Examining the Effect of Mood and Music on Problem Solving Ability - Research Paper Example

? Examining the Effect of Mood and Music on Problem Solving Ability due This paper develops on the study about the effect of mood on problem solving ability. It explores the possibility of a relationship between the two variances of mood- good and bad- and music on an individual’s ability to solve cognitive problems. The study takes in to consideration of various genders over a good number of participants. Background music is used to gauge how it might affect individuals of good mood and bad mood. The study aims at establishing the possibility of a significant effect of music and mood on the ability to solve cognitive problems, and methods used involve dissemination of test questions that are expected to be answered or solved within the set environment. It bases on the hypothesis that the ability of a person in solving cognitive problems under such circumstances will be established. The relationship between quality and volume is, however, not considered. Rather, the study goes for the other variances of mood, especially strength of the mood. The effect of generational variation and attitude on music and mood aspect is not considered by this study. Examining the Effect of Mood and Music on Problem Solving Ability Scenarios requiring individuals to demonstrate levels of problem solving and necessary ability to negotiate through the said problems occur. The ability or ease of problem solving depends on an individual mindset as well the environment or external factors, which facilitate or inhibit the process of problem solving. Mood, as earlier investigated, is a lasting emotion on an individual due to a persistent feeling. It affects problem solving ability since negative mood will most likely inhibit the ability while positive mood will enhance the ability to solve problems. Mood, therefore, depends on emotions, although it is always either positive or negative. Strong emotions of anger, love and joy will always set the framework for problem solving. The study on effects of mood on problem solving majors mainly on the consideration of negative-positive moods as the key independent variable since it gives a clear outline and relationship with the ability to solve problems. Psychological studies can point out the relationship between music and mood in problem solving. Music has an impact on mood and, therefore, will influence the ability of an individual to solve a problem. There are cases where music can lead to development of a positive mood and, thus, enhance problem solving while it could sometimes create a negative mood or distraction to hinder one’s ability to solve problems. Music and Mood Music is a universal language of mankind and love. It plays a key role in the life of many through entertaining, rejuvenation, consolation and education. Basing on these qualities of music, it will have a key role in problem solving with the interaction of the existent mood. The quality or type of music will determine how an individual perceives it and will also determine the mood so developed by the individual. The characteristics of music, such as loud, soft, slow and fast, will be received differently by people of various gender and social values; hence will impact on their mood as they try to solve the problems they encounter. People facing emotional challenges of lost friends or relatives through death will have a resigned mood or simply melancholic and will, therefore, be better off with cool consoling gospel like music to enable them overcome their emotional challenge. Lathom (2002) argues that individuals with social problems such as relationship break ups will resort to soft love music to refresh their memories and keep them on course to solving their problems. Loud, rough music will distract any person undertaking research in which computation and extreme data analysis are involved but this will also depend on the mood. The constant challenge of attempting to solve a mathematical problem or scientific problem without success will result into sadness on an individual and the person develops a negative mood whose result is that the music he listens to when trying to solve the problem may only serve as distracter. Problem solving Every individual, at one time, comes to a situation where they must be able to solve a problem regardless of the mood or the environment. The person must therefore make a decision of how to solve the problem. A child, for instance, must find ways of communicating their problems to the mother, and will react differently in quiet environment in comparison to a musical environment. The musical tone of the mother or caretaker will give the baby confidence to produce different communication parameters and enable the solution of the problems, whether hunger or discomfort. People come up against tasks and challenges in the daily occurrence at work places or in the family set up which they must solve. The ability to solve these problems, whether they are economical or social, will always rely on interaction between mood, so developed, and the musical environment. Either way, the problem must be solved. Previous Study on Mood The study undertook to establish cognitive processes of solving problems as being based on moods as opposed to previous researches which actually based mood as greatly influencing social problem solving strategies. From the study, it was established that problem solving is affected greatly by moods and it did hypothesize that negative moods will result into low cognitive problem solving ability. The study did find out that there is little effect of a person’s mood on his/her cognitive processing in problem solving. This is attributed to various other underlying factors that influence cognitive processes and which will influence such problem solving processes. If the problem requires extreme energy, then no matter how much positive mood someone might be experiencing, they must have the required energy capacity to handle the job. Study 2 Previous Research This study integrates the interaction between mood and music to create an impact on problem solving ability of an individual. According to Hallman, Price and Katsarou (2002), music will enhance problem solving ability at some age where it can no longer distract hence a primary school kid might find it difficult to integrate and solve problems encountered in class in the presence of a background music while adults especially those in the design and computer industry will greatly and more efficiently solve problems in the presence of music. The nature or type of music also determines its role in enabling problem solving environment for example classical music is more efficient in enhancing problem solving because it keeps the mind refreshed while punk that wholly involves the mind will not promote more of problem solving. In children, some songs are meant to enhance their emotions and so build their moods to make them able to solve problems in life. These have been used as teaching songs to enhance the ability of children to integrate and approach the problems they meet. A study by public Med established that through listening to preferred music, people developed a positive mood which is necessary in problem solving. The happier people are more ready to participate in surveys than sad and neutral individuals. Studies have also established a relationship between work output on individuals who listen to music from the internet and