Abstract
The present study employs a mixed methods approach to understanding the psychological functions and contexts of music use. Seventy-six emerging adults selected a single piece of music that they considered personally significant and elaborated on the reasons for this significance in response to written prompts. A constant comparative analysis of these retrospective accounts revealed three major themes. Specifically, participants selected music that helped them cope with a transition, facilitated self-reflection, or elicited positive memories. Additionally two metathemes emerged: participants selected music with lyrics that resonated with their own experiences or that helped them feel less alone. Quantitative analyses revealed systematic differences between the three major themes. Results are discussed in light of the psychological functions music may serve.
Keywords
Most of us, if asked, could likely call to mind specific songs or pieces of music that we associate with a significant time, experience, or relationship in our lives. Indeed, scholars in psychology and communication/media studies have documented, using various methodological approaches, the extent to which listening to music serves emotional and social purposes (Crafts, Cavicchi, & Keil, 1993; DeNora, 2000; Greenwood & Long, 2009a; Roberts & Christenson, 2001; Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007). Research on the psychological function of music listening has typically focused on adolescents and emerging adults, whose key developmental tasks—ranging from emotion regulation to identity formation (Arnett, 2000; Steele & Brown, 1995)—seem particularly relevant to the ostensible gratifications that music provides. Specifically, this body of literature examines how music listening may help adolescents regulate negative moods (e.g., Larson, 1995), promote peer affiliation (e.g., Lull, 1985), and facilitate both the expression and exploration of personal identity (e.g., Gauntlett, 2002). What is less clear and what this paper will address are the specific social and psychological circumstances in which a particular piece of music becomes imbued with personal meaning. Privileging the “voices” of emerging adults via both qualitative and quantitative analysis of autobiographical recollections, the present study contributes an in-depth and nuanced examination of the role that music plays in the emotional and social lives of emerging adults.
A substantial body of literature explains the appeal music holds for listeners in terms of the psychological and social functions it serves. Perhaps the best supported function identified in the literature on young adults’ music use is music allows listeners to gratify emotional needs (e.g., Laiho, 2004; North, Hargreaves, & O’Neill, 2000). One theory often employed in this line of research is Zillmann’s (1988) theory of mood management. According to this theory, people strategically – although not necessarily consciously – select media fare that will allow them to achieve or prolong hedonic states. However, they may sometimes aim to achieve a negative emotional state in the short term if they believe it will lead to a more positive mood in the long term (Zillmann, 2000).
However, the findings from some research challenge the assumption that the desire to create or maintain hedonic states necessarily guides music listening. There is evidence, for example, that people may use music for “mood adjustment” purposes, selecting music that allows them to regulate (but not necessarily improve) their mood in a way they see as appropriate to an anticipated task (Knobloch, 2003). Indeed, Zillmann himself has stated that mood management research examining music selection “poses the strongest challenge yet to the proposal that all bad moods inspire efforts at mood repair” (Zillmann, 2000, p. 114).
Evidence that people may in some cases select mood congruent, rather than mood boosting, music offers another major challenge to the hedonic assumption present in earlier accounts of mood management theory. While traditional mood management theory would predict that romantic loneliness would lead people to listen to music with uplifting messages about romance, experimental work indicates that state, but not trait, romantic loneliness leads young adults to select music with “love-lamenting” lyrics over music with “love-celebrating” lyrics (Gibson, Aust, & Zillmann, 2000; Knobloch & Zillmann, 2003). Zillmann (2000) suggests that the gratification obtained in these cases may be feeling understood; the singer, in these cases, may serve as an understanding and sympathetic friend. In support of this, adolescents in one study claimed that hearing lyrics describing problems similar to their own helped them feel less alone in their struggles, and thus were a source of solace (Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007). This use of music may be understood as a “quasisocial” use, which is “listening that occurs alone but still serves goals and needs related to social relationships” (Roberts & Christenson, 2001, p. 399).
Another major line of research on the reasons young people listen to music focuses on identity. Music helps people figure out who they are—and, just as importantly, who they are not (Frith, 1987). This music-facilitated identity work can take place at an individual level, helping listeners negotiate private struggles but insofar as music is capable of cementing ingroup and outgroup identities, music may also contribute to individuals’ social identity development (Tarrant, North, & Hargreaves, 2002). These need not be mutually exclusive considerations; instead, it seems likely that social identity development impacts personal identity development and vice versa. From a sociological perspective, Frith (1981) makes a similar point, highlighting the ability of (individual) musical taste to serve as a “badge” that helps draw group boundaries.
In some cases, the identity work enabled by music involves a look backwards. As Denora (1999) argues, key to developing a coherent sense of self in the present is an exploration of who we were in the past, and the ability of music to evoke vivid memories—of loved ones who have passed, of former romantic partners, and of both specific and generalized periods of our lives—makes it especially well suited to this process. Other times, this identity work is located in the present, as was the case for a young man who credited music with helping him come to terms with his homosexuality (Gauntlett, 2002). Finally, negotiating identity may involve a look forward: music allows people to explore “possible selves,” to rehearse both feared and desired identities (Larson, 1995; Markus & Nurius, 1986).
