Claim 1:
Music allows people to center their thoughts and worries inward and can help create peace within a person who is bothered mentally. If there are any emotional imbalances within a person, therapists and doctors could offer music as a way to calm the person down and allow time for reflection. In fact, psychologists and therapists occasionally request for a patient to use music as a means of therapy due to the positive effects it has on our brains. Music therapists use music as a way to trigger certain emotional responses within the patient in order to heal them or make them feel comfortable with opening up about certain issues. Music therapists also record favored genres, beats, artists, and instruments in order to get a better understanding of a person’s preferences. A person is more likely to open up to their therapist if their favorite artist or song is playing, so analyzing the patient’s change in mood, thoughts, or emotions as they listen to the song allows for therapists to make accurate conclusions about not only the patient, but the effect the genres has on them. Anxiety, depression, improving the lives of people with serious cases of dementia, and restoring lost speech are a few of the issues that music therapy can help to resolve. While there are other diseases that allow individuals to use music as a therapeutic activity, the ones listed above are the most common disorders that call for this type of therapy.
On the other hand, since music triggers the release of dopamine, we often feel good while listening to music and people can often times become addicted to it while undergoing music therapy. If a patient becomes addicted to music and is constantly shutting out the world and isolating oneself, serious consequences can result from this; social anxiety and the failure to communicate with others can lead to the individual worsening their symptoms of depression, anxiety, or any similar issue. While music therapy does not work for every person struggling mentally and physically, as a whole, music allows an individual to find inner peace and pushes and individual to seek self-reflection.
CLAIM 2
People listen to a particular type of music in order to put them in a good mood, calm them down, or to energize themselves, but due to differences pertaining to traits within individuals, their tastes will all differ. Some specific traits that affect a person's music taste are the characteristics of music, repeated listening, age, personality, mood, arousal, and developmental issues. The differences allow individuals to identify themselves within society and define their values in life, while embracing their uniqueness  rather than isolating oneself due to their distinct characteristics. For example, a person undergoing developmental issues may face certain setbacks within life, but with music they are capable of exploring their identities, finding out who they want to be, and can experiment with different personalities while communicating their personal beliefs to others without feeling judged. Individuals also are more open to branching out and seeking their individuality, which can affect their personalities and musical preferences; music could have the potential effect of making certain people become more sociable with others. In relation to personalities, individuals tend to have unique senses of humor resulting in them developing different tastes in activities, music, and values; everyone has their differences, and determining a person's music  preferences is one of the many examples that takes into account a person’s personality and their unique qualities. For example, an extroverted person would most likely prefer loud and outgoing music that compliments their personality, rather than sad and gloomy music. Another factor that plays a major role in prefered music, are people’s moods. An individual in a depressing and somber mood will tend to choose the calming and melancholy music that relates to their feelings. Overall, a person’s personality, mood, and other specific traits all affect their preference in music, leading to differences in taste of music.
CLAIM 3
While external factors may affect a person's overall opinion on a specific genre, a certain type of music should have similar effects to everyone listening to it. In fact, an experiment was conducted by an individual who compared five different music types to each other and their effects they have on a group of five hundred individuals. After playing each genre and recording the person’s initial thoughts and feelings on the music, the experimenters then compared the results and sought out similarities and differences between the effects a genre has on a person mentally. Sophisticated music allowed people to obtain information about the musicians or themselves through the lyrics, and enabled individuals to express themselves. Electronic music tends to energize people, put them in a good mood, and makes feel close with others; people tend to feel the need to sing and dance along with this type of music. Rock music permits individuals to express their values, identities, beliefs, and gives people a better understanding of their thoughts and inner self. Beat/folk/country music puts people in a good mood and balances people emotionally while influencing people to dance; the least amount of people preferred this genre of music. The only genre of music used in the experiment that did not affect a person’s mood, emotions, or arousal was pop, and instead made people want to identify with the artist and meet other people. Again, while external factors may affect a person’s initial thoughts, as a whole, people tend to develop the emotions and thoughts described above after listening to these genres. For example, a person’s mood may differ from another person’s, affecting their results and possibly skewing the expected outcome; one individual could be experiencing a bad day, while another could be in a positive mood, resulting in them perceiving the genres differently.