Abstract
It is well known that appreciating music has some effects on our feelings. We conducted an experiment in order to specify what kinds of effect appreciating music have on our emotion. The subjects of this experiment were 31 healthy female university students whose ages varied from 18 to 23 years old. These subjects were exposed to three different conditions. Under one condition, they were asked to rest without music. In the other two conditions, they were asked to rest while listening to two kinds of music, which were a piece of classical music (Ravel's "PAVANE POUR UNE INFANTE DEFUNTE") that was selected by an examiner and the music preferred by the subjects. All the music was selected in order to relax the subjects. The session made up of these three conditions was held three times on separate occasions. In each session, we asked them to relax on the body sonic device with their eyes closed. The results of the session were analyzed using the Profile of Mood States (POMS), which is a psychological test to measure emotional condition. As the result, a change in emotion was observed evidently after listening to music for a short time. Moreover, a consistent pattern was observed regardless of the genre of music. Our finding was that each factor of POMS suggested a homeostatic change as the tendency of emotional change due to appreciating music. Over all, we concluded that appreciating music could help keeping our mood in good conditions.