One especially promising approach to studying personally meaningful music is to focus on autobiographical memories of music. Tapping autobiographical memories has the potential to provide a high degree of ecological validity, because the experiences described are ones that actually occurred in real life (Harris, Bonds-Raacke, & Cady, 2005). This makes it possible to assess, albeit retrospectively, the social psychological dimensions of media use. This approach has particular promise for the study of personally meaningful music, because the emotional significance of music does not reside in the music itself, but rather is a function of social and psychological contexts in which it is heard and with which it comes to be associated (Frith, 1987; van Dijck, 2006). Consequently, this method is especially well suited for identifying the emotional, social, and identity-relevant functions of music.
However, researchers exploring autobiographical memories of music often use methodologies that limit the conclusions they may draw. Studies in which researchers ask participants to generate autobiographical memories in response to researcher-selected music, for example, have limited ecological validity (Janata, Tomic, & Rakowski, 2007; Schulkind, Hennis, & Rubin, 1999). Similarly, asking participants to rate personally significant music on researcher-generated dimensions may not fully capture the range of reasons music may attain personal significance (Baumgartner, 1992). In short, while these approaches allow for valuable insights into autobiographical memories of music, they may fail to capture both the full range of reasons music attains autobiographical significance and the full range of reactions to this music.
Two Scandinavian studies, however, did provide participants the latitude to both select music that was personally significant and define the significance of this music in their own terms. Ruud (1997) asked participants to compile 10 to 15 pieces of personally meaningful music on a cassette tape and then either write a 10-page paper or complete an hour-long interview explaining their selections. An analysis of these data revealed that participants selected music that aided in identity formation, socially situated them, evoked specific temporal or geographical locations, or produced “peak” experiences. Gabrielsson and Lindström Wik (2003) used a similar approach, asking participants to describe their “strongest, most intense experience of music.” The authors identified over 150 experiential and behavioral themes in these descriptions, which included but were not limited to physiological, cognitive, emotional, and transcendental responses to music, thus highlighting the broad range of experiences with and responses to music that people may have.
The present study extends existing work on the social psychological significance of music listening by focusing on a substantive sample of American emerging adults and by making use of both qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis. Specifically, we asked individuals to identify and elaborate on a single piece of music that was considered particularly memorable or meaningful, and allowed them to define “meaningfulness” in whatever terms were personally salient. In addition to broad thematic analyses, we collected more specific information about the listening experience, such as the age at which the music was first heard, the interpersonal context of that listening experience (i.e., solo or with others), and the frequency of repeat listening through the present time. The present study thus both offers a comprehensive portrait of individuals’ intimate relationship with one particular piece of music and examines the systematic patterns that emerge across participants’ accounts of this music.
Method
Participants
Participants were 83 students at a large midwestern university enrolled in an introductory communication studies course who received course credit for their participation. Seven people provided too little data for any meaningful analysis to be conducted (i.e., answered most of the open-ended responses with one-word answers, or wrote responses that were too vague to permit meaningful interpretations) and were excluded from the analyses, leaving 76 participants in total. Consistent with enrollment in communication studies courses at the university, the majority of these participants (80.3%) were female. The mean age of participants was 18.89 years old (SD = 1.33).
Materials and Procedure
Participants completed the open-ended questionnaire on a desktop computer in a private room. The music questions were part of a larger set of questions focused on memorable movies and television shows (not the focus of the current investigation). The order in which participants completed the music questions, relative to the two other sections, was randomized. The opening prompt was as follows:
Please think about a song or piece of MUSIC you listened to at any point in your life that has been particularly memorable or meaningful to you. This could be because of what was going on in your life at that time, as well as the lyrics of the song or music, or the particular context in which you listened to it. The song or piece of music you are thinking of may have affected you positively, negatively or some combination of both. Please make an effort to read each question carefully and respond as accurately as possible.
After identifying the song or piece of music as well as artist/performer, the first question inquired: “What was it about this song or piece of music that made it particularly memorable or meaningful to you?” The question was deliberately broad, providing participants the opportunity to discuss the significance of the music in whatever terms were most salient for them. Follow-up probes (e.g., “Were there any significant events occurring in your life around that time?”; “Was the experience of listening to it positive, negative, a mixture of both? Please describe the kinds of positive and/or negative emotions aroused by the music in more detail and try to explain why you may have reacted in this way”) were designed to encourage participants to reflect on other potential reasons the music might have been identified as particularly memorable.
