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The effect of hopeful lyrics on levels of hopelessness among college students

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Abstract

Hopelessness is a product of negative future expectations, negative feelings toward the future, and feeling a lack of control over future improvements. College students are seen to experience hopelessness. This study aimed to reduce levels of hopelessness in college students through an intervention that involved listening to songs having hopeful lyrics. The sample consisted of college students (N = 66), who were randomly assigned to three groups, namely the lyrics-music group, music-only group, and the control group (no intervention). The Beck’s Hopelessness Scale was used to measure their levels of hopelessness before the intervention and at the end of four weeks. The lyrics-music group and the music group participants were exposed to songs and instrumental tracks, respectively, twice a week, for four weeks. The Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test for related samples was used to analyze the effect of the intervention on levels of hopelessness. The Kruskal–Wallis test was used to analyze the differences across the three groups. Results indicated that the lyrics-music group had a significant decrease in levels of hopelessness after the intervention. However, the music group and the control group showed no significant decrease. There was a significant difference between the three groups with regard to the difference score obtained from pre to post intervention. Thus, the evidence suggests that hopeful lyrics do have an effect on hopelessness and can be seen as differing from the functions of music alone.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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The authors did not receive support from any organization for the submitted work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Hosur Road, Bengaluru, Karnataka, 560 029, India

    Sonia Elizabeth Prasadam & Elizabeth Thomas

Authors
  1. Sonia Elizabeth Prasadam
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  2. Elizabeth Thomas
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Correspondence to Sonia Elizabeth Prasadam or Elizabeth Thomas.

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval

Approval was obtained from the ethics committee of the University in 2018. The procedures used in this study adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Appendices

Appendix 1

Table 4

Table 4 Normality test scores for pre-intervention hopelessness score, post-intervention hopelessness score, difference pre-post score, and no of sessions among the three groups
Full size table

Appendix 2

Figures 1 and 2

Fig. 1
figure 1

Flowchart of participant enrollment

Full size image
Fig. 2
figure 2

Frequency of participants engaging in different art forms

Full size image

Appendix 3

List of songs used with vocals for the lyrics-music condition and without vocal track for music condition.

  1. 1.

    Fight Song – Rachel Platten

  2. 2.

    Rainbow—Sia

  3. 3.

    It’s Gonna be okay – The Piano guys

  4. 4.

    Unwritten – Natasha Beddingfield

  5. 5.

    Try Everything—Shakira

  6. 6.

    Better Days—Hedley

  7. 7.

    So Small – Carrie Underwood

  8. 8.

    Sound of Surviving – Nicole Nordeman

  9. 9.

    One step at a time – Jordin Sparks

  10. 10.

    Tell your Heart to beat Again – Danny Gokey

Appendix 4

Expert validated criteria for song selection.

  1. 1.

    Words talking about comfort

  2. 2.

    Words talking about silver linings

  3. 3.

    Words talking about raising after a fall

  4. 4.

    Words talking about walking toward the light

  5. 5.

    Words talking about pushing oneself to move forward

  6. 6.

    Words talking about happy endings

  7. 7.

    Words talking about courage / Words talking about strength and courage

  8. 8.

    Words talking about self-confidence and self-reliance

  9. 9.

    Overcoming a challenge no matter what

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Prasadam, S.E., Thomas, E. The effect of hopeful lyrics on levels of hopelessness among college students. Curr Psychol 42, 21648–21658 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-02934-1

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