those who prefer quiet environments. The mood of those who listen to music have been found to be positively good while the quiet ones have been found to have negative mood. The result of such negative and positive mood is realized in the rate and accuracy with which they perform the work. The happy ones who listen to music enjoy the work and therefore come up with solution to the challenges they encounter thus increasing their work output. Those with negative mood find a lot of difficulties in problem solving because the mind is not relaxed leading to depression. Present Study on Mood and Music There already exists evidence that mood and music will influence cognitive problem processing. The challenge that emerges is how much or how far can the mood and music affect such processes. The parameters and extent of the influence of music and mood are the main reasons for this study so as to be able establish precisely how the interaction between the two factors will affect the process of problem solving. The study therefore attempts to address how manipulation in mood and music will affect the efficiency of people of various gender in problem solving. The study hypothesis is that for someone in a bad mood, music will enhance problem solving ability while for someone in good mood; music will act as distraction hence lower the problem solving ability of the person. Method Participants In this study, the subjects were randomly recruited from within the campus. There were a total of eight subjects who were assigned to the two independent variables of music and mood. The variables were assigned so as to be able to identify and organize a response challenge through directed questions which would ensure that information was not so complicated to handle. Materials In this study, it was necessary to develop mood whether good or bad in the participants. It was also necessary to determine whether the mood was actually there and questions to establish the problem solving ability of the individuals. Two sets of pictures were used to create the opposing moods on the individuals. Background music was also available while a set of questions were used to determine the problem solving ability of each individual. The two sets of participants with differently induced moods would respond to the study questions differently in the background of same music which would play throughout the study. This made it necessary to gauge how the good and bad mood would interact with the background music in the problem solving process. Procedure With the background music “I am yours” by Jason Mraz playing, the two groups of 40 each were given the two sets of pictures to induce the expected good and bad moods. The set of questions were then administered to each of the groups and limited time provided to respond these questions. After viewing the images and with the background music playing, the participants filled the questionnaires accordingly to give information which would be associated to the mood and music. Results From the study, 37 of the participants were of the male gender while 43 of them were females. Out of this number, 41 developed good mood while 39 were of the bad mood. The dependent variable of efficiency in answering the survey questions was recorded with reference to mood and music check and analyzed in the normal fashion of one way variance to establish the deviation and variance of the data. The average age of the subjects was 24.5725 which is an average active age capable of answering the test questions and with the gender balanced across; it was possible to have a fair representation of the statistics. The participants were able to answer approximately 2 questions per minute (M=1.8783) with a deviation of 0.49. More than a half the participants responded positively to music to enable them get correct answers (1.5) with a deviation of 0.5 same was the effect of mood as the majority who responded positively to the music had bad moods (1.48) at a deviation of 0.5. Discussion This research study investigated the interaction between mood and music in the problem solving scenario with main emphasis on cognitive problem solving. The results from the study indicate that most people who responded more efficiently to the questions were in bad mood and were therefore helped by the music to respond to the question as this could boost their bad moods. People in the good mood category found it difficult difficulties in responding to the questions in the atmosphere of the background music which suggest a distraction. The results indicate significance of music and mood on problem solving. Though there exists that significance, there is little variation considering the ranges of standard deviation for the figures which is approximately 0.5 Interpreting the Results The results which put the number of those with bad mood to have responded to the questions efficiently could be interpreted to consider the effect of music on the mood. The people became relaxed and could therefore respond faster and correctly to the questions compared to the ones with good mood who were actually distracted by the music since they did not have anything bothering them initially. However, the results are not so varied to conclusively lead to such a deduction since the level of efficiency and response is near the same among some individuals. This could be because of some factors very specific to an individual such as like and dislike to music or the particular music being played as background music (Lathom, 2002). The effect of such attitude independent of mood and music should be reduced or eliminated from the study so as to obtain relatively correct results. The answering of the questions is a cognitive process and it seems even the moods do not interplay in providing solution since the problem overrides the effect of mood. The other non research parameters like attitude and perceptions should be treated in this research as covariant to be able to establish their significance on the results. It should be noted that problem solving in this case of study is not absolutely cognitive but also behavioral. Based on this, an individual will respond depending on particular behavior trend independent from mood and the background music. The memory of the person plays a key role in responding to the questions since even if the mood would be boosted by the music, if the person is unable to recall what the correct response to a particular question is then the person may not be able to provide the correct answer. The effect of music and mood is in creating an enabling environment for the brain or mind to be able to integrate the problem but not aiding in recalling the answers. The similarity or closeness of the results could be associated to the challenges of brain and not music as a mood enhancer or distracter. In this survey, music was constant and therefore the people with good mood who did not need the music could not be catered for leading to poor results for the study. If the aspects of problem solving and factors were sub-categorized in a process where each aspect was considered differently, then significant variations could be established between people with good mood and those with bad mood. Since the age difference of the people used in the study was 45, this gives a nearly generation of difference which could be a factor especially based on generational priority. With the mean being at 24, it implied those above 30 who were interviewed were so few that their number almost