Good Example Of Experiment Dissertation Chapter

Impact of music on someone’s psychology and personality

Introduction
The personality and psychology of human beings is a complex phenomenon even to study. However, we do understand the fact that the psychology is concerned with the brain and so is the personality. Therefore, whatever affects the brain has an effect on a person’s personality and psychology. Among the things that have an effect on the brain is music. We know this because music affects our moods. It can make us happy or sad. It is used to express our deepest of emotions. Therefore, through emotions we can safely claim that it has an effect on our brain and, thus affects someone’s personality and psychology. Therefore, this essay endeavors to gain and insight on this topic to prove whether it is true or not. Through the understanding of the topic, we may be able to decipher the significance that music has in our lives and learn how it can be applied in other parts of our lives.
Music is part of human lifestyle for a long time. Music has had a big share of man’s life because of many things. It is a form of relaxation. A visit to the opera will confirm this. It is also a form of communication for our feelings and emotions. Music gives us the power to express ourselves through music. Furthermore, music is an essential tool for passing on knowledge to the next generations. The knowledge embedded in it is passed on overtime as the song is taught to the next generation. There are many other things music is helpful for explaining why music is a part of us. Understanding music better will help us know we can learn to give it some level of priority it deserves(Bigliassiet al 206).

Method
Not many experiments have been conducted to check the brain processes that involve music. We are aware of is the fact that scientists have managed to measure the amount of brain activity with regards to music using the EEG (electroencephalogram). This machine showed that both the left and right hemispheres of the brain respond to music. For the experiment, we will use secondary data because we will utilize results from an experiment by a group of neurosciences to try and decipher what link the brain has with music. The experiment will take the form of patients in a hospital who are undergoing brain surgery so that the activity of the temporal lobe and the limbic system of the patients’ brains is put under study. In the experiment, the patients had to be awake so that they can listen to a song by Mozart, the theme song of Miami Vice (computer game) or a folk song. The essence of diversifying the type of music is meant to be the control of the experiment. By control, we imply that we can see that different aspects of music also affect the brain.
We aim to establish that music has an effect on the personality and psychology of someone. To achieve this, we need to find a variable that is affected by music directly. Therefore, the music becomes the independent variable in this case study. The dependent variable, I decide to go for emotions. We know that emotions are essential because they give us the ability to react to emotions such as anger or even fear. The part of the brain responsible for the control of emotions is the limbic system of the brain. This region in the brain recognizes, shows and controls the body reactions to emotions. The neurons within the hippocampus have their role to play in emotions. Coming to conclusions on how the music affects someone’s emotions, will To research on the effect music has on a person, we should first be able to establish a connection between the emotional content of music and the state of emotion the producer of the music piece is at(Quintinet al 1246).
Three assumptions will be made on this part. First, we will assume that emotions can be described as a pattern (s) of changes in the body (caused by the limbic system). A second assumption will be that music can resemble the visceral and dynamic qualities of body feelings. The final assumption posits that these resemblances are monitored, registered and kept track upon by the same mechanism within the brain functions that deals with the subject’s emotions(Quintinet al 1247).

