The potential of group music education for developing empathy: An empirical study

Abstract

This study examines the effect on students’ empathy of using group music activities based on composition and improvisation strategies. The research was carried out over a 9-month period using a pre–posttest control group quasi-experimental design. Sixty-three students took part in the study: 32 in the experimental group and 31 in the control group. The Interpersonal Reactivity Index scale was used to provide a multidimensional approach to measure empathy. The scale’s cognitive components, perspective taking and fantasy, and its emotional components, empathic concern and personal distress, were adopted in the study. The research design used was quasi-experimental, as it was not possible to randomize the sample. Results show significant differences in empathy and cooperation skills between secondary students after implementing the music composition and improvisation activities in the experimental group. These students enhanced their ability to break with routine and place themselves in an imaginary situation that they associated with their musical creations. Moreover, helping them to understand others through the translation of personal emotions and moods into musical sequences contributed to the development of consideration of others’ viewpoints and helped to reduce confrontation in the classroom. This way, musical activities in groups based on creative strategies had potential to improve students’ empathy.

Keywords

empathy composition improvisation music education secondary school

The literature provides multiple definitions of empathy (Batson, 1991; Hackney, 1978; Strayer, 1987). Underlying most of these definitions is the notion that empathy is the ability to feel and understand others’ emotions from their perspective.

Empathy is a complex concept comprising various components (cognitive, affective, behavioral, and moral) (Lam et al., 2011; Riess, 2017). From this perspective, Davis (1980) described empathy as a multidimensional construct made up of four components: perspective taking (the ability to understand different perspectives), fantasy (the capacity to identify with unreal characters), empathic concern (the ability to feel compassion for others), and personal distress (the ability to feel uncomfortable about the negative experiences of others). The first two components are related to the cognitive aspect of empathy, whereas the second two are associated with affect (Clarke et al., 2015). This study is framed within Davis’s (1983) perspective of empathy.

The ability to empathize contributes to both adults’ (Vinayak & Judge, 2018) and young people’s (Khajeh et al., 2014) well-being. This may be because it is connected to emotional abilities that favor psychological well-being. On one hand, empathy contributes to enhancing intrapersonal skills such as self-esteem (Cooper, 2011), self-image (Chung, 2014), critical thinking (Ratka, 2018), and resilience (Brooks & Goldstein, 2003). On the other hand, empathy benefits interpersonal skills since its development fosters prosocial behavior (Rabinowitch et al., 2013; Rumble et al., 2010).

In educational settings, empathy provides these and other benefits such as acceptance, openness, giving attention, listening, having a positive and affirmative approach, and being interested (Cooper, 2011).

The importance of empathy in secondary schools

According to Goleman (1995), students who develop empathy show better affective skills, which could help them perform successfully in life. Given that empathy is an ability that can be developed or repressed during a person’s life (Cooper, 2011; Ratka, 2018), acquisition of this ability should be fostered from an early age, and it should be one of the primary objectives in education (Rabinowitch et al., 2013). This objective could be met through educational interventions (Ratka, 2018). However, integrating tasks to develop empathy at school can be a challenge (Bouton, 2016) due to the prevailing mechanistic paradigm in today’s education system. This educational approach is rooted in the 18th and 19th centuries, but it does not respond to the needs of today’s youth (Cooper, 2011). Studies reveal a need for resources that help to curtail the escalating levels of disruptive behaviors among teenagers in schools in recent years, including bullying among peers (García et al., 2013; Nolasco, 2012) and violent behavior in class (Caurín et al., 2019). Empathy has been demonstrated to be a key factor in inhibiting disruptive behavior (Jolliffe & Farrington, 2006; Luna & De Gante, 2017) and fostering conflict resolution (Garaigordobil & Maganto, 2011).

The literature provides a range of didactic resources that can be used to develop empathy such as role-taking, decision-making, and personal exchange activities (Cooper, 2011; Good et al., 2011). Likewise, collaborative learning is a didactic strategy that encourages students to understand others’ points of view to reach agreement to achieve common goals (Campayo-Muñoz et al., 2020; Laal & Ghodsi, 2012). Music is another essential tool for schools to use to increase empathy due to its potential for connecting with an individual’s emotions (Laurence, 2005).

Music education and empathy

Music has the potential to awaken feelings of empathy in both listeners and performers (Clarke et al., 2015). In the educational setting, some studies claim that music education provides the opportunity to develop social skills (Giannopoulou et al., 2016; Schellenberg et al., 2015), including empathy (Rabinowitch, 2012; Wu & Lu, 2021), when the experience of making music is pleasant (Hallam, 2010). This phenomenon is possible thanks to the transfer capacity of the brain (Schellenberg, 2003). For this potential of music to be developed, it is necessary that music practice be carried out in groups. It is for this reason that secondary schools are an excellent context for developing social skills. Also, to develop the above-mentioned interpersonal skills, music instruction must pursue this goal (Bisquerra, 2009).

