Sex-specific Effects of Music Listening on Couples’ Stress in Everyday Life

Abstract

Music listening in daily life is associated with stress-reducing effects on the individual with increasing effects when music listening occurs in a social context. As little is known about effects on couples, we investigated whether beneficial effects can be found in couples. Forty heterosexual couples were investigated using ambulatory assessment. Participants completed six assessments on music listening and subjective stress per day for five consecutive days. With each assessment, saliva samples for the later analysis of cortisol and alpha-amylase were collected. Music listening affected biopsychological stress markers in women and men, however in different ways: While music listening reduced cortisol in women, it increased alpha-amylase in men. Dyadic effects of music listening on stress markers were found. Men showed lower secretion of cortisol if women listened to music which was more pronounced when couples shared musical preferences. Both men and women showed higher alpha-amylase activity when their partner had listened to music. Music listening influences couples’ psychobiological stress levels in a sex-dependent manner with evidence of dyadic co-variation in physiological responses to music. Interventions for promoting stress reduction should consider that women and men differ in their use of music in everyday life.

Is consonance attractive to budgerigars? No evidence from a place preference study

“…Intriguingly, when a similar paradigm was applied to humans, only females spent more time in locations when they heard consonant sounds. Sex differences in humans' reaction to musical stimuli are rarely tested but have been described (Bowling et al 2019;Nater et al 2006;Wuttke-Linnemann). Still, that males did not spend more time with consonant stimuli was surprising, as the traditional surveybased tests of consonance preferences for humans have not produced any evidence of sex differences of which we are aware.…”

“…Sex differences in budgerigar acoustic preferences were shown in a previous place preference study (Hoeschele and Bowling 2016 ). For humans, sex differences in acoustic perception have sometimes been found (Bowling et al 2019 ; Nater et al 2006 ; Wuttke-Linnemann 2019 ), and while sex differences in human consonance perception have not been reported, it is not clear that they have been investigated. For these reasons and for parallelity, we analysed the data for each sex separately as well in both humans and budgerigars using the same tests as described above.…”

Uses and Perceptions of Music in Times of COVID-19: A Spanish Population Survey

“…Participating in any kind of musical experience, in general, and music making, more specifically, can have an impact on positive emotions ( Lamont, 2012 ; Croom, 2015 ; Campayo–Muñoz and Cabedo–Mas, 2017 ). These effects can increase when music occurs in a social context ( Wuttke-Linnemann et al, 2019 ). Music has been widely used in psychological and therapeutic interventions to enhance physical and mental health ( Peters, 1987 ; Bunt and Pavlicevic, 2001 ).…”

Psychological and Physiological Signatures of Music Listening in Different Listening Environments—An Exploratory Study

“…Consequently, from methodological perspective, it is currently challenging to get a unified perspective about the affordances of music in modulating our physiological and psychological state. While questionnaire and interview studies are conducted in laboratory settings as well as in regular listening environments, physiological studies including those with hormonal analyses have been conducted mainly in the laboratory (see, however the recent report about an ambulatory, home-performed, cortisol study by Wuttke-Linnemann and others [ 25 ]). Thus, one might speculate about the differential effects the listening environment has on the results obtained—it might be that the modulatory effects of music on its listener are stronger in a familiar environment, that is, at home, when compared with the laboratory [ 26 ].…”