• Question: why do people react to music?

    Asked by Lilymarie to Angela, Robert, Sarah on 20 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Angela Stokes

      Angela Stokes answered on 20 Nov 2014:

      Hi Lilymarie
      We don’t really know, but there have been experiments which show that if you listen to happy music and then look at pictures of faces with expressions the happy faces seem really happy and the sad ones not as sad as they were if you had just been listening to sad music. The happy faces don’t seem as happy if you are listening to sad music either.
      Clearly this is all to do with emotion, but as we all know our emotions are very subjective and scientists have been studying them to try and make sense of them for hundreds of years.

    • Photo: Sarah Harris

      Sarah Harris answered on 21 Nov 2014:

      Good question! Scientists have been investigating this for some time, as music can be calming, energetic, and even used to improve concentration! Research has shown that different pitches and tones activate different areas of the brain associated with emotion – I read one interesting theory that this is because music is just an extension of human language – so if you can tell when someone feels sad it would make sense that you would recognise sad music and empathise.

      Really though we don’t know the reasons behind music having this effect. Neuroscientists, music psychologists, computer scientists, anatomists and other scientists are all investigating it – so there are lots of possible careers at the interface if you’re interested!

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