Do Stress Levels Affect Response Reactions to Background music?

Abstract

Music is different sounds put together to create harmonies. Stress is a reaction to an interference that disturbs the functioning of an organism. Although many previous experiments tested the effect of music on stress levels and reactions, the correlations among three factors (perception, processing, and reaction) has not been investigated. The objective of this experiment is to test the effect of stress levels on correlations of three factors within physical response reaction with and without background music. It is hypothesized that participants with high-stress levels would have the fastest response reaction regardless of the type of music they listen to. Each participant was randomly put in one group, each group having different testing sequences. The participants then took a stress test, listened to cheerful, suspenseful, and no music for thirty seconds each, and took a “push the button activity” to test their reaction speed. Participants were divided into different groups according to their stress levels and reaction time under different music conditions was compared. Listening to music worsened participants' reactions, however it had the least influence on low stress participants. The data showed that there is no significant difference in reaction times possibly due to the small sample size. It rejects the hypothesis that high stress levels will have a faster response reaction time regardless of the music they listen to. Participants with high stress levels have a faster reaction time and so do low stress levels. Future work includes specific age requirements and extended time period for data collection.

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