” Levitin says. “A large proportion of people use music kind of how they would use caffeine or alcohol: to get up, go to the gym, to soothe themselves.”
Greenberg likens listening to music to self-therapy that many people engage in without realizing it.
That’s why, after a romantic breakup, people often prefer sad music. “It’s kind of counter-intuitive, but it’s soothing,” Greenberg says, adding that one theory is that sad music helps release the hormone prolactin, the same self-soothing hormone released during breast-feeding.
At the same time, it’s possible to overdo sad music in a way that stifles recovery, Greenberg adds. “At which point is [the music] no longer helpful? If it’s two years later, is the music perpetuating that hurt? Is there still more healing and consolation that needs to take place?”
While music itself is “an incredible therapeutic device that has evolved throughout millennia to heal,” Greenberg says that “we’re at the forefront of seeing how music can be used as a formalized therapy” in clinical psychology.
Musical therapists are already focused on individuals’ musical tastes — and using and shaping those to a therapeutic end. But psychologists could also have patients fill out their musical tastes at the very first session, Greenberg says. “This can help inform and drive the therapy, rather than spending 10 sessions collecting data anecdotally.”
[See: 11 Simple, Proven Ways to Optimize Your Mental Health.]
How to Have a Healthy Relationship With Music
While most people intuitively self-regulate when it comes to listening to music, it’s possible those tunes could be too much of a good thing. Levitin likens an addiction to music to binge-watching television. “It’s not destroying most peoples’ lives,” he says. “Binge listening doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve got a problem.”
But it can become a problem if people listen compulsively, to the exclusion of things like interacting with real people, Levitin adds. Or if it makes you do bad things. “If you lose friends, your job or other parts of your life, you have to begin asking the question: ‘Am I coming under the influence of something I want?'”
Many people, however, experience music as something that brings them together. Greenberg, who is a saxophonist, says one of the most rewarding things about being a musician is playing with other people because it increases empathy.
That empathy carries over into our listening lives as well. That’s why the death of so many renowned musicians in 2016 — Prince, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen — caused a collective grief that crossed generational lines, Levitin says. “They’re like schoolmates — we have a kind of privileged relationship with them, as if they were people we’ve known our whole lives.” And musicians also articulate what we can’t, or don’t, emotionally, Levitin says. When we lose them, “we lose a part of us that’s hidden from others.”
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What Your Relationship With Music Says About You originally appeared on usnews.com
