Many people love listening to music and everyone likes to listen to different types of music whether that’d be upbeat music or more downbeat music. But some may begin to wonder if music can be one out of many causes of mood change.

An experiment was done on a classroom of 21 students by William Whelchel and Mariah Harrison. In the experiment, 4 different songs were played. First, there was a sad song, then a happy song and both were from the hip-hop culture. Then there was a different sad song, and a different happy song and both were classics. As these songs were being played one at a time, the students had a survey to fill out. On this survey, there was a scale from 1-5. The 1 meant extremely unhappy and the 5 meant extremely happy. Under the scale, the students were asked to give a brief description of their mood. Then, there was a question that asked if the music changed their mood.

Looking at the results, it seems like music does change the mood of most people. A lot of the students were affected by the four different songs that were played. Before a sad song played, some were already feeling a bit down. Then, when happy music was played, some of those students who were sad became a bit happy and some just stayed the same. But there were a few who were happy before the sad song was played and their mood changed. It was interesting to see the effect music has on people, however, it was just as interesting to see that a few of these students were affected by everyone else’s mood in the room. But the song that really seemed to affect the students was from a rapper named XxxTentacion who recently passed away in 2018. In the area where it asks the students to give a brief description of their mood before the song was played, the student answered with “Relaxed and chill.” Then in the area where it asks to to give a brief description of the students felt after the song was played, the same student answered with “Little less happy.” Lastly, in the area where it asks if the music affected them, if so, they had to describe how or why the music affected them, that student answered with “Yes, because X is dead.” There were many students who were affected by XxxTentacion’s music.

On the other sad song called “What Hurts the Most” by Rascal Flats, it seemed to changed a few of the students moods only because it was country music and some of them thought it was annoying.

This proves that music does affect people in many different way whether it’s the type of music or lyrics, it can change someone’s mood.