The Effect Of a Minor Stressor with Varying Auditory Stimuli on Physiological Response
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Date
2017Author
Johns, Chris
Romanoski, Josh
Dierking, Anna
Pfeifer, Courtney
Krouse, Adam
Publisher
Journal of Advanced Student Sciences (JASS)
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
College students experience high levels of stress relating to classes, exams, and personal
conflicts. Persistent high levels of stress can lead to adverse health outcomes such as mental
illness or digestive system complications. Many students use music as a method to cope with
stressful situations and anxiety levels, but also as a supplementary studying device. Past research
studies have established that high tempoed music, such as that heard in pop music, resulted in
increased physiological response and slow tempos heard in classical music, resulted in a
decreased physiological response. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether
varying genres of music affected the the physiological response of experimental participants after
the induction of a minor stressor. All participants were asked to perform a three minute word
search in four different experimental groups. Two groups received classical or pop music as the
auditory stimulus and a minor stressor, another group received no auditory stimulus, but a minor
stressor, and the last group received no auditory stimulus and no stressor. We hypothesized that
individuals who listened to pop music would experience a larger positive increase in heart rate,
diastolic blood pressure, systolic blood pressure, and respiration rate compared to classical
music. Our results showed that exposure to pop music lead to a heightened physiological stress
response based on higher systolic and diastolic blood pressures in reference to baseline. Classical
auditory stimulus had little effect in response to the stressor. Despite the statistically significant
physiological response in participants, music played no noticeable role on task performance
between treatment groups.
Subject
auditory stimulus
blood pressure
Heart Rate
Music
stress
Respiration
Permanent Link
http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1793/81875Description
An article that appeared in JASS, issue 2017