Sociology @ WIC

We know that music can alter your mood

. Films have been using musical scores for years to create the right mood for a scene. At times you hardly notice the music at all but you are very receptive to the mood being conveyed. So can we use music to put us in a "productive" mood?

Research seems to support such a claim. For example, a trial where 75 out of 256 workers at a large retail company were issued with personal stereos to wear at work for four weeks showed a 10% increase in productivity for the headphone wearers. Other similar research conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois found a 6.3% increase when compared with the no music control group.

Your favourite rock band where you sing along to all the lyrics for example is not a good choice.

You can also use music to break up your study time. It's great for example to study for 40 minutes with music then 30 minutes without, each time you make a shift it will seem like a fresh study period and can actually help you study more effectively for longer.

five major birth order positions: only, oldest, second, middle, and youngest child

. Each one of these had its own personality traits, ingrained psychological issues, and effects later in life.

only child

Musicians achieve a higher grade point average (GPA) than non-musicians in the same school do. Music students achieve higher ACT scores and other college entrance exam scores. In a recent study, 66% of music majors who apply to medical school are accepted, the highest percentage of any group. Only 44% of biochemistry majors are admitted. Findings indicate that music study uniquely enhances higher brain functions required for reading, mathematics, chess, science and engineering.

Music training enhances reading skills.  A study done with 1st grade children shows significantly higher reading scores with children receiving piano/music instruction than did the control group. (Hurwitz, I., Wolff, P.H., Bortnick, B.D. & Kokas, K. 1975) Music training dramatically enhances children’s abstract reasoning skills necessary for math and science.  A study with 3 and 4 year-olds indicated that children who received piano/keyboard training performed 34% higher on tests measuring spatial-temporal ability than the non-musical group. These findings indicate that music uniquely enhances higher brain functions required for mathematics, chess, science and engineering. (Psychologist Dr. Frances Rauscher of the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh and physicist Dr. Gordon Shaw of the University of California at Irvine in 1994)

Music training increases intelligence.  Scores on a puzzle task, designed to measure spatial reasoning ability, increased significantly during the period they (three and four-year-olds) received the music lessons. In a research report, ‘Music Increases Intelligence Report,’ Dr Shaw said the piano was the instrument of choice because its keyboard gave the children both a linear and audible representation of the relationship between sounds. "What this means for parents is that they should consider giving their children piano lessons as early as age three or four," said Shaw. (College of Computing, Georgia Tech, August 24, 1994. UCI Journal, Spring 1997) Music enhances learning and creativity.  In another research test involving four and five-year olds, the effects of music on learning and creativity was measured. After twenty days of training, the music/dance group showed the greatest improvement in learning about body parts and creativity. (Mohanty, B. & Hejmadi, A. (1992). Effects Of Intervention Training on Some Cognitive Abilities of Preschool Children. Psychological Studies, 37, 31-37.)

The study does beg one age-old question: Which came first? Do kids think better of themselves because they're involved in sports, or do they get involved in sports because they already have higher self-esteem? "It's difficult to swoop into a one-time study and then determine whether the kids have better self-esteem to begin with," says McHale.

A psychological contract is created in which a staff person is led to believe that after several years of hard work, the supervisor will assist in a promotion. With that carrot, the boss obtains superior work, long hours and dedication from an ambitious employee. When the time comes for a return on the staff person’s investment, the boss reneges, either having overstepped his bounds (offering something he can’t provide) or failing to provide the staff person with the development necessary to step into the promised position.

controversial

He concluded people obey either out of fear or out of a desire to appear cooperative--even when acting against their own better judgment and desires. Milgram’s classic yet controversial experiment illustrates people's reluctance to confront those who abuse power.

This argument rests on the premise that we learn best through data collection without the burdens of judgment and discernment.

The Dumbest Generation

In the economics literature, Andreoni and Vesterlund (2001) seminal study demonstrated that the question of “Who is more generous?” is complicated. Their study differences in the “demand curves for altruism” where men are more responsive to the price of giving (pg. 1). They conclude that men are more generous when it is cheap to give, but women are more generous when it is more expensive to give.