Participants were left alone in a room and allowed as much time as they needed to complete the survey. Responses were typed into a Microsoft Word document, and participants could write as much or as little as they wished. At the end of the survey, participants indicated their age, gender, and expected major. They were also given a space to comment on the survey itself. Participants typically took 30 to 45 minutes to complete the full study, and they were fully debriefed upon completion.
Results
Analytic/Coding Strategy
We conducted a constant comparative analysis of the data with the aim of developing a mutually exclusive and exhaustive coding system (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Broadly speaking, this approach involves two stages: “open coding,” during which the analysts develop labels to describe the data and use these labels to place the data in subcategories, and “axial coding,” during which the analysts fit the subcategories identified during open coding into larger conceptual categories. Our guiding analytic principle was to allow the overall theme and focus of each response to determine the way in which it was coded. As we will elaborate below, three listening themes emerged in the responses based on our analysis of the social psychological function of memorable music: Coping with Transitions (n = 38), Positive Memories (n = 23), and Self-Reflection (n = 15).
We complemented our thematic analysis with a quantitative coding strategy that allowed for both basic descriptive information and some key comparisons among variables of interest. In addition to obtaining participant age and gender, we asked individuals about the age at which they first heard the piece of music, the interpersonal context in which the music was heard (i.e., “Did you listen to this song or piece of music with someone else [family members, friends, romantic partners]?”), and the approximate frequency with which participants had listened to the music since the first time (i.e., “Have you listened to this song or piece of music since this time? If so, approximately how often have you listened to it?”). We coded the open-ended frequency of listening responses into a quasicontinuous variable: daily, weekly, monthly, once every few months, and rarely. However, some responses (n = 14) were too vague to include in the formalized coding and were not included in the analyses (e.g., “A high number of times since 2004”).
The first author also coded the lyrics and tempo of the music participants selected using information available online (e.g., lyrics, audio clips). Lyrics were coded using printouts of the lyrics to each song so that nonlyrical elements of the songs (e.g., tempo, melody) would not influence the coding. Drumbeat was used as a guide in determining tempo. For both these variables, ambiguous cases were resolved through discussion with the second author. Finally, the authors coded the valence of the listening experience as positive, negative, or mixed.
Descriptive Information
The mean age at which participants first listened to the music they wrote about was 15.05 (SD = 3.76). Over half of the participants (62%) wrote about music they remembered listening to with others (29% with friends, 18% with family, 12% with a romantic partner, and 3% other) while the remaining 38% wrote about music that they remembered listening to alone. The modal current listening frequency was weekly (30%), with monthly (24%), and rarely (21%) as the next most common responses. A smaller percentage reported either daily listening (e.g., “it has been the ringtone on my cell phone for years so I basically hear it daily,” 11%) or listening once every few months (12%).
Lyric coding resulted in three broad emotional tone categories: “positive/celebratory” (n = 26; e.g., ‘All My Loving’ by the Beatles, ‘Our Song’ by Taylor Swift), “negative/hopeful” (n = 27; e.g., ‘What’s Going On’ by Marvin Gaye, ‘My Heart Will Go On’ by Celine Dion), or “negative/bleak” (n = 19; e.g., ‘Because of You’ by Kelly Clarkson, ‘So Sick’ by Ne-Yo). 1 More participants wrote about songs with slow tempos (n = 48) than fast tempos (n = 28).
Participants tended to describe the experience of listening to the music they identified as either a positive experience (n = 39) or an experience that was both positive and negative (n = 33); very few participants talked about their experience exclusively in negative terms (n = 3). 2 Because the small number of people in this final category would not have permitted meaningful analyses, we collapsed the “mixed” and “negative” categories into a “not positive” category for subsequent analyses.
Listening Themes: Coping With Transitions, Positive Memories, and Self-Reflection
As noted above, we classified the participants into one of three major listening themes: Coping with Transitions (n = 38), Positive Memories (n = 23), and Self-reflection (n = 15).
Coping with transitions
Fifty percent of the sample (n = 38) identified a piece of music that was memorable within the context of a significant life transition. More specifically, the majority of this group (n = 24) described how music helped them cope with a period of their life that was coming to an end (e.g., an interpersonal loss through breakup or death); 10 participants wrote about music that helped them adjust to a new phase of life (e.g., starting a new school); finally, 4 participants wrote about how the music helped them cope with midrelationship uncertainties.
