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

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.