oListening to Classical Music does not Make You Smarter (a study on the Mozart effect)

Introduction
In 1993 Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky conduct an experiment to demonstrate the effect of
listening music by Mozart on the human brain, research participants were given a series of
spatial tasks to complete. Before the test, one of the participants was asked to listen to ten
minutes of Mozart’s sonata for two pianos in D major (K448). Before the test the participant,
one of the subject was asked to listen to repetitive relaxation music, and the other to no music
at all and of course Mozart’s piano sonata. The participant who listened to Mozart did better at
the spatial test that other students, but the effect only worked temporary for about fifteen
minutes, this effect was later called The Mozart Effect. But, the research did not mention or
made the claim that listening to Mozart’s music can make people smarter
Over the years people tend to think that listening to classical music in this case Mozart’s
music makes your IQ higher or the effect of the music on children can make them smarter,
which becomes a common and popular opinion. Mozart is in fact a genius in terms of his song
writing ability, his songs are indeed complex, but can it actually make people smarter just by
listening to them?. Researcher to this day still debate whether or not The Mozart Effect actually
exist. Even if it’s just an exaggerate term, there’s still some other positive effects that could be
found, although maybe not as significant and impactful as the general people think.
Mozart effect in the public eye
Some people think that Mozart effect is real and can make people smarter including the
belief that exposing your infant to classical music on a young age can make them grow up
smarter or even when they’re still a fetus. The fetus's ability to hear begins to develop during week
18 of pregnancy. But whether this will give babies a head start in education or on a musical career
hasn't been proven. Some experts even worry that it can be harmful, a theoretical risk that parents
may unknowingly disrupt the natural sleep patterns of their fetus as they attempt to turn the womb
into an live orchestra concert actually hinder the development instead of nurturing it (Murkoff,
October 24, 2018). While it can make your babies more soothing, calm, and maybe grow up
loving classical music, there’s no indication that it can make your babies smarter. Additionally
there’s some effect of music in general for children like learning music instrument or singing
a song to them, but not for listening classical music (moore, 2010).
As for the adults, there’s also people that claim that it can made your IQ higher or
improve your general intelligence. Like the original research said, there is only claim of an
improvements in the human visual-spatial reasoning after listening to a short period of Mozart's
music, so in theory in can improve your improve short-term and shape-predicting skills. But
the paper also said that the effect is not long lasting and no claim of sudden peak of intelligence.
But still, a lot of people are still believe that listening to Mozart 5 minutes before a math test
can guaranty you walking out of that that test with an ace.
Not only people claim that there’s an effect for human intelligence, there’s also claim
that it also have an effect on animals. In his book, Mind Myths, Sergio Della Sala a psychologist
visited a mozzarella farm in Italy, there, the farmer claim that the buffalos produced better milk
after listening to Mozart’s music three times a day. Its still not clear whether this is true or not
because there is no other research that supports this claim.
Classical music does not makes you smarter
So, does the Mozart effect truly exist? yes and no. No in the sense that it can make you
smarter, and yes that it has effects although not very impactful. A study on the effect on
intelligence of listening to music called 'Mozart's Requiem' by music scientists were either
unable to repeat the finding or found a transient effect lasting no more than 20 minutes after
listening to classical music and some suggest no long-term effect at all on IQ. In 2010
Researchers at the University of Vienna conduct The Mozart Effect research and performed a
meta-analysis of nearly 40 studies but found no evidence that Mozart’s music enhance any
person’s intelligence, and when researchers analyzed the general trend across studies, they
calculated that the overall effect if it even exists, it would be small. So listening to music does
little for improving overall intelligence in the long term. (University of Vienna, 2010).
A studies conducted by Samuel Mehr, a Harvard Graduate School of Education also
found no evidence that music training can improve young children brain. the research consist
of Mehr teaching children in a music class using assessment tools designed to test areas of
cognition, vocabulary, mathematics, and two spatial tasks.
“Instead of using something general, like an IQ test, we tested four specific domains of
cognition,” Mehr said. “If there really is an effect of music training on children’s cognition, we
should be able to better detect it here than in previous studies, because these tests are more
sensitive than tests of general intelligence.”
While the children performed comparably on vocabulary and spatial tasks, there’s no evidence
for cognitive benefits from music training. (Reuell, 2013)
Does it have any other positive effect?
Even if it doesn’t make them smarter, classical music certainly won’t hurt anyone. If it
calms the parents down, it will probably also calm the baby down. Although it does not have
any effect to your children intelligence, singing to them, giving them an musical instrument to
learn, and maybe even enrols them to music class could be great for your child's developing
brain and make them even more creative but it won’t effects their general intelligence.
(Anderson, 2016).
And for the adults, classical music may not make you a genius, but depends on your
taste of music listening to them can improve your mood. A few studies proved that listening to
your favorite music can effect the drops in your blood pressure. (Trapp and Voit 2016; Gruhlke
et al 2015). Others studies also find that people with anxiety find the greatest anxiety antidote
is when they get to choose the music they listen to. (Bradt, 2013). So, yes it does have effects
on the health aspect; it can help us cope with stress, but the effects is very small that it does not
need to be viewed as something impactful. Thus, instead of the music, it depends on our
emotions, if you are feeling down or in a bad mood, certain music might make you feel more
happy and energized, and listening to sad and moody songs can also lead into a more gloomy
day and maybe listening to a calming and soothing songs like classical music for example, can
boost in our ability to concentrate. That’s why people seem to think that it can make you smarter
whereas it just help us to be more less stressful in a certain situation like a moment before test
and help us to be more calm and collected. However, we should not think that merely listening
to music will make us smarter.
Still in the subjects of our emotion, another research this time using Mozart’s music
and Stephen king’s short stories. The researchers found that the individuals performed better
after whichever experience they preferred to. So the one that enjoys listening to Mozart has a
greater impact than when listening to king’s short stories and the other way around. Same when
in 1996 instead of using Mozart’s music the researcher uses blur’s music, a rock band that was
popular in the 90s. The effects were nonetheless the same, people who enjoy listening to the
band got better performance when they did a short test of visual-spatial ability. So once again
it depends on the listeners and how they react to it. In Mozart’s case, it may be because the
certain song that people are listening is the one that able to bring easiness and calmness to the
human mind.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the Mozart effect does not make you smarter in any significant way, a
lot of follow up research has been done after the original research proving this, and like the
original research said it only improve your spatial reasoning but only momentarily even though
other researchers were unable to replicate the effect, so its clearly stated that it does not makes
you smarter but people still gets the wrong message. Although listening to music does not make
you smarter, it does have other positive effects that are not that significant and impactful to the
human body. Depends on the person emotions, some music can make you happy like listening
into a upbeat song, and some can lead into a gloomy day if you decide to put on some sad
songs. Again, the effects of the songs depend on your what you wanted to hear. People need to
change their understanding about The Mozart Effect, music is a lot of things but thinking that
exposing your children with classical music can make them a genius, can make a person
instantly smart or hopping that it can boosts their IQ, well that’s just taking the wrong notes.