The objective of the research is to examine the correlation between emotional response to music and contentment on the list of undergraduates of UTAR: Perak Campus. Besides that, the gender distinctions in emotional reaction to music and gender differences in contentment will be evaluated as well.
The studies show that there are over fifty percent of the individuals scored more than 4 out of the maximum credit score of 7. It means that they typically have an average level of pleasure. There are only few participants fall season in low happiness level which have scored significantly less than 3 and about more than 1 / 4 of participants show up in high contentment level which scored 5 or above.
Emotional Reaction to Music and Happiness
This research discovered that there is a significant relationship in emotional reaction to music and enjoyment on the list of university's undergraduates. The level of emotional reaction to music among both male and female undergraduates is correlated with their respective enjoyment level. This is reinforced by Lamont (2011) where the analysis results show that young adults will probably have strong positive experience from music listening, especially if it had experienced a dominant strong impact in their lives. This end result show the correlation between emotional respond to music and the pursuit for joy as music might provide a possible link with various aspects to find enjoyment or even to reach a peaceful state of mind free from any side effects. (Lamont, 2011) Another research that can support the result of this finding expresses that music being attentive was claimed to be usually relaxation, mood advancements, and the as lowering negative psychological well-being such to be under anxiety and stress. (Kallinen & Ravaja, 2008)
Other than that Saaikallio, Nieminen & Brattico (2011) support the results of the research's as it was found that it isn't actually only happy music that can evoke emotions of happiness in the listener. It had been also found that unhappy music can generate positive thoughts such as joy as well, which may be anticipated the individual's need to protect happiness despite the miserable (musical) stimulus, or also because the need to not be extremely emotionally affected or handled by the particular piece of music. (Saaikallio, Nieminen & Brattico, 2011) With this notion, it can further support the relationship between emotional reaction to music and enjoyment, as the type of music will not become a hurdle in the obtained positive thoughts of enjoyment through hearing music.
In a similar study Truck Goethem & Sloboda (2011) found that music plays an important role in the creation of joy as well as relaxation. Other studies include: (1) music works well in helping strategies of regulating emotions such as distraction. (2) music is quite a successful device for affective legislation alongside with other styles of mechanisms of coping. (Truck Goethem & Sloboda, 2011) The research also shows that enjoyment is the highest percentage affect being regulated with music which facilitates this research's result on emotional respond to music and happiness relationship. Hearing music can regulate one's feelings and with joy being the easiest emotion to regulate through music listening, the better one's emotional respond to music the happier they are really.
Despite the disagreement that pleasure is induced from the music Konecni, Brown & Wanic (2008) discovered that the overall measure of the participants after hearing music was leaning more towards the positive feeling of feeling delight which is thought through the recollection with their life-events that seems to be rather mounted on the emotions experienced through music. The findings also recommended the big difference between originally experienced real life events' feelings and the induction of happy-sad feeling by music proceeding to convey that emotions induced in music exclusively triggers the listener's imagination (recollection) of that emotion once experienced. (Konecni, Brown & Wanic, 2008) Hence, the mental response to music can be applied by hearing happy music to cause positive feelings such as contentment.
Happiness and Gender
This research exhibited that we now have is a significant difference in enjoyment level in male and female. According to a study conducted by Yang (2008) proved that we now have gender dissimilarities in pleasure level where women tend to be more content than men before old age but their delight level appears to declines when in old age; while men are tend to be more comfortable in old age. This is recognized by Easterlin (2010) that is exhibiting the same result displaying evidences between genders and decades, men and women are evenly happy and unhappy when look on the whole; but when appeared nearer at different life phases, women actually is more happy than men in early life but less happy and the end. (Easterlin, 2010) Inglehart (2002) discovered that women who are below 45 old have a tendency to be more pleased than man.
While the longitudinal research done by Stevenson & Wolfers (2009) shown that there is a declination of joy level in female over the years. Corresponding to Zaidi (2010), women have bigger orbital frontal cortices compared to men since there is highly factor in the proportion of orbital grey to amygdala volume. The ratio between the orbitofrontal cortex (part that in charge in regulating thoughts), and how big is the amygdala, are confusing in order to produce emotional reactions. The ratio appears much larger in women than men. On average, women might become more proficient of managing their emotional responses. (Zaidi, 2010) Biological differences and gender assignments are the most probably to lead distinction between male and feminine and delivering the variations of enjoyment among genders.