turned insignificant. It should be noted that within a generation, differences in preference exist with strong feelings about these differences being amongst the youth who seem to be the main subjects of the study. There is a possibility of developed attitude towards the survey based on the background music. This will not consider the aspect of mood especially in answering the questions. If the person did not like the music or had some bad memories associated with music, even the bad mood they could initially be having cannot help improve their response to the questions but will feel irritated. The way males respond to music also differ from females and this should have been considered in the study as a variable since it can result into a significant contribution on the results of the study. Limitations Despite a relative degree of success in this study, many limitations can be highlighted. The study lacked a control mechanism with which to compare the variations. All the participants were included in the same set up of music with only variation being good and bad mood. Since music is an independent variable, it would have been necessary to set up control by having some if not few participants in a no music scenario so as to gauge their response (Lathom, 2002). However this cannot be a strong limitation as the first study evaluated the effect of mood on problem solving. It was also necessary to have participants who were deemed neutral and whose mood had not been skewed so as to tell how the non moody participants responded in the presence of music. This would be able to bring out a clear-cut scenario and comparison for the mood and music factors. There are cases of those participants who are anti music whose participation in the study gave skewed results. There should have been screening to ensure only participant with fair attribution to music and whose moods could be affected by what they saw could be used. Since this was not done, it is likely that may be the participants could have been picked without proper considerations and such issues like rigid moods and attitude towards music found their way into the study results; a factor that could be attributed to invariable trend in the data. Lesiuk (2010) explains that there could be other means establishing people in good and bad mood for the study. This is because it could be quite difficulty to induce a mood to a person based on a picture. The perception that it could be the purpose of introducing the pictures is enough to make participants difficult to nurture into the required mood status. Mood is a persistent emotion which could be hard to develop in a person within the limited time and through the use of simple images. Moods developed from such media do not always last any considerable time. For example, someone who gets into a bad mood as a result of watching a mood would change into a jovial mood as soon as he/she stops watching the movie. This could have been the case in this one. The method, where the efficiency in responding to the study questions was used, must have affected the study result and the objective which was determining the effect of music and mood on solving cognitive problems. The duration and the amount of questions designed for the study could not provide a wide range for comparison and analysis of the study results which could lead to false conclusion from the results. Future Research The research as it is does not come up with a comprehensive conclusion on the effect of mood and music in problem solving; it does give an insight into a relationship between the two variables and work. The result, though leaning towards satisfying the claim, does concretely define the extent. It indicates that people in bad mood would be boosted by some kind of music to be able to solve cognitive problems while those of good mood will be distracted. It is therefore necessary that further research be conducted with an aim of determining the kind of music and nature which will influence the problem solving problems. A wide range of factors should be consider to establish the extent to which those with good moods are affected by music and which kind of music could be affecting their performance. In such future studies, it would be necessary to overcome the stated limitations of this study for example screening and setting up controls to be able to gauge the outcome so as establish a clear and concise relationship between mood and music effect on problem solving process. There should be better evaluation mode as in the use of test questions which can give comprehensive information on the test variables. Future research should aim at categorization in the cognitive problem solving process to ensure effectiveness in responding to the questions with the rate per time issue adequately addressed. It should also be considered that the questions administered should be ones that can be adequately answered by most if not all of the participants barring any limitations which should be brought about by mood and music. This is because, if some subjects may not be able to answer some questions based on lack of memory, then the results would still be invalid and will make it difficult to arrive at conclusions. Other components of the variables, such as age and gender, should be addressed with the significance they can have for this study. This will help in determining and factoring in generational variation and conflicts, as these also affect the quality and degree of response. Conclusion This study has tried to set up and evaluate the interaction between mood and music on cognitive problem solving process. From the results, it has been established that there is a relationship between the two variables of mood and music. People of bad mood are boosted by music of a kind while those of good mood are distracted by the same. This is in line with the confirmation of the hypothesis set for the study. With the mood being considered as good or bad, other valence related to the aspect of mood were not covered. This leaves an ambiguity as to the effect of such aspects on the entire problem solving process. The limitations from the result of the study have a lot of leaning and bearing on other significance factors, which are responsible for a person’s responsiveness to mood changing elements, as well as music and content. The generational variation among the participants was also noted to have contributed to the insignificance of some aspects of results, which actually necessitates factoring such differences in the set up and analysis of the study results. With further research to establish the degree of the effect of mood and music on problem solving, it would be necessary that such limitations be addressed so as to able to determine the nature and quality of music that influences the mood of each individual towards solving cognitive problems. With a proper control, it should be able to bring out the difference, and a conclusion on the relationship between the aspects of mood and music on the cognitive problem solving processes. Figure 1: Graph of Mood and music against efficiency References Hallman, S., Price, J. & Katsarou, G. (2002). The effects of background music on primary school pupil’ task performance. Educational Studies, 28, 111-122. Lesiuk, T. (2010). The effect of preferred music on mood and performance in a high- cognitive demand occupation. PubMed, Summer;47(2):137-54 Lathom, W. (2002). Pediatric music therapy. Springfield, Ill.: C.C. Thomas. Read More