Orange Coast College
Abstract
Music is valued to be an essential pillar in the improvement of one’s status and temperament in life. With this statement said, value depends on the person’s use of music in each context of his life when he hears the melody of certain popular genres. Only a few of the existing scholarly papers have focused on the investigation of people’s direct experience with music in a daily environment. More so with classical music, it is believed that the said music contributes to the improved productivity and an enhanced work performance of students. It is also viewed as an item that encourages focus and positive affect among people who prefer to listen to it as their background. Therefore, this study aims to measure the effect of classical music on the work performance of students in the Orange Coast College. The effects of classical music on this scenario may be in the case of positive affect as produced by listening to classical music. This study is given much preference to give light on the implications of classical music as it gains presence in the academic and organizational practice. The paper is expected to produce a positive result on the contributions that classical music which can help improve the school status of the students at Orange Coast College.
The Effect of Classical Music on the Work Performance of the Students of Orange Coast College
It was in the 1993 issue of the Nature Magazine that researchers have published a short article regarding the causal relationship that exists between Music and Spatial performance. They have discussed that the research has involved students who were exposed to Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major performed statistically essential scores in Stanford-Binet Intelligence Tests. It was said that those who listened to the sonata had higher scores as compared to those who did not (Swartz, n.d.).
Numerous studies as that mentioned above, have been conducted to measure the effect of music on a person’s mood, emotion or behavior. According to Lesiuk (2005), one of the proven benefits of music on the task performance is the increase of a person’s positive mood. As such, music is thought to evoke better affect and an increase in the state of arousal; thus having people perform better in other tasks. Although the mentioned effect has been proven, it is still argued that much is needed to be learned. As noted by Schlichting and Brown (1970), the first factual data on the study of music and its effect on productivity was made by Langdon and Wyatt in 1938. The said study has proven the beneficial effects of music on the improvement of production goals. Although useful as it is in the industry, a survey conducted by Konz in 1962 has contradicted music’s benefits and found that students performed menial tasks better while having background music at hand. This study is supported by findings as established by Kirkpatrick in 1943 who supposed that music blocked work that commanded higher mental concentration. Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky (1993) have even conducted a study that supports the notions above that there are no historical, anecdotal and correlational relationships that exist between the cognition of music and the performance of certain abstract tasks; (such as those in spatial and in mathematical areas).
However, although the preceding suggest the blockage of productivity because of music, it must still be considered that individual differences affect the results produced by listening to music. According to Lesiuk (2005), it is still possible that more people who listen to music are also more likely to witness increasingly heightening emotional reactions to music. This result was labeled by Lehmann as reported by Lesiuk (2005), as the emotional sensitivity to music.
Although the preceding has set standards on the expectations regarding the effects of music on productivity and emotion, so little is studied on the physiological effects of music on the emotions of students. It is only known that music has a proven effect on the respiratory, pulse and external blood pressures of a person as studied by Mursell in his discussion of the physiological responses of a person on the speed of the melody of music. Through this paper, an exploration of the effects of music to the performance of students in Orange Coast College will be made to add evidence to the beneficial results of having classical music present in the background, while students performed tasks essential to their academic improvement.
References
Lesiuk, T. (2005). The effect of music listening on work performance. Psychology of Music,33(2), 173-191. doi:10.1177/0305735605050650
Rauscher, F. H., Shaw, G. L., & Ky, C. N. (1993). Music and spatial task performance. Scientific Correspondence, 365(611), 611. doi:10.1038/365611a0
Schlichting Jr., H. E., & Brown, R. V. (1970). Effect of background music on student performance. The American Biology Teacher, 32(7), 427-429. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4443158
Swartz, L. (n.d.). The “Mozart Effect”: Does Mozart Make You Smarter? (Master's thesis). Retrieved from http://xenon.stanford.edu/~lswartz/mozarteffect.pdf