In another research conducted by Crossley & Langdridge (2005) proved gender differences on the list of perceived delight: Men obtained better in "sexual activity", being "liked", "sports" and running a "good interpersonal life"; whereas women scored better in getting a "close family", "loved by loved one", "assisting others", "good communal life" and being "liked" than men in assisting them to accomplish happiness. (Crossley & Langdridge, 2005) Hence the difference of joy level between genders.
Emotional Response to Music and Gender
This research showed that there are is a big change in emotional respond to music level between male and feminine. Relating Chentsova-Dutton & Tsai (2007) women were more emotionally reactive than men as they exhibited larger changes in overall reactivity, where they report a lot more extreme emotions while reliving trend and thoughts of passion for recollection of previous events. The study suggests that at some level, gender dissimilarities on emotional response may persist even across cultural groups. (Chentsova-Dutton & Tsai, 2007) Hence the gender differences in emotional reaction to music.
According to Nater, Abbruzzese, Krebs & Ehlert (2006) research on participants reactions to different musical stimuli (relaxing traditional music, and unpleasant metallica), women have tendency to demonstrate hypersensitivity to repulsive musical stimuli hence exhibiting the gender dissimilarities in emotional reaction to music. In a similar research, Istk, Brattico, Jacobsen, Krohn, Mјller & Tervaniemi (2009) found gender differences for some emotional when describing music conditions such as "touching", "feelings evoked", "ugly", and "drab", additionally male members have higher tendency expressing with negative adjective compared to female individuals.
Multiple researches implies often, Rickard (2004) found that gender difference may not donate to difference of psychological response to music in terms of physical arousal as the music with mental power treatment induced significantly increased increase in epidermis conductance and amount chills evenly in both gender. Lundqvist, Carlsson, Hilmersson & Justin (2009) show similar results with no gender distinctions in emotional reaction to music in conditions of both physical and mental response, as both male and female have equivalent response level to music stimuli.
Limitations and suggestion
This research acquired faced difficulties in finding journals of gender dissimilarities on level of happiness, gender variations in emotional response to music no subject of Malaysia context or others because there are limited resources and research upon this subject matter. The researcher acquired faced issues especially in finding publications or articles to compare on joy level and psychological reaction to music. Therefore, this research is to make contribution to the studies gender variations on delight level, and psychological respond to music and happiness.
In this research, it only engaged a hundred members (fifty male students of UTAR: Perak Campus, and fifty female students of UTAR: Perak Campus) which is not enough to generalize on the populace. Further research need to increase the sample size and different backgrounds of individuals so the consequence obtained could be generalized to the whole people. Furthermore, the participants of this analysis are mostly Chinese. Because of the same ethnics and idea systems they may have, may contribute to this effect which is not a gender distinctions in enjoyment level. Thus, further study should be done by relating more ethnicities and culture ideals in order to determine a more in depth study.
Moreover this research only focuses on the consequences of gender distinctions on emotional response to music, and degree of enjoyment which is not enough to review on the results of the research. Other demographic aspects should be contained in future study on this research, such as get older, ethnicity, contest, field of analysis and so forth. A suggestion for more accurate reliability of the research is to perform a cross-cultural study to look for the effects of ethnic differences on the results of the study.
Conclusion
This analysis is proposed to find out the relationship between emotional respond to music and level of enjoyment, the gender dissimilarities in emotional response to music, and gender differences in contentment. The results show that there surely is significant relationship in emotional reaction to music and pleasure which means the level of emotional response to music and level of happiness interrelates with each other. There is also a significant gender difference in emotional reaction to music, where this research found that female have more impressive range of emotional respond to music compared to male. Last but not least, gender variations in enjoyment have a significant final result as well, where female was found to have a higher level of joy than compared to male.
This research has made contribution to mental reaction to music and happiness researches in Malaysia context. To be able to improve the outcome of this analysis, more research as a larger sample range should be conducted to boost the validity and generalization.
