Music – a collective spectacle that incorporates all boundaries of nationality, race and culture. An instrument for exciting emotions and feelings – many music psychologists would agree that music is more powerful than language. An amplified interest in brain processing musical emotion can be recognized to the way in which it is described as a “language of emotion”.
From the simplest form of exposure to music – a smartphone and some earplugs- to a more complicated form – an orchestra with numerous musicians – music can be so evocative that it can be defined as standing midway between thought and phenomenon. Not to mention the personal relationship of music and your memories.
Music can be assumed as a form of perceptual illusion. The brain enforces structure on an arrangement of sounds and in effect, generates a completely new arrangement of meaning. The appreciation of musical arrangements depends on the capability to process fundamental structure, but this structure should include unpredictability to ensure the emotional appeal of the musical arrangement.
Though music appears related to features of language, it is deep-rooted in the primitive brain structures that include emotion, pleasure and motivation. The brain coordinates neural oscillators to the beat of the music – cerebellum activation, and calculates next beat in the musical arrangement.
According to music psychologists, an individual’s reaction to the groove of any music is generally unconscious since it is primarily processed in the cerebellum and not in the frontal lobes.
According to Ms. Shedy Dee Mallari – a Registered Psychometrician – “Based on the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), there are four dichotomy based on the theory of Carl Jung, namely: Extrovert-Introvert, Intuitive-Sensing, Feeling-Thinking, and Perceiving-Judging. Extroverts prefer happy music like pop, hip-hop, rap and generally prefer music that doesn’t require too much thinking. Intuitive people on the other hand prefer more complex music, including classical and jazz, which makes sense because intuitive people have a greater aesthetic appreciation.
Expectedly, feeling types are more emotionally affected by the music they listen to. This is because feeling types are more personal than thinking types. Lastly, perceiving types tend to be less critical on the music they listen to and enjoy a range of genres. Judging types, on the other hand, enjoy exclusive genres. This can be explained because perceiving types are often more open and accepting than judging types.”