Playing music in a group provides the opportunity to connect with emotions, which fosters understanding and respect for others’ emotional worlds (Laurence, 2005). There is a two-way relationship between group music making and the development of interpersonal skills (Campayo-Muñoz et al., 2022). For example, playing in a group requires abilities such as coordination and synchrony, which foster the development of perspective taking, an important factor for improving empathy; in turn, perspective taking favors coordination and synchrony between the members of a group (Hawkins, 2013; Novembre et al., 2019). In addition, group music practice promotes assertive communication since players have to discuss and reach agreement on aspects of interpretation (Haddon & Hutchinson, 2015). Specifically, studies based on implementing music programs intended to develop empathy find that participating students score higher in empathy than those who do not participate (Laurence, 2005; Rabinowitch, 2012). These programs are typically based on group interactions that consist of a series of easy musical activities such as following the changing beat or imitating the musical phrase that has been played by a classmate. It is important to highlight that these kinds of musical programs aimed at developing empathy were primarily carried out in primary school contexts.

To enhance empathy through music education, two aspects should be considered. First, didactic strategies intended to favor empathy development must be implemented, and second, a class environment must be fostered that is based on confidence, where the objective of making music is the process itself rather than the outcome (Rabinowitch et al., 2013).

Creativity is another key factor in the development of empathy (Hernández et al., 2010). Artistic creativity can be cultivated in music education through improvisation and composition (Larsson & Georgii-Hemming, 2019). According to Hernández et al. (2010), improvisation and composition are very closely linked since the latter is a consequence of the former. These musical practices allow students to resolve problems and imagine different situations (Glover, 2004), which is crucial for developing perspective taking. This could be the main reason why the most representative programs for developing empathy are based on these two musical abilities. One of the most notable studies along this line is that of Rabinowitch (2012), who proposed a program based on music group interaction and improvisation. Her program includes a set of musical games based on (1) synchrony, where players in a group are encouraged to follow the same beat; (2) imitation, where students are invited to imitate each other when making music; (3) ambiguity, where explicit interpretations and meanings are left ambiguous; (4) shared intentionality, where students pursue the same musical goal; and (5) intersubjectivity, where students share affective and cognitive musical dynamics.

Another strategy that can foster empathy by developing creativity is synesthetic exploration in music since students must associate different sensations on the basis of the same stimulus, which allows them to be aware of their sensations when perceiving a stimulus such as a color and learn to transmit their sensations through musical elements (Acevedo, 2003; Lage & Cremades, 2018). In addition, this exercise could boost mirror neurons, which are related to the functioning of empathy (Melero, 2013). Finally, promoting collaborative attitudes among peers in musical creative processes is essential to the success of empathy development (Rabinowitch, 2012).

This study

This research seeks to examine the effect on students’ empathy of using group music activities based on composition and improvisation strategies.

Method

A pre–posttest control group (CG) quasi-experimental design was adopted, in which the two groups were not randomly assigned to the experimental conditions (Miksza & Elpus, 2018). In this approach, treatment assignment takes place through researcher selection such that the experimental group (EG) and CG are not statistically equivalent, which is the case in randomized experiments (Wong et al., 2013). The students in the EG followed the music learning activities through cooperative composition/improvisation, whereas those in the CG followed the traditional non-cooperative music learning methodology, in which composition/improvisation was not used as an educational strategy.

Ethical guidelines governing research with human subjects were respected, and the following conditions were met: Informed consent was obtained for the right to information, protection of personal data confidentiality was guaranteed, and nondiscrimination on any grounds was guaranteed. Authorization to participate in the study was requested from the students’ families, who were previously informed of the characteristics of the study, including the intervention times, the musical activities to be engaged in during those times, and, above all, that participation in the study had no risks at a psychological, educational, or personal level.

Sample

The sample consisted of 63 students (N = 63) at the same compulsory secondary state school in the south of Madrid (Spain), where the researcher was a music teacher. The EG comprised 32 students aged 13 and 14, 51.3% of whom were female and 48.7% male; the CG was made up of 31 students of the same age, 52.3% of whom were female and 47.7% male. Nearly every student was of Spanish nationality and from a low to middle background in socio-cultural and economic terms. The educational profile of the students was similar in both groups, and there was not a significant number of students with previous musical knowledge acquired outside the compulsory academic environment.

