College students usually find themselves in a better mood after listening to music, regardless of whether it is rock or classical, if it’s stadium music or hotel music.”Not only did our sample of students report more positive emotions after listening to music, but their already positive emotions were intensified by listening to music,” says Dr. Valerie N. Stratton, associate professor of psychology at Penn State’s Altoona Campus. Each of the positive moods listed in the Penn State survey (i.e. optimistic, joyful, friendly, relaxed and calm) showed an increase after periods of listening to music. At the same time, each of the negative moods (e.g. pessimistic, sad) showed a decrease, the one exception being fearful, which stayed the same. “Every positive mood except loving rose in intensity after episodes of listening to music,” notes Dr. Annette H. Zalanowski, associate professor of music at Penn State’s Altoona Campus. “Meanwhile, most of the negative moods showed a drop in frequency, except sad, hateful and aggressive, which either stayed the same or increased slightly.” Stratton says, “The non-music majors reported listening to music for an average of 161.4 minutes per day while the music majors reported 117.7 minutes of listening. A total of 905 episodes of listening to music were reported by the non-music majors and 819 by the music majors.

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