Listen to the Birds! Their Songs May Relieve Anxiety and Paranoia

New research suggests that birdsong has substantial positive effects on mental health and mood.

Researchers found that people who listened to birdsong experienced significant reductions in anxiety and paranoia (excessive suspiciousness). By contrast, noisy sounds such as traffic—including cars, engines, sirens and construction—were found to increase depressive states.

Dr Emil Stoble of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany, commented on the study in Scientific Reports, published on 13 October 2022:

“The results suggest it may be worthwhile to investigate targeted use of natural sounds, such as birdsong, in clinical settings—for example, hospital waiting rooms or psychiatric settings. For someone seeking an easily accessible intervention to reduce distress, listening to an audio clip of birdsong would be a great option.”

Nature’s Calming Effect

Stobbe said the aim was “to investigate how the physical environment affects the brain and mental health”. He added that, although many studies have examined the environment’s visual features, its auditory aspects remain under-researched.

It was noted that most people encounter situations in which they may experience anxiety and paranoia, even without being aware of it.

“We wanted to investigate whether nature’s beneficial effects could also influence these states. In theory, birds may represent a natural, life-supporting environment, conveying nature’s positive effects to people listening to birdsong.”

An earlier study comparing natural and urban sound conditions showed that natural sounds improved cognitive performance but not mood. The current study varied the sounds and focused not only on cognition and general mood, but also on state paranoia, which “can be measured sensitively to change” and “has been shown to increase in response to traffic noise” as a psychological state.

The researchers hypothesised that birdsong would have more beneficial effects on mood, paranoia and cognitive performance than traffic noise. They also investigated whether higher or lower diversity of bird species or noise sources “might be a factor modifying the effects” of the sounds.

Study Details

The study included 259 people, mostly men, with an average age of 20. None had a history of psychological illness, hearing difficulties, substance/medication use or suicidal thoughts or tendencies.

The outcomes of interest were measured before and after exposure. Each sound environment had two versions, with high or low diversity. This produced analyses comparing two sound types (birdsong and traffic noise) x two levels (low and high) and two time points (before and after exposure).

Exposure lasted 6 minutes. Participants then rated how varied/monotonous, beautiful and pleasant they found the sound environment on a 0–100 visual scale.

Reduction in Depressive Symptoms

Participants were divided into four groups:

1. Low-diversity traffic noise (83 people)
2. High-diversity traffic noise (60 people)
3. Low-diversity birdsong (63 people)
4. High-diversity birdsong (80 people)

In addition to listening, participants completed questionnaires measuring mood and paranoia (depression–anxiety) and a digit-span cognitive performance test, both forwards and backwards.

Type, diversity and the type × diversity interaction all showed significant effect sizes. “This suggested that all these factors and their interaction substantially influenced perceptions of the sound environments, including ratings of monotony/diversity, beauty and pleasantness.”

Further analysis showed that depressive symptoms increased significantly with both low- and high-diversity urban sound environments, but decreased significantly with high-diversity birdsong.

Further analyses of anxiety found no effect with either low- or high-diversity traffic noise. By contrast, significant decreases occurred in both birdsong conditions.

Similarly, paranoia did not change when participants listened to low- or high-diversity traffic noise. Both birdsong environments, however, reduced paranoia.

None of the sound environments affected cognition.

Stobbe commented:

“In theory, birds may represent natural, life-supporting environments that convey nature’s positive effects to people listening to birdsong. Taken together, these findings offer another perspective on why interactions with nature may benefit our mental health and why protecting nature is extremely important.”

Stobbe added that future work should explore mixed soundscapes, including whether the presence of natural sounds in urban environments can reduce stressors such as traffic noise.

An Area Needing Research

Ken Duckworth of the National Alliance on Mental Illness said that “nature’s benefits have not been studied enough” and agreed that exploring birdsong in psychiatric facilities could be important.

“Future studies could relate birdsong’s role to the mental health benefits or aspects of being in nature, which has been found to have some effect.”