Fall semester in 2014, I took a class that taught several methods of measuring and interpreting data from an engineering point of view. The main project required me to come up with my own research project, collect data for it, interpret the data, write a research paper on it, and present it in the form of a poster and slide show. The project was on something that I both experienced almost daily and something that was interesting to me: the effect of music on stress levels.
While doing work, many of my peers, including myself, listen to classical or instrumental music since we find it less distracting than music with lyrics. We listen to artists like Bach and Beethoven to the Piano Guys and 2Cellos. As I found through a few quick Google searches, many people have done similar projects using classical music, pop music, and hard rock. However, my project differed in that I only used instrumental music since that’s what I had experience with.
The independent variables were tempo of music and the activity being done; stress was measured by heart rate using an EKG sensor. The main focus of the project was to see how students’ stress levels were affected with different tempos; no music, slow, medium, and fast; of classical music while doing a problem-set. For control and comparison purposes, I also had the students rest and play a game while listening to the music.
The general results were that there was no strong correlation between rising tempo of music being played and a rising heart rate across all three activities. However, all five of the participants’ heart rate increased with increasing music tempo while they did a problem-set. The difference between resting heart rate and problem-set heart rate was only by a few beats per minute. This indicated that, at least in this small sample, higher tempo, even within the more relaxing realm of classical music, can induce stress by a rising heart rate. My subsequent recommendations for students were to either listen to nothing while working or to moderately low tempoed music.
For a quick description of the background and experimental setup of my project, click on the link below for the lightning talk. My poster that I presented to my professor, lab instructor, and various other students during the poster is also below.
Draw. Paint. Design. 