The participants were not assigned randomly to their groups as the EG and the CG corresponded to the class groups established at the beginning of the academic year.

The researcher chose this school level because the activities related to musical composition/improvisation as a strategy to improve empathy, such as sound parameters, rhythm and movement, song intonation, and possibilities of musical instruments, were well suited to the curricular content.

Instrument

The Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) has been employed among secondary school students in many studies around the world, such as Cliffordson (2001), Hatcher et al. (1994), and Yang and Kang (2020). Empirical data for this study were collected through the Spanish adaptation of IRI questionnaire (Davis, 1980; Mestre et al., 2004). The reliability of this instrument in its Spanish version among young people (13–18 years) has been validated (Mestre et al., 2004). Moreover, given the complexity of the concept of empathy (Lam et al., 2011), scholars have considered IRI to be an excellent tool to measure this psychological construct on account of its multidimensional approach (Pérez-Albéniz et al., 2003). This approach includes both cognitive and emotional components. Its cognitive components are perspective taking (an individual’s spontaneous attempts to adopt the perspective of the other in real situations) and fantasy (individuals’ imaginative ability to put themselves in fictitious situations); its emotional components are empathic concern (feelings of compassion for and concern and caring about the discomfort of others) and personal distress (feelings of anxiety and discomfort that the subject manifests when observing the negative experiences of others). Each component contains seven items. Participants responded to the items on a 5-point Likert-type scale, ranging from “Does not describe me well” to “Describes me very well.” Studies have confirmed that the measure “has excellent psychometric properties. The factor structure remains constant for both sexes across independent samples and across repeated administration. [. . .] the internal reliability of the four scales is quite acceptable” (Davis, 1980, p. 17).

The Spanish adaptation (Mestre et al., 2004) was carried out with a wide sample of participants belonging to different educational centers of the Valencian Community (1.285 adolescents, 698 males and 597 women, with an age range between 13 and 18 years). The results of the study indicate the validity of the instrument for evaluating the different components of empathy. In relation to reliability, Cronbach’s alpha analysis shows different indices for each of the subscales. For fantasy, there is internal consistency and homogeneity in its measurement, with an alpha coefficient of a = 0.70. The rest of the subscales have lower internal consistency indices: empathic concern has an alpha coefficient of a = 0.65, personal distress of a = 0.64, and perspective taking of a = 0.56.

Procedure

The research was carried out over 9 months between September 2017 and May 2018 and involved 26 half-hour sessions for each group (EG and CG). Because empathy consists of multiple related constructs (Davis, 1980), several aspects were developed using creative musical strategies. Some were related to the questionnaire components: fantasy was developed by adopting different musical points of view and by translating images into music; perspective taking by understanding how others feel when listening to the music they have created; personal distress by reacting behaviorally to the musical stimulus of others.

During the first session, the pretest was administered in both groups (EG and CG) by the school psychologist. Then, the EG specifically followed the musical composition and improvisation group activities designed by the researcher to develop empathy and musical skills. In every music class with the EG, half an hour was spent working on composition and improvisation strategies related to the above-mentioned components. Activities involved playing instruments, using voices, body percussion, and movement.

The musical activities for the EG were as follows:

To train fantasy, participants were asked to provide their own musical responses to given musical semi-phrases. They were asked to create musical sequences that described a set of images, for which they explored Wassily Kandinsky’s activities with color and music. They tried to translate lines into melodies, figure sizes into musical beats, and colors into musical harmonies, at all times under the guidance of the teacher. In addition, the students selected different instruments and worked in small groups to solve problems effectively and collaboratively. They also performed the activity in reverse, graphically representing the composed music, and practiced with their voices.

To train the ability to understand and imagine the point of view of others, the students were asked to identify and translate into music one opinion from each group. Examples include transferring positive and happy ideas into bright and rhythmic sounds by tapping lightly and repeatedly with the hands, feet, or percussion instruments; in contrast, negative beliefs were performed with dissonant, dark, and quiet sounds. In this way, these kinds of analogies between musical sequences and students’ opinions were intended to provide them with tools to express their ideas in a musical way. Afterwards, when they analyzed and reflected on the process, the feelings they experienced on hearing other groups’ musical creations allowed them to understand others’ points of view. The students also had to create musical sequences in groups based on famous phrases from Spanish literature (by Miguel de Cervantes or Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer) given to them previously. Their attitudes and behaviors became more closely associated with the meanings of the phrases. In fact, the way convictions were re-created with music encouraged them to enjoy taking deliberate perspectives and putting themselves in the place of the sentences. The students also analyzed pieces by famous composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, Dmitri Shostakovich’s Jazz Suite no. 2, or Erik Satie’s Gnossiennes as a source of inspiration for creating their own musical sequences. The lives of these musicians and the relationship between their convictions and experiences and their musical works were also studied.