The majority of participants in the Coping with Transitions group wrote about music that helped them cope with an ending or an interpersonal loss, which included graduating from a school, the end of a relationship, or a death. Overall, music seemed to help participants reappraise their situation, reflect on the recent past, and/or regulate their emotions. One way that music helped participants cope with transitions was by helping them reframe their situation more positively, which in turn lessened their subjective distress. For example, one participant who was preparing to break up with her boyfriend of 2 years so that she could attend a college 2,000 miles from home claimed that “Hey There Delilah” by the Plain White T’s helped her see that “its not really good bye for ever, just good bye for now. [sic].” Another participant who was also about to leave home for college wrote, “I was sad to be leaving my family and friends and the only life I had ever known . . . [but ‘Swing Life Away’ by Rise Against] makes me realize that I am growing older and need to move on.” In an especially moving and articulate response, one participant described how listening to ‘Anyway’ by Martina McBride helped her cope with a friend’s suicide: “It felt like the song was telling me that even though she didn’t take our help, the fact that we never gave up on her was what really mattered.” It is important to note that in none of these cases did the participants’ external circumstances change. The participants quoted above still had to deal with ending a long-term romantic relationship, leaving behind family and friends, and a friend’s suicide, respectively. The music in question appeared to help participants reconceptualize negative events in a way that ultimately helped them feel better.
Music also helped participants take stock of periods of their lives that were coming to a close. For some participants, endings—and the music associated with them—provided an opportunity to make global assessments of their lives. One participant who was about to graduate from high school, for example, wrote that Green Day’s ‘Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)’
made me think about whether or not I made all the right decisions and if I regretted anything. It made me think about specific events and analyze the way things had turned out and if I was happy with them or not.
In other cases, music helped shed light on the growth that occurred during the period of life coming to an end. One participant claimed John Mayer’s ‘Say’, which “teaches a lesson to say what you need to say,” was memorable because she had struggled with speaking her mind throughout high school; however, when she first heard this song in her senior year, it was something she had “conquered,” so the song makes her “happy every time I hear it because it made me realized [sic] that I have grown up a lot since the beginning of high school.”
Music helped participants regulate the emotions associated with the endings they faced in various ways. Music appeared useful in helping participants integrate positivity into sad times, a process which has been shown to reflect and potentially facilitate resilience and recovery (Bonanno & Keltner, 1997). In the words of one participant coping with the death of a family member, “Even though the events surrounding the music at the time were extremely sad, [listening to the song] was a way to cope with how I was feeling and it helped turn my negative emotions into calmness and serenity.” Another participant noted that a Beatles song provided some comfort while dealing with her mother’s death: “I reacted negatively because my situation and surroundings were negative at the time . . . [but] . . . I reacted positively also because I know my mom loved the song.” While music did not take away the pain associated with the negative situations these participants faced, it helped make this pain more tolerable.
Some participants also credited music with facilitating emotional catharsis, which they believed helped them cope with the transitions they faced. In the memorable words of one participant, “the song ‘hurt so good.’” Participants in this category described an initial negative emotional state that they sought to amplify so that it would dissipate. Music was deliberately sought out because of its ostensible ability to facilitate an emotional release. As one participant wrote,
When I was seeking a release for my emotions, the song was a positive experience because sometimes I didn’t know how to let out my sadness, so I would listen to it to be comforted and as a way of coping.
Other participants reported listening to music that “helped me cry” or “helped me vent.” This language suggests that participants identified emotional needs (e.g., the need to cry) that they used to guide their music selection.
The participants who wrote about music associated with a new phase of life linked the music to either starting a new school or starting a new romantic relationship. As was the case for participants coping with endings, music helped some of these participants reframe their life transitions so they felt less threatening. For one participant who was starting at a new high school, for example, ‘For Now’, from the Broadway musical Avenue Q, “allowed me to realize that even though I was new to the school and hadn’t quite figured out my place there yet, that in time it would change and I would become more comfortable.” Similarly, a participant who was about to start college noted that ‘100 Years’ by Five For Fighting “helped me realize that going away to college would be a really good experience cause I have to live my life to the fullest.” This reframing helped participants more fully embrace the new phases of life they faced. Music also provided the inspiration or motivation to make the most of a new situation. Another participant who was about to start college wrote that ‘I Believe’, by American Idol winner Fantasia, made her “feel that nothing is impossible . . . I was confident and ready to enter college to turn my dreams into a reality.” Music also helped people escape the distress associated with starting at a new school. For one participant, who was “leaving the comfort of elementary school” for middle school, which “was much more difficult to adjust to socially,” this alternate world was provided by the Harry Potter soundtrack, which she associated with the Harry Potter books. As she explained, “I hated how difficult the real world was, and I wished that I was in a fantasy world. The music took me away from reality and made me wish even more that I was in another place.” In this case, it seems possible that the fantasy-based music exacerbated her feelings of alienation even as it provided comfort.
Four participants reported that a particular piece of music helped them negotiate midrelationship uncertainties. For example, one participant noted that Dar Williams’ ‘Iowa’, was “memorable because I had just started dating someone at the time that I wasn’t sure I should be dating . . . it kind of encouraged me to date this person.” Another recalled listening to ‘Good Thing’ by the Fine Young Cannibals with her father immediately after her parents’ divorce; as she explained, “the song made me feel like everything was going to work out because I saw that my dad and I were bonding and having a good time together. . . . It made me feel like he would never leave me for good.” In the first case, then, the comfort came from the song itself; in the second, the comfort came from the extratextual circumstances the song came to symbolize.
