Study: 'Heal the World' Lyrics Make a Difference

Can just hearing music about global love be a first step to changing the world?

A new study by the University of Sussex in England has shown that listening to music with positive ("pro-social") lyrics can actually affect how likely we are to help others. Experiments involving groups of students demonstrated that those who'd listened to positive music were consistently more likely to act positively when researchers 'accidentally' knocked over a container of pencils:

"On average, those who had heard songs such as Michael Jackson's Heal the World responded more quickly and picked up almost five times as many pencils as those in the other [neutral lyrics] group."

The study was published two months ago in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. You can read press articles referring to it at the links below. (Thank you, Michael, for your wonderful music! You continue to change the world in a million different ways. And we'll keep spreading the L♥VE!)

• Listening to positive lyrics can make us nicer, study shows
• "Heal the World" Helps Heal the World
• Positive lyrics can hit home with grumpy teenagers, study says
• Listening to positive lyrics can make you empathetic

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