To show compassion or concern for others’ experiences of sadness, groups of students were asked to play music in a similar mood to that expressed by a very upset and depressed classmate. They had to listen very carefully to what he or she had to say and then plan and perform a musical response. They were advised to use different instruments, body percussion, and choreography. Through their musical responses, students gave meaning to the process and this helped the students get to know their classmates better. They also learned to listen and to observe what others do. Little by little, the students adopted musical language as a natural channel of communication.

To train behavioral reactions to musical stimuli, different modes of music (major/minor) were played by one group while other groups were moving around freely. Relaxing or exciting sounds were improvised to encourage attitude changes. The students composed contrasting pleasant and unpleasant melodies and related them to emotional feelings and behaviors.

After each activity, the class reflected for a moment on the experiences and strategies used. Any specific points that arose were reviewed, and desirable attitudes were identified. Students were asked to describe opposing emotional reactions as dilemmas by considering alternative viewpoints and values. Empathy, therefore, leads to independent critical thinking (Lombard et al., 2020). During these exchanges of meanings, a pleasant classroom environment was created. The participants moved into different groups after every six sessions to change the groups’ composition and encourage new socialization dynamics. The music classes for the CG were implemented by another music teacher in the same school and did not include group musical composition or improvisation strategies to improve empathy, but they did follow the standard program for working with and performing the regular repertoire. The teaching focused on the interpretation of musical pieces for flute, xylophone, guitar, and percussion; intonation and popular songs; and theoretical explanation of musical concepts. The didactic methodology was based on imitation and repetition of musical pieces, recognition of scores, and theoretical explanations. Finally, after 9 months of working with different methodological approaches in each group, the same IRI measurement questionnaire was again administered by the school psychologist to both groups.

Data analysis

Kolmogorov–Smirnov and Shapiro–Wilk tests for normality were used to check whether the two samples had a normal distribution. As the p < .05 for both tests, with N = 63, the null hypothesis was rejected, the distribution was assumed to be not normally distributed, and therefore, nonparametric tests were used (Miksza & Elpus, 2018). Data were analyzed using Python version 3.7.

Comparison of the two pretests of CG and EG

The Mann–Whitney U-test was applied to compare the pretest in independent data samples, to analyze the equivalence of the CG and EG at the beginning of the study. CG and EG are equivalent in the pretest in almost all items except PT-3, PT-8, PT-11, PT-15, EC-14, EC-18 and EC-22, using a significance value for p of ⩽ .05 (see Table 1). If p is below the significance level, then there is enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis (Miksza & Elpus, 2018).

Table 1.

Results of the Mann–Whitney U-Test for Independent Groups (CG and EG) of the Pretest Samples.

IRI	Pretest CG		Pretest EG		Mann–Whitney
IRI	M	SD	M	SD	p
F-5	2.419	0.764	2.468	0.841	.399
F-7	2.129	0.805	1.937	0.715	.181
F-16	2.064	0.928	1.812	0.737	.158
F-1	2.161	1.035	1.937	0.800	.232
F-12	2.161	1.003	2.156	0.766	.462
F-23	2.129	1.117	2.000	0.842	.422
F-26	2.064	0.997	1.750	0.622	.139
PT-3	1.967	0.948	1.500	0.672	.022
PT-8	2.096	1.044	1.500	0.672	.010
PT-11	2.451	0.925	1.875	0.751	.007
PT-15	2.354	0.660	2.031	0.782	.048
PT-21	2.419	0.922	2.281	0.888	.306
PT-25	1.677	0.599	1.656	0.653	.415
PT-28	1.870	0.763	1.687	0.692	.172
EC-2	1.741	0.728	1.593	0.559	.249
EC-4	2.483	1.028	2.187	0.780	.125
EC-9	1.806	0.945	1.593	0.797	.202
EC-14	2.580	0.620	2.125	0.707	.006
EC-18	1.967	0.657	2.343	0.745	.025
EC-20	1.709	0.782	1.781	0.870	.412
EC-22	1.032	0.179	1.562	0.715	<.001
PD-6	3.774	0.883	3.843	0.627	.391
PD-10	3.806	0.703	3.562	0.669	.102
PD-13	4.225	0.668	4.031	0.897	.242
PD-17	1.774	0.762	2.031	0.897	.126
PD-19	4.290	0.901	4.468	0.761	.246
PD-24	3.516	0.961	3.718	0.771	.209
PD-27	3.451	0.850	3.781	0.906	.055

Note. IRI = Interpersonal Reactivity Index; CG = control group; EG = experimental group; M = means; SD = standard deviation; F = Fantasy scale; PT = Perspective-Taking scale; EC = Empathic Concern scale; PD = Personal Distress scale.

