113 Songs About Psychology

I have loved the field of psychology—the study of mind and behavior—since I was a precocious 8-year-old with my own subscription to Psychology Today. Eventually, I became a psychologist myself so I could live the dream.

Psychology abounds in the music we listen to, the media that surrounds us, and our everyday lives. As you listen to popular songs, challenge yourself by noting its references to topics in psychology. Or if you teach the subject like I did in graduate school, consider using music to

• introduce concepts before class or transition between topics
• illustrate concepts and
• build an awareness of psychological constructs all around us.

To get you started, here's a playlist of pop, rock, and country songs. Truly, the only thing more enjoyable than psychology is adding music to it!

Hell yeah, psychology is real science so stop calling it "soft" or a "pseudoscience". We use the scientific method with experiments and data collection, statistics and meta-analyses. We measure, analyze, and summarize relationships among intangibles like human emotions and attitudes rather than simple things you can pick up or measure with a ruler. Now if that's not difficult, then what is?

Start things off on this playlist with some songs that give a nod to research methods.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Find out what it means to me.

For all those who chemists, physicians, and engineers who think psychology is just fluffy stuff, remind 'em with this song that hey, psychology is science too. Just because we're not using test tubes and microscopes doesn't mean we don't have research design and statistics nailed. Sing it, Aretha!

This gal's limbic system is in overdrive. (The limbic system is a collection of brain structures important to sexual and endocrine function, behavior, the sense of smell, memory, and other key functions.)

In this sexy pop song, Rihanna is "fist fighting with fire," and she's got love on the brain. Even her choice of partners may be explicable with genetics, but where's the romance in that?

Think of this reggae-influenced pop song as a sensation and perception classic. Now that the rain has lifted, the narrator is really stoked that his eyes see clearly. It's now a bright and sunshiny day. He's even more excited that his pain has gone. Who wouldn't love that?

Somebody pinch this guy because his face has gone numb. Better yet, let's just get him into rehab because he's so high he's addressing his cocaine as if it's a lover. Drugs can induce an altered state of consciousness but so can dreaming, hypnosis, meditation, illness, and other experiences.

The narrator in this alternative rock song is feeling solemn. He contemplates alternate states of consciousness as he wonders whether we're really just living in a dream:

We all are living in a dream,
But life ain’t what it seems.
Oh, everything’s a mess
And all these sorrows I have seen
They lead me to believe
That everything’s a mess.

Looking for more songs about dreaming? You could make a playlist out of dreaming songs alone.

There's a whole lot of learning going on in this gal's life. Actually, each of us is continually learning whether through classical conditioning, operant conditioning, or observation. The narrator of this rock song describes memorable albeit unconventional methods which have taught her what she knows today.

The fellow in this classic pop song claims to know very little intellectually. He admits knowing next to nothing about

• history
• biology
• French
• geography
• trigonometry or
• algebra.

However, what he lacks in such knowledge, he more than makes up for in the arena of romance. Perhaps he's a proponent of the Theory of Multiple Intelligences?

There's nothing complicated about the way Pharrell Williams feels in this chipper pop song. He just can't help but invite you to clap along with him.

The nature of emotions, however, isn't the same as it once was believed to be. For decades, the most prominent theory of emotion held that there are six basic emotions that exist cross-culturally, each "hard-wired" by evolution: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise.

More recently, however, new research has suggested that humans are even more basic than that. Because fear and surprise may be indistinguishable at basic levels and disgust and anger share a "danger" element, there may be only four basic emotions.

Either way, the happiness that Pharrell Williams is feeling is one of them. For songs about other emotions, check out the table below or the playlist of songs about feeling sad and crying.

The man in this country song has disappointed the woman he loves. In his weakest moment, he expresses his motivation to become a better person so that he can get his needs for affection and unconditional love met.

Some might call the narrator in this rock tune a Negative Nellie while others might say that she is engaged in counterfactual thinking. That's the human tendency to think of possible alternatives to life events in retrospect -- in other words the "mighta beens."

Forget about looks. This guy is in love with his lady friend's personality, the distinctive patterns of thinking, feeling, and behavior that make her special. He celebrates the charm, charisma, and essence of her individual differences, and he's so enthralled with her that he's willing to make a fool of himself to prove his love.

In this country ditty, Miranda Lambert's character is making some very bad choices. She's been cheated on by her lover and decides to enact revenge by lighting ablaze a trail of kerosene:

Now I don't hate the one who left
You can't hate someone who's dead.
He's out there holding on to someone, I'm holding up my smoking gun.

Something tells me she won't feel too sorry about the consequences of her action. If you're looking for other music to illustrate psychopathology, there are plenty of songs about being crazy as well as songs about substance abuse. Just for fun, play the armchair psychologist and try to figure out what's going on with the narrator in popular songs.

From infancy through childhood and adulthood, this classic pop song describes a disjointed and distant relationship between a son and his father. Feeling role conflict, the father consistently prioritized work over family during the son's youth. Sadly, the young man learned to emulate the pattern of relational detachment in his own life.

There are lots of thoughtful songs about aging and growing older that are useful to reflect upon.

Who are you? We each have a personal identity as well as social and collective identities which help define how we construct ourselves. In this heartwarming country song, the narrator defines many of the roles that she fulfills in life and describes important characteristics of her self-identity:

I am Rosemary's granddaughter
The spitting image of my father
And when the day is done
My momma's still my biggest fan
Sometimes I'm clueless and I'm clumsy
But I've got friends who love me
And they know just where I stand
It's all a part of me
And that's who I am.

Ah, gender roles. When heartbreak happens, women cry while men sleep around and get angry. That's the point of this country song: men and women tend to handle break-ups differently. So what do you think?