Positive memories
The next most common theme we identified (30% of the sample) was the association of a particular piece of music with various positive memories. These participants’ responses indicated that they linked memorable music to a close relationship, a specific positive period of their lives, a positive emotional or energy state, or their own youth.
Close relationships were central to many of the positive memories evoked by music. For example, one participant, who associated ‘Crush’ by the Dave Matthews Band with her boyfriend, explained, “It was a song that symbolized our relationship and feelings towards each other . . . [listening] reminded me of the good times we had together and the feelings we felt for one another.” Three participants selected songs that led them to more fully appreciate a parent. In the words of one participant, the song ‘Daughters’ by John Mayer “made me realize how lucky I am to have a father who is so amazing and great to me.” Each of these 3 participants wrote about a song whose lyrical content pertained to parent-child relationships (Boyz II Men’s ‘A Song For Mama’, Beyonce’s ‘Daddy’, and the aforementioned John Mayer song).
Other people wrote about popular music that triggered positive recollections of a specific time in their lives. As one participant wrote, the song ‘Crank That (Soulja Boy)’ by Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em “became very popular my first semester freshman year of college. It played at every party and even had a certain dance. I will never forget this song because I heard it so many times.” Three participants wrote about a song that they associated with the time when they started developing their own musical preferences. One participant, for example, in accounting for the resonance of Hanson’s ‘MMMBop’, explained, “It came out when I was in second grade and which was when it started to be cool for my friends and I to listen to the radio. It was also on the first CD that I ever bought.” In each of these cases, the music reflected and potentially facilitated a particular developmental moment in the participant’s life.
Others wrote about music that they associated with the production of a positive emotional state. In some cases, this positive state was a state of calm. In response to the prompt asking why the music was memorable, one of these participants simply wrote, “This song just completely relaxed me.” Other participants selected music they associated with the increased energy levels the music reliably produced. In the words of one participant, “Every time I hear the song I get pumped up . . . whenever I play a sport or do an activity, that song reverberates through my head and I get those feelings of being so pumped up and ready to go.” All 3 of these participants were male, and all associated the music they wrote about with playing sports.
The remaining participants in this category wrote about music that they associated with positive memories of their youth. One participant wrote about a popular song that she “always sang” with her sister and a family friend. As she explained, “we would all have our own parts. It is one of the best memories I have from growing up, and every time I listen to this song, it brings a smile to my face.” In contrast to the participants who wrote about music they associated with a specific, relatively short period (e.g., “first semester freshman year of college”; “second grade”), the 4 participants who wrote about music they associated with their youth described associations with more protracted and less well-defined periods. For example, one participant recalled that ‘The Birthday Song’ by the Beatles was always played when she or one of her siblings had a birthday, and she associates the song “with so many memories from my childhood” to this day.
Self-reflection
The remaining 20% of the sample identified music that enabled them to reflect on themselves and their ideals. In some cases, these reflections came in the form of global self-evaluations. For example, one participant wrote that “listening to the lyrics and thinking about the meaning of them made me think about myself and my personality and how I treat others,” while another wrote that the song she identified “made me re evaluate [sic] my life, my relationships, how things are supposed to happen or work out in life.” Another described a song that helped her see “that I’m an anxious person and that waiting for good things to happen is necessary.” In short, songs helped these participants take stock of their lives in ways that allowed them to consider the extent to which their lives, as currently lived, were consistent with their goals and ideals.
In addition to facilitating reflections about the lives participants lead, music facilitated reflections that shed light on the lives they wanted to live. One participant wrote that the song she identified “made me feel that I want to be a person who is true to myself,” while another claimed that her music selection “makes you want to live the rest of your life as if every day is your last.” Another wrote about a song “about someone’s love for Christ” that “made me want to strengthen my relationship with Christ so I could have that type of undying love for him.” Music, then, helped these participants figure out how they wanted to live their lives.
Music that was used in the service of self-reflection also appeared to facilitate self-acceptance and validation: one participant credited a song with helping him to accept his homosexuality. As he wrote, “the lyrics made me begin to realize that my romantic feelings for another as a gay man were just as beautiful, honest, and genuine as that of a heterosexual couple.” Now older and more comfortable with his sexuality, this participant is still able to look back on this song and the relationship it gave him the courage to pursue as significant to his sexual identity development.