Comparison of the two posttests of CG and EG

The Mann–Whitney U-test was applied to compare the posttest in independent data samples of EG and CG. Moreover, to calculate the magnitude of effect sizes in posttest CG and EG, we used Cohen’s d measure (Cohen, 1988) (see Table 2). Following the recommendation of Davis (1980, p. 2), we present the results of the four scales as their individual items. This allowed us to acquire a richer and more detailed knowledge of the effect of the musical activities for the different peculiarities addressed in each scale. Other authors, such as Cliffordson (2001), also analyzed using scales and, in some results, refer to specific items.

Table 2.

Results Posttest CG and EG.

IRI	Posttest CG		Posttest EG		Mann–Whitney	Cohen
IRI	M	SD	M	SD	p	d
F-5	2.516	0.769	3.562	0.759	<.001	1.369
F-7	2.096	0.700	3.968	0.822	<.001	2.449
F-16	2.193	0.909	3.093	1.058	.001	0.911
F-1	2.161	1.035	2.531	0.915	.063	0.379
F-12	2.096	0.870	3.687	1.029	<.001	1.668
F-23	2.225	0.990	3.500	0.915	<.001	1.338
F-26	2.387	0.954	3.531	1.046	<.001	1.142
PT-3	2.064	0.853	3.875	0.793	<.001	2.200
PT-8	2.451	0.994	3.468	1.015	<.001	1.012
PT-11	2.612	0.954	3.281	1.084	.006	0.665
PT-15	2.032	0.604	3.500	0.879	<.001	1.941
PT-21	2.870	1.087	3.500	0.842	.006	0.649
PT-25	2.290	1.006	3.281	1.023	<.001	0.977
PT-28	2.161	0.934	3.906	0.734	<.001	2.081
EC-2	2.451	0.722	3.093	0.928	.002	0.771
EC-4	2.000	0.774	4.531	0.621	<.001	3.613
EC-9	2.483	0.889	3.218	0.974	.002	0.788
EC-14	2.322	0.701	3.312	1.674	.007	0.767
EC-18	2.096	0.907	4.375	0.870	<.001	2.565
EC-20	2.225	0.990	3.406	1.073	<.001	1.143
EC-22	1.870	0.805	1.781	0.832	.285	0.109
PD-6	3.774	0.762	1.500	0.508	<.001	3.152
PD-10	4.032	0.795	1.687	0.780	<.001	2.987
PD-13	3.096	0.907	2.781	0.941	.187	0.341
PD-17	2.709	0.824	1.406	0.498	<.001	1.914
PD-19	2.806	0.980	3.875	1.070	<.001	1.040
PD-24	3.516	0.676	1.468	0.507	<.001	3.426
PD-27	3.322	0.871	1.375	0.491	<.001	2.754

Note. M = means; SD = standard deviation; IRI = Interpersonal Reactivity Index; CG = control group; EG = experimental group; F = Fantasy scale; PT = Perspective-Taking scale; EC = Empathic Concern scale; PD = Personal Distress scale.

The Fantasy scale revealed a significant difference between the EG and CG in terms of the effect of the intervention on the way the students deal with fantasy, except for item F-1 “I daydream and fantasise, with some regularity, about things that might happen to me.”

The scores of almost all items of the Perspective Taking scale increased in the EG after implementing the musical activities. However, Mann–Whitney score values for items PT-11 (“I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective”) and PT-21 (“I believe that there are two sides to every question and try to look at them both”) increased not so much in the EG.

Comparison of CG and EG concerning the Empathic Concern and Personal Distress scales reveals a significant difference between the two groups. The Mann–Whitney U-test results show a p below the significance level of .05, providing enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis. However, the difference for item EC-22 was not significant. In EC-22, “I would describe myself as a pretty soft-hearted person,” the p is over the significance level of .05 (see Table 2).

Examination of the scores of the four scales revealed differences between EG and CG (p < .05), and the size of the effect indicated by Cohen’s d was very large for nearly all items. This is especially the case with F-5, F-7, PT-3, PT-28, EC-4, EC-4, EC-18, PD-6, PD-10, PD-24, and PD-27. Since it is ⩾1 (Cohen, 1988) in the case of F-5 (d = 1.369), the EG exceeds the CG by 91.91%. Only in F-1 is the effect small, and in EC-22 there is no effect.

Evolution of the posttest in each group, considering the pretest from which each group started

The nonparametric Wilcoxon test was then used to compare the two related samples of the pre- and posttest in the EG and CG, seen in Table 3.

