Relaxing Music Prevents Stress-Induced Increases in Subjective Anxiety, Systolic Blood Pressure, and Heart Rate in Healthy Males and Females

Abstract

Previous research suggests that while subjective anxiety is reduced by relaxing music, the effect of music on physiological stress indices is less consistent. In the current study, the effect of relaxing music on participants' subjective and physiological response to stress was explored, with attention paid to methodological factors and mediating variables that might have contributed to inconsistencies in previous studies. Undergraduate students (43 females & 44 males) were exposed to a cognitive stressor task involving preparation for an oral presentation either in the presence of Pachelbel's Canon in D major, or in silence. Measures of subjective anxiety, heart rate, blood pressure, cortis..