A final group of participants identified music that helped them reflect on their place in the grand scheme of things, which, in one particular case, occurred in conjunction with a uniquely literal experience of a grand scheme. This participant described her first time hearing Enya’s ‘Only Time’ while on an aerial tour of “the most beautiful glaciers” and “realizing how trivial and inconsequential the ‘problems’ I have in my life really are . . . knowing that almost every person in the world is contributing to their extinction made me very upset and angry with myself for contributing as well.” More commonly, participants wrote about songs that gave them the opportunity to reflect upon or refine beliefs about the world around them. For one participant, a song with an antirape message amplified an existing belief system: “although I already agreed with the ideology and message of the song, this solidified it in my mind.” In other cases, music helped participants develop their belief systems. One participant, for example, claimed Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Goin’ On’ “made me even more aware with regards to race and racism than I previously was,” while another said John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ caused her to wonder “why are people so mean and hateful towards others? Why are there wars and hate crimes?” Insofar as the development of worldviews is a central feature of identity development for emerging adults (Arnett, 2000), the responses highlighted here suggest one way in which music may contribute to this developmental task.
Additional Themes: Lyrical Resonance and Music as Companion
Our constant comparative analysis also led us to identify two metathemes that cut across the primary themes and are thus worth underscoring: the ability of lyrics to give voice to participants’ experiences, and the extent to which music helped people feel less alone. Many of our examples described above clearly demonstrate the role that lyrics played in the significance of a given piece of music. Indeed, of the 72 participants who wrote about a single piece of music that had lyrics, 41 (56.9%) claimed that part of the reason the song was significant was because they believed the lyrics applied to their lives. As one participant wrote, “this song was memorable for me because it described the relationship I was living in.”
Additionally, in several cases (n = 9), participants explicitly noted that the music in question helped them feel less alone, which was invariably described as a positive experience. All 9 had also claimed that the lyrics applied to their lives, which suggests this is the key mechanism by which music accomplishes this emotionally validating function. For example, one participant wrote about a song taking on particular significance following the death of a sibling: “Hearing those feelings put into words was sort of like a realization that other people go through the pain of loss all the time.”
Listening Theme Comparisons
We were also interested in conducting comparative quantitative analyses with our data, so we assigned nominal codes to each of the major themes described above and entered them into an SPSS file. The two metathemes that cut across these themes—lyrical resonance, and music helping people to feel less alone—were coded dichotomously (i.e., present vs. not present).
To assess whether the three listening themes were meaningfully related to the age at which individuals first heard the music and the frequency with which they continued to listen, we utilized ANOVA (both variables were treated as continuous). For the remaining comparisons, chi-square analyses were utilized. Because obtaining a significant chi-square statistic from an analysis that includes more than four cells only indicates that there are significant differences between groups but not which cells significantly deviate from their expected values, we examined the adjusted standardized residuals for those analyses that yielded a significant chi-square statistic to make this determination. Specifically, we assessed whether listening theme was meaningfully related to: the social context of the listening experience, whether or not participants believed the lyrics resonated with their lives, the emotional tone of the chosen song, the tempo of the chosen song and/or the valence of the listening experience.
We obtained a marginally significant effect of listening theme on age at which participants first heard the given piece of music, F(2, 73) = 2.91, p = .06. Planned inspection of pairwise comparisons indicated that individuals in the Positive Memories group were significantly younger than those in the Coping with Transitions group when they first reported hearing the music in question (M = 13.5 years vs. M = 15.6 years; p < .05).
We next examined whether frequency of current listening varied as a function of listening theme (with age at which participants first heard the music entered as a covariate). A significant effect of listening theme emerged, F(2, 58) = 5.08, p < .01. Planned inspection of pairwise comparisons indicated that individuals in the Positive Memories group listened to their identified music more frequently than those in the Coping with Transitions group (p < .01).
The relationship between listening themes and listening context was also significant, χ2 (2, N = 76) = 8.866, p = .012, Cramer’s V = .342. Participants in the Coping with Transitions group were significantly more likely than chance to listen to the music alone versus with others, while participants in the Positive Memories group were significantly more likely than chance to listen with others than by themselves. This is not surprising given that many of the individuals in the Positive Memories group reported that their positive associations were attributable to shared listening experiences.
Significant patterns also emerged between the listening themes and lyrical resonance, χ2 (2, N = 72) = 23.089, p < .001, Cramer’s V = .566. Participants in the Coping with Transitions group were especially likely to write about the importance of lyrical resonance, while those in the Self-reflection and Positive Memories groupings were significantly less likely than chance to do so.
Significant associations also emerged between listening themes and both tempo of music selected, χ2 (2, N = 76) = 12.11, p = .002, Cramer’s V = .399, and emotional tone of the lyrics χ2 (4, 72) = 11.94, p = .018, Cramer’s V = .288. Specifically, participants in the Coping with Transitions group were significantly more likely than chance to select slow music (and less likely than chance to select fast music), whereas participants in the Positive Memories group were significantly more likely than chance to select fast music (and more likely than chance to not select slow music). Participants in the Coping with Transitions group were also significantly less likely than chance to select music with lyrics we classified as positive/celebratory, while participants in the Positive Memories group were more likely than chance to select music that was “positive/celebratory” and were less likely than chance to select music that had “negative/hopeful” lyrical content.