Table 3.

Results Pre–Posttest CG and EG.

IRI	Groups	Results pretest		Results posttest		Wilcoxon
IRI	Groups	M	SD	M	SD	p
F-5	CG	2.419	0.764	2.516	0.769	.317
F-5	EG	2.468	0.841	3.562	0.759	<.001
F-7	CG	2.129	0.805	2.096	0.700	.782
F-7	EG	1.937	0.715	3.968	0.822	<.001
F-16	CG	2.064	0.928	2.193	0.909	.206
F-16	EG	1.812	0.737	3.093	1.058	<.001
F-1	CG	2.161	1.035	2.161	1.035	1.000
F-1	EG	1.937	0.800	2.531	0.915	.001
F-12	CG	2.161	1.003	2.096	0.870	.564
F-12	EG	2.156	0.766	3.687	1.029	<.001
F-23	CG	2.129	1.117	2.225	0.990	.366
F-23	EG	2.000	0.842	3.500	0.915	<.001
F-26	CG	2.064	0.997	2.387	0.954	.002
F-26	EG	1.750	0.622	3.531	1.046	<.001
PT-3	CG	1.967	0.948	2.064	0.853	.632
PT-3	EG	1.500	0.672	3.875	0.793	<.001
PT-8	CG	2.096	1.044	2.451	0.994	.012
PT-8	EG	1.500	0.672	3.468	1.015	<.001
PT-11	CG	2.451	0.925	2.612	0.954	.025
PT-11	EG	1.875	0.751	3.281	1.084	<.001
PT-15	CG	2.354	0.660	2.032	0.604	.012
PT-15	EG	2.031	0.782	3.500	0.879	<.001
PT-21	CG	2.419	0.922	2.870	1.087	<.001
PT-21	EG	2.281	0.888	3.500	0.842	<.001
PT-25	CG	1.677	0.599	2.290	1.006	.001
PT-25	EG	1.656	0.653	3.281	1.023	<.001
PT-28	CG	1.870	0.763	2.161	0.934	.029
PT-28	EG	1.687	0.692	3.906	0.734	<.001
EC-2	CG	1.741	0.728	2.451	0.722	<.001
EC-2	EG	1.593	0.559	3.093	0.928	<.001
EC-4	CG	2.483	1.028	2.000	0.774	.030
EC-4	EG	2.187	0.780	4.531	0.621	<.001
EC-9	CG	1.806	0.945	2.483	0.889	<.001
EC-9	EG	1.593	0.797	3.218	0.974	<.001
EC-14	CG	2.580	0.620	2.322	0.701	.127
EC-14	EG	2.125	0.707	3.312	1.674	.001
EC-18	CG	1.967	0.657	2.096	0.907	.512
EC-18	EG	2.343	0.745	4.375	0.870	<.001
EC-20	CG	1.709	0.782	2.225	0.990	.002
EC-20	EG	1.781	0.870	3.406	1.073	<.001
EC-22	CG	1.032	0.179	1.870	0.805	<.001
EC-22	EG	1.562	0.715	1.781	0.832	.090
PD-6	CG	3.774	0.883	3.774	0.762	1.000
	EG	3.843	0.627	1.500	0.508	<.001
PD-10	CG	3.806	0.703	4.032	0.795	.050
	EG	3.562	0.669	1.687	0.780	<.001
PD-13	CG	4.225	0.668	3.096	0.907	<.001
	EG	4.031	0.897	2.781	0.941	<.001
PD-17	CG	1.774	0.762	2.709	0.824	.001
	EG	2.031	0.897	1.406	0.498	<.001
PD-19	CG	4.290	0.901	2.806	0.980	<.001
	EG	4.468	0.761	3.875	1.070	<.001
PD-24	CG	3.516	0.961	3.516	0.676	.942
	EG	3.718	0.771	1.468	0.507	<.001
PD-27	CG	3.451	0.850	3.322	0.871	.499
	EG	3.781	0.906	1.375	0.491	<.001

Results of the pre–posttest for the Fantasy scale are statistically significant in the EG but not the CG, except with F-26.

In the Empathic Concern scale, both groups obtained significantly different pre–post scores (p < .001) for item EC-9. For item EC-14, the Wilcoxon p for the CG was .127, whereas for the EG, it was .001. The EG score was not significantly different pre–post for the item EC-22 (p = .090) concerning self-image perspective.

On the contrary, in the Perspective Taking scale the item scores for PT-8, PT-11, PT-15, PT-21, PT-25, and PT-28 were quite high in the CG posttest, although the test values were statistically more significant in the EG.