Results

Discussion
Music can commandeer brain mechanisms whose duties include keeping track of our emotions and those of others. As a result, whenever we listen to music, we perceive the emotion within the music and in turn, the emotion of the producer of the music. As much as few experiments have been done to show the relationship of a person’s brain and music, there have been a few along these lines though not directly related. There have been experiments that have shown that humans have the capability to find and tap to beat of musical rhythms. These rhythms could be of varying complexity ranging from modern jazz to the simple children songs. I am positive that there are numerous times you have heard kids, probably your own or even kids in your area singing a song and tapped your feet to the ‘tune.’ This instance of kids is carefully chosen because we know very well children do not mind about the aspects of music such as voice and even melody. However, you will find that you can enjoy the song and even tap your feet to the song(Fürst 128).
Beats have no direct link with auditory features of a human being. It is, however, a representation of our perception that comes into being when there is an interaction between the higher level cognitive organization and the sensory cues. There have been previous studies(Iliya 179) that which endeavored to understand the neural basis that explains the processing of beats by the brain. However, none has gone to the extents of seeking insight into the phenomenon of tapping to beats that are found. To test this phenomenon, the scientists used the Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) equipment to test the ability of musicians to find and tap to musical beats. The beats were varied from simple to complex as control of the experiment to find how the brain reacted. The beat tapping performance of the musicians was measured including sessions where scanner noise was used to check on the ability to perceive the beats(Thompson and Katrina 5).
The results showed that for a musician to be able to find a beat and tap to it, it needed various overlapping sections of the brain. These regions included the STG (superior temporal gyrus), the VLPFC (ventrolateral PFC) and the premotor cortex. The activity in the VLPFC and the STG correlated with performance as well as the perception of the beats. This result, therefore, suggests that these two brain regions are responsible for the retrieval, selection and maintenance of the musical beat. This experiment is along the same line with the earlier mentioned experiment though on a different road. The outcomes are similar. The fact that a musician is able to find and tap to a beat no matter how weak or strong it is with the help of the brain (the STG and the VLPFC) means that indeed music has a one-on-one link with the brain. There are regions of the brain specialized to music. The VLPFC and the STG are responsible for this ability in a person.
There is also an experiment(Thomaet al 236) that works to decipher the relationship the personality of a person has with music. This experiment, however, involved the study of the effect of background music on how people perceive the personality of a person. The essence of the experiment was to discover the stereotypes people have buried concerning different genres of music. It also endeavored to study if the music therapy students are either more or less biased than the students who do not major in music. The total number of subjects was 388 so that the music therapy students were 182 and the non-music major students were 206. They were then requested to listen to listen to a recording. After that, they were made to fill in surveys about the recording. Some subjects claimed to have only heard a single person reading a script. There were others who claimed the heard background music and some crowd noise and felt that they simulated a live performance. They were also asked to rate the person in the recording based on descriptions of personality they could capture from the recording. Most of the answers of the subjects were concerned with the kind of genre the music in the recording was in. There was an instance where whenever the subjects were exposed to either country or rap music, they rated the personality of the singer rather negatively as compared to people who made jazz, classical or no music at all.
The essence of the experiment is to show that music also deal with the personality of a person. Different genres of music are usually different ways someone expresses himself or herself. How someone expresses himself in a rap differs greatly how he will express himself in a classical music. In the world today, musical genres are plenty, and all have their ways of expressing themselves. There are the RNBs, which are very emotional compared to rap music. They go hand in hand with soul and reggae music genres. They will dictate how someone will view someone and tell of their personality traits. Therefore, understanding music genres can help us understand personality better and decipher methods of improving them(Okumura et al 946).
Music is important because of the many functions it has in our lives. But also, it has positive effects on people who study music. Therefore, it has earned its right to be a discipline in our schools to make our children better. The positive effects that music has on the students f music include improving our reasoning and motor skills. Learning to play a musical instrument can be beneficial to the children because of this factor. A study showed that children with three or more year musical experience of an instrument performed better than those who have never learned to use any instrument. The performance measured was in terms of fine motor skills and auditory discrimination abilities. Scientists have called this effect the Mozart effect(Preteet al 260). The rigorous training that learning of music notes and the order that they should be in causes the brain to experience more order than normal. It gains the ability to work in specific patterns so that the subject can be able to understand pitch and rhythm patterns easier and faster. The subject can also contrast character faster than a normal child and be able to identify the simplest of change in themes.
Understanding he effects music has on us will help us understand what other types of sounds such as noise and how they affect us. For instance, the study of the effect of music on the human brain has enabled us to know that ambient noise can improve the creativity of a person. All of us like to play different types of music or tunes when it comes to doing our duties. Whenever it comes to creativity, loud music does not cut out to enhance it. It has, however, been proven that a moderate level of noise is the hot spot for creativity. Low noise levels do not work as effectively as ambient noise levels. Moderate noise levels work is believed to increase the processing difficulty thereby promoting abstract processing of the subject. The increased level of abstract processing leads to increased level of creativity. In other terms, whenever we struggle (sufficiently) to process something more than the normal processing we do, we end up resorting to approaches that are more creative. A Higher level of noise impairs our creative thinking because we are overwhelmed by the noise. This phenomenon can be related to how lighting and temperature affect the productivity of a person(DeMarco, Christa and Ronald 84).

Conclusion

Music is indeed significant to our lives owing to the importance and significance it is turning out to have on our lives. This experiment has proven that indeed music has an effect on our brains and in turn our psychology. By affecting the various regions of the brain, we can deduce that it has an effect on our psychology. This has been shown by establishing a connection between the emotions of a person and the brain activity with regards to music. Several other experiments have been brought to light and explained how they show the relation music has with the brain and in turn the psychology of a person. The personality of a person has been related to the genre of music that dictates how someone expresses himself and in turn exposes his personality. It is my recommendation that governments work to enhance the study of this discipline as it is a potential source of improvements of learning activities in our schools.

Works cited

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DeMarco, Tina C., Christa L. Taylor, and Ronald S. Friedman. "Reinvestigating The Effect Of Interpersonal Sadness On Mood-Congruency In Music Preference." Psychology Of Aesthetics, Creativity & The Arts 9.1 (2015): 81-90.
Fürst, Elisabeth. "Coming Back To Oneself: A Case Of Anoxic Brain Damage From A Phenomenological Perspective." Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry 39.1 (2015): 121-133. 
Iliya, Yasmine A. "Music Therapy As Grief Therapy For Adults With Mental Illness And Complicated Grief: A Pilot Study." Death Studies 39.3 (2015): 173-184. 
Okumura, Yuka, et al. "Brain Activation By Music In Patients In A Vegetative Or Minimally Conscious State Following Diffuse Brain Injury." Brain Injury 28.7 (2014): 944-950. 
Prete, Giulia, et al. "The “Consonance Effect” And The Hemispheres: A Study On A Split-Brain Patient." Laterality 20.3 (2015): 257-269. 
Quintin, Eve-Marie, et al. "Emotion Perception In Music In High-Functioning Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorders." Journal Of Autism & Developmental Disorders 41.9 (2011): 1240-1255.
Thoma, M.V., et al. "Listening To Music And Physiological And Psychological Functioning: The Mediating Role Of Emotion Regulation And Stress Reactivity." Psychology & Health 27.2 (2012): 227-241.
Thompson, Grace A., and Katrina SkewesMcFerran. "Music Therapy With Young People Who Have Profound Intellectual And Developmental Disability: Four Case Studies Exploring Communication And Engagement Within Musical Interactions." Journal Of Intellectual & Developmental Disability 40.1 (2015): 1-11.