The Interplay of Preference, Familiarity and Psychophysical Properties in Defining Relaxation Music

Background: The stress response has been well documented in past music therapy literature. However, hypometabolism, or the relaxation response, has received much less attention. Music therapists have long utilized various music-assisted relaxation techniques with both live and recorded music to elicit such a response. The ongoing proliferations of relaxation music through commercial media and the dire lack of evidence to support such claims warrant attention from healthcare professionals and music therapists.

Objective: The purpose of these 3 studies was to investigate the correlational relationships between 12 psychophysical properties of music, preference, familiarity, and degree of perceived relaxation in music.

Methods: Fourteen music therapists recommended and analyzed 30 selections of relaxation music. A group of 80 healthy adults then rated their familiarity, preference, and degree of perceived relaxation in the music.

Results: The analysis provided a detailed description of the intrinsic properties in music that were perceived to be relaxing by listeners. These properties included tempo, mode, harmonic, rhythmic, instrumental, and melodic complexities, timbre, vocalization/lyrics, pitch range, dynamic variations, and contour. In addition, music preference was highly correlated with listeners' perception of relaxation in music for both music therapists and healthy adults. The correlation between familiarity and degree of relaxation reached significance in the healthy adult group.

Conclusions: Results from this study provided an in-depth operational definition of the intrinsic parameters in relaxation music and also highlighted the importance of preference and familiarity in eliciting the relaxation response.