Further examination of the Personal Distress scale shows statistically significant differences in all items for EG, as well as in PD-13, PD-17, and PD-19 for CG.

Discussion and conclusion

Disruptive behavior is recognized as a problem in secondary schools today (García et al., 2013; Nolasco, 2012), and effective solutions need to be found to address this educational and social challenge. In this vein, empathy has proved to be an essential ability that reduces disruptive behaviors (Jolliffe & Farrington, 2006; Luna & De Gante, 2017), and this interpersonal skill can be developed through group-based musical interactions (Laurence, 2005; Rabinowitch et al., 2013). In this setting, this study examined the effect on students’ empathy of a set of musical group activities based on composition and improvisation.

To examine differences in empathy levels between the EG and CG at the end of the course, we compared the four IRI scales (pre–posttest). For nearly every item score related to empathy, empathy increased in the EG by the end of the intervention and remained the same in the CG or did not increase as much as in the EG. Therefore, the overall empathy scores from the IRI questionnaire show significant differences in empathy abilities between secondary students after implementing the musical composition and improvisation activities in the EG, which matches the findings of other studies (Laurence, 2005; Rabinowitch, 2012). The fact that we found no previous studies using the IRI test to measure empathy in secondary school students in the music education field adds value to this study.

Findings related to the Fantasy scale indicated that synesthesia exercises focusing on colored music could have increased experiences of emotions and fantasizing. These results are in line with the findings of Rouw and Scholte’s (2016) exploratory study, which show how a measurement of the synesthetic strength of the synesthesia types: colored music, colored sequences, colored sensations, spatial sequences, nonvisual sequelae, and sequence-personality correlates with increased openness, fantasizing, and emotionality. Strategies to associate images with self-composed music improved the ability to understand imagined circumstances. These findings also have educational implications for improving learning in teenagers, seeking to equip them with creative strategies for solving problems (Acevedo, 2003). Moreover, Batson (1991) has shown that for empathy-motivated helping behavior to occur, one must be able to imagine the other person’s perspective.

However, for item F-1 (“I daydream and fantasise with some regularity about things that might happen to me”), the change in the CG was nonsignificant while that in the EG was significant. This could be understood to mean that during the intervention, the EG students worked creatively in the music class trying to set adaptive goals to imagined situations in a given context. According to Moroye and Uhrmacher (2010), creative music practice can strengthen students’ awareness of imagined experiences during class and can help students to achieve their ideas. Hence, imagination refers to internal work, and creativity to the external expression of this work.

Our research findings align with the above and confirm students’ enhanced ability to break with routine and place themselves in an imaginary situation that they associated with their musical creations. The same idea emerges from the significant difference in item F-23 “When I watch a good movie, I can very easily put myself in the place of a leading character”, in which students acknowledged fantasizing at a specific moment and not throughout the day.

Findings related to the Empathic Concern scale indicated that students felt protective toward someone being taken advantage of. However, results revealed that the enhancement of some aspects regarding this component of empathy was not a direct consequence of the musical activities, as for example, item EC-9 (“When I see someone being taken advantage of, I feel kind of protective towards them”) showed significant differences in pre–post scores in both groups. This could suggest that improvement occurs spontaneously during adolescence (Shaffer, 2002).

However, the process of opinion building and discussing other students’ possible emotional reactions was practiced in the music classroom by performing fictitious situations using musical group composition and improvisation techniques. Collected data suggested that helping students to discover and understand others developed their consideration of alternative viewpoints and helped reduce confrontation (Good et al., 2011).

Scores for the item concerning their self-image (“I would describe myself as a pretty soft-hearted person” [EC-22]) were not high in the EG, so they did not match students’ perception of themselves. It also would be important to take into account that EC-22 is one of several items in which the groups (CG and EG) were non-equivalent in the pretest. The activities may have influenced students’ behavior more than their perception of themselves. The findings reveal that translating experienced feelings into music supported by cooperative activities during the in-class creative process were helpful to the extent that students responded with empathy toward the represented emotional states or actions of their classmates. In fact, scores related to concern for people less fortunate than themselves and feeling protective toward someone being taken advantage of (EC) increased significantly in the EG. This shows that the effect of the musical activities on the ability to react emotionally to the experiences of others and to imitate others’ emotions was shown in the EG, whereas for the CG, which did not work in this regard, this ability remained unchanged. These findings support other studies that have examined the contributions of music activities to enhancing empathy in other educational environments (Cross et al., 2012).