Finally, significant differences emerged among listening themes with respect to the likelihood of rating the experience of listening as positive. As might be expected, participants in the Positive Memories group were significantly more likely than chance to describe the listening experience as positive, while participants in the Coping with Transitions group were significantly less likely than chance to do so, χ2 (2, N = 75) = 16.455, p < .001, Cramer’s V = .468.
Discussion
The primary aim of this study was to examine the themes that emerge in retrospective accounts of a single piece of music identified by American emerging adults as personally memorable or meaningful. A secondary aim was to determine whether the identified themes were linked in specific ways to other relevant contextual variables such as the emotional tone of the music, the interpersonal context of the first listening experience, and the frequency of current listening. Over half of the sample identified a piece of music as particularly meaningful because it had helped them cope with a difficult transition, such as death, divorce, or the start of a new school. The next most common explanation for why a particular piece of music was meaningful was simply that the music was associated with positive memories, such as an important relationship, time in life, or emotional state. The final theme that we identified running through individuals’ responses was that their chosen piece of music enabled meaningful self-reflection. For some this manifested as an affirmation of a particular worldview (e.g., environmentalism) or identity (e.g., coming out as gay). Finally, we identified two additional meta-themes that cut across these listening themes: participants often selected music that contained lyrics they saw as resonating with their personal experiences or music that helped them feel less alone.
The extent to which meaningful music was so designated because it appeared to function as a coping mechanism in a time of transition may reflect both the developmental challenges facing our sample (recall that the mean age of first listening was 15 years old among the emerging adults we surveyed), and the emotional scaffolding that music provides. Larson (1995) has noted that for adolescents in particular, the “intense emotion expressed in a song provides a strong anchor point for confronting, reappraising, or disassociating oneself from the potent events of the day” (p. 7). Indeed, music listening during a stressful transition appeared to be particularly useful in helping these participants reappraise their current situation in a more positive light and, in many cases, reassuring them that their distress was not only valid but time limited (e.g., “only for now”). The capacity to reconceptualize negative emotion as nonthreatening and temporary is considered a key strategy of adaptive emotion regulation (Brammer, 1992; Gratz & Roemer, 2004; John & Gross, 2004). To the extent that music facilitates such beliefs, it may be viewed as a highly valuable externally derived emotion regulation tool.
Although participants who used music to facilitate catharsis invariably believed that they felt better after releasing emotions or tears, which is consistent with existing self-report data on the cathartic effect of crying, experimental data typically indicates that crying does not have the positive effects most believe it to have (Cornelius, 2001). Cornelius argues that crying makes us feel better insofar as it is effective in eliciting a response from others that leads to a resolution of the problem that triggered the crying in the first place, but that crying, in and of itself, does not lead to positive psychological or physiological outcomes. It may be, then, that to the extent that participants felt better after crying, it was because of gratifications prompted by but external to the crying itself.
In addition to music enabling young adults to cope with transition, half of the sample reported on music that was associated with positive or self-reflective psychological experiences. In the former case, music listening was typically social, celebratory, and, in the present time, evocative of pleasant memories. This showcases the versatile emotional role of music and fits with research suggesting that young adults use music more than other forms of media in both positive and negative moods (Greenwood & Long, 2009a). The emergence of self-reflection as a major category is consistent with existing research on the functions of music, which identifies identity development or self-exploration as a primary function of music. The use of music in this capacity is likely to be especially prevalent among emerging adults, who are still actively negotiating their identities (Arnett, 2000), although there is evidence that this is an important gratification for people of all ages (DeNora, 1999). The present study shows that the self reflections enabled by a particular piece of music can imbue that music with autobiographical significance.
Our quantitative coding scheme enabled us to move beyond emerging themes and explore relevant patterns of association among related variables. Specifically, we found that individuals who identified music that helped them cope with a transition were significantly more likely than chance to claim that lyrical resonance was an important reason the music was personally meaningful, to select slow music, and to listen alone. These individuals were also significantly less likely than chance to select music with positive/celebratory lyrics or to describe the listening experience as exclusively positive. These findings are consistent with Larson’s (1995) conclusions that music listening in adolescence tends to happen in solitude and functions in part to help regulate and navigate negative emotions. The findings also resonate with Oliver’s (2008) contention that we often seek out media that facilitate a sense of meaning rather than or in addition to media that offer basic hedonic rewards.
Individuals who associated their chosen piece of music with positive memories of people or eras of their lives were significantly more likely than chance to select music with positive/celebratory lyrics, to select music with a fast tempo, to describe the experience of listening to the music in exclusively positive terms, and to recall listening to music with others. These individuals were significantly less likely than chance to claim that the lyrics of the music they wrote about resonated with their personal experiences and to select music with “negative but hopeful” lyrics. Further, as compared to individuals who selected music that helped them cope with a transition, individuals whose musical selections were associated with positive memories were significantly more likely to have heard the music at a younger age and to have listened to the music more frequently since that time, even after controlling for the age at which they first heard the music.
