Get your creative juices flowing by listening to happy music!

New Delhi: The power of music is undeniably unmatched. Various studies have confirmed highly effective results when it comes to the healing properties of music in situations of emotional and/or mental stress.

It not only has an impact on humans, but on animals too, which many researches have shown as well.

Many people resort to music when they feel low, sad or depressed, because it is soothing and makes you feel calm and at ease.

A study, however, has said that listening to happy music can help get your creative juices flowing.

Scientists found that listening to happy melodies may help generate more, innovative solutions as compared to silence.

Researchers, including those from University of Technology Sydney in Australia, had 155 participants complete questionnaires and split them into experimental groups.

Each group listened to one of four different types of music that were categorised as calm, happy, sad, or anxious, depending on their emotional valence (positive, negative) and arousal (high, low), while one control group listened to silence.

After the music started playing, participants performed various cognitive tasks that tested their divergent and convergent creative thinking.

Participants who came up with the most original and useful solutions to a task scored higher in divergent creativity, while participants who came up with the single best possible solution to a task scored higher in convergent creativity.

Researchers found that listening to happy music, which they define as classical music that is positive valence and high in arousal, facilitates more divergent creative thinking compared to silence.

The variables involved in the happy music condition may enhance flexibility in thinking, so that additional solutions might be considered by the participant that may not have occurred to them as readily if they were performing the task in silence, researchers said.

This study shows that creative cognition may be enhanced through music. Researchers suggest that the study may also demonstrate that music listening could promote creative thinking in inexpensive and efficient ways in various scientific, educational and organisational settings.

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

(With PTI inputs)