Likewise, the Perspective-Taking scale provides enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis. It is important to highlight that “empathic people can identify and understand situations, feelings, motives, and perspectives, and, moreover, recognise and appreciate the concerns of another person” (Ratka, 2018, p. 1140). Moreover, as Davis (1980) states, perspective-taking ability seemed to be associated more with the capacity to empathically care for others and less with having feelings of personal discomfort with the negative experiences of others. Comparisons of the two groups (see Table 2) revealed that experiential learning with the specific goal of enhancing understanding of others increased empathic reactions significantly for the EG in the posttest.

Results show significant differences between the EG and CG in items PT-11 and PT-21 concerning understanding friends’ meanings better by imagining how things look from their perspective (see Table 3). Both items refer to effective peer-to-peer communication and show that after the intervention in EG, students had fewer difficulties understanding things from another teenager’s point of view. In fact, challenges were built into the implementation of the musical activities so that students could learn first to deal with their own feelings and to understand their emotions before being able to deal with those of others. This approach was helpful, bearing in mind that emotional empathy engages strongly with salient aspects but blinds one to others’ reactions (Lombard et al., 2020). After that, the ability to develop a critical stance to put facts and literary phrases into perspective allowed students to find analogies with the context they were working on.

The Empathic Concern and Perspective-Taking scales refer to different feelings from the Personal Distress scale. The self-regulatory character of empathy is understood as other-oriented self-feeling (EC), and in the case of uncontrolled emotion, it is seen as a self-centered discomfort. In this regard, findings related to Personal Distress suggest that the greatest impact of teaching empathy at this education level lies in handling personal problems and managing Personal Distress, rather than learning how to manage stressful situations involving others (Kassler et al., 2013). In this sense, item PD-17 “Being in a tense emotional situation scares me” concerns individual differences in emotional responses to observed emotionality in others, and this item scored high in both groups (see Table 3). Following Batson (2009), it should be noted that the expression of personal distress at another person’s suffering is rather a personal reaction than a source of knowledge, either of another person’s state or what the other is thinking or feeling.

However, some values in the posttest were lower than in the pretest for the CG (see Table 3). We considered that this may be due to the lack of cooperative and creative musical activities inherent to the traditional teaching methodology in the CG, since every person has creative potential but needs training to help them develop it (Tsai, 2012). Moreover, collective creativity refers to the harmonious possibility of teamwork in creative circles characterized by open and spontaneous composition, common objectives, role-playing, simulation, self-management of action, self-control of process, productive feedback, creative strategies, and transformation (Hernández et al., 2010). According to the results, in F-12 and F-23 items show a decrease regarding interest in participating in certain activities. In this context, it is difficult to put oneself in the place of others (PT-3, PT-8, and PT-28).

To conclude, it can be said that the emotional processes involved in group musical interaction and the attention given to the intentions and moods of the other performers during the collective musical activities promoted better understanding of others’ emotional states. Therefore, the type of creation-based musical activities presented in this study has strong potential to integrate the special skills acquired into tools for fostering empathy. However, non-collective musical activities did not have such a significant impact on the results of the CG.

The importance of the results points to the need to include such collective programs in the curriculum in formal settings to equip students with an augmented capacity for empathy; this will impact their well-being. In this vein, we endorse the recommendations of other authors to continue working within the frame of music education to help students gain confidence in their ability to experience another person’s emotional states and produce a relevant and supportive emotional response (Rabinowitch et al., 2013).

The potential of group music performance in schools to tackle such vital issues and to help respond effectively to problems at this educational stage should not be underestimated. Music is more than just a subject; as well as contributing to students’ cognitive development, it can also foster the acquisition of life skills and promote well-being. In this sense, this study also has implications for prevention and intervention programs aimed at reducing aggressive behavior in adolescence since the results show that empathic students are capable of displaying stronger affective behaviors and attitudes. In order for this to happen, it would be advisable to disseminate among music teachers the potential that the kind of implementation described in this study has for the development of student empathy. Such dissemination could be done through conferences in schools, informative articles, and even social networks. In addition, it would be desirable to provide teachers the necessary musical training that will enable them to design and implement this type of proposal successfully.

Given human beings’ complexity, especially the psychological and physical changes occurring during adolescence (Diz, 2013), it could be possible that other factors, apart from the implementation carried out, were involved in the improvement of empathy in the EG (Schellenberg, 2019). However, the musical implementation was the only controlled factor in both groups, which had similar characteristics. Another limitation of this study is the fact that it was conducted in a single secondary school, so the results are limited to this particular case and cannot be extrapolated to other contexts. To strengthen the results obtained, it would be necessary to replicate this study in other secondary schools in different countries. In this way, it would be possible to check whether the trend in results continues by increasing the sample and changing its origin.

Future research should attempt to identify the impact of acquired empathy skills in students’ well-being in the school context, with particular attention to peers’ relationships.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Laura Cuervo

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