Individuals whose music selections afforded opportunities for self-reflection were significantly less likely than chance to write about music that contained lyrics that resonated with their personal experiences. No other patterns with respect to this group emerged as significant. While many researchers have noted that the ability of lyrics to give voice to feelings and experiences, or to provide solace, can be key gratifications for listeners (Frith, 1987; Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007), others have found that, under some conditions, lyrics are the least relevant listening motive (e.g., Roe, 1985).
Together, the findings are consistent with existing literature that argues that people often elect to listen to music that is mood, or situation, congruent (Gibson et al., 2000; Greenwood, 2010; Knobloch & Zillmann, 2003) as opposed to merely uplifting, as traditional mood management theory would predict. Whether one is coping with stress remembering fun times or relationships, or taking stock of one’s personal and/or ideological identities and possible selves, music seems to offer a uniquely personalized soundtrack.
Ultimately, we believe our study broadens the current understanding of the critical role that music plays in emerging adults’ lives. Their thoughtful reflections provide a rich and nuanced view of the value that music holds for a population that is, by definition, in transition. For college students, in particular, adapting to these transitions may even require and reflect shifts at the neural level: first year college students show increased activity and connectivity among regions of the brain associated with emotion and behavioral regulation in partial response to the “increasingly complex environmental demands” of college life (Bennett & Baird, 2006, pp. 774-775).
Arnett (2000) notes that the years of emerging adulthood are “characterized by a high degree of demographic diversity and instability, reflecting the emphasis on change and exploration” (p. 471). Interestingly, our study suggests that music may provide a pivotal form of stability as well as self-exploration during what may be considered a normatively overwhelming time of life. Although the students in our sample typically identified songs that had first emerged as meaningful to them in high school (mean age at first listening was 15 years old), the majority (65%) reported continuing to listen to their chosen song as often as daily (as in the ringtone example), weekly, or monthly. This suggests that music may provide some kind of ongoing emotional scaffolding for adolescents as they attempt to navigate the social, intellectual, and emotional pressures of college life.
Limitations and Future Directions
A few limitations of the present study should be noted. First, self-reports generally and retrospective data in particular, may not provide accurate accounts of the phenomenon under investigation. This is highlighted in work that calls attention to different patterns of findings that emerge in self-report versus experimental data (Cornelius, 2001). However, even if the memories reported are “inaccurate” in the sense that they do not directly correspond to the experiences described, they are “accurate in the sense that they represent the personal meaning of an event” (Gabrielsson & Lindström Wik, 2003, p. 204). For this reason, memory bias in this case may be considered informative rather than obstructive.
Next, given the documented gender differences in listening motives and selections (Roe, 1985; Wells & Hakanen, 1991), it would have been desirable to examine gender differences in the present study. However, given the small number of male participants, it was not possible to conduct these analyses.
Finally, the specific concerns discussed by the emerging adults in this study may not generalize to emerging adults from other cultural or socioeconomic backgrounds. For example, given the financial costs of attending college and social and cultural norms about higher education, attending college—and, in particular, leaving one’s hometown to attend a college that is in another city, state, or country—suggests either a certain amount of privilege or atypicality. However, the needs activated by the events these participants discussed (i.e., the need to cope with a stressor, the need to belong) are believed to be fundamental human needs that traverse cultures and age cohorts (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Gelhaar et al., 2007). Future research should examine whether other populations turn to music to satisfy these needs.
Future researchers should also carefully assess young adults’ ongoing strategic social and emotional use of music. One approach that has been used to study everyday music listening and that would provide researchers with additional insight into how music listening practices might offer opportunities for emotion regulation, positive memories and self-reflection, is the Experience Sampling Method, or ESM (Sloboda, O’Neill, & Ivaldi, 2001; see also Thompson & Larson, 1995, for a study using a similar approach). With this approach, participants are provided with pagers and instructed to provide information on the music they are listening to and the circumstances surrounding their listening whenever they are paged. By clarifying the nature of the daily soundtracks that accompany the lives of emerging adults, researchers may better understand when and for whom music listening might facilitate or inhibit emotional well-being.
Future research should continue to probe the significance of lyrical resonance. Our data indicated that lyrics were often a key reason a particular piece of music was identified as personally meaningful. However, some existing research suggests that lyrics are relatively unimportant to the listening experience (Roe, 1985). We suggested that people may be especially likely to consider lyrics important in music they see as personally significant. Future research should seek to identify the contexts in which lyrics do or do not attain significance. A focus on the ends lyrics may enable music to serve (e.g., companionship, inspiration) might also be fruitful.
Findings from the present study indicating that music helped emerging adults feel less alone or allowed them to feel connected to absent others suggest that music may, in some cases, help fulfill belongingness needs (i.e., the “need to belong”; Baumeister & Leary, 1995). There is some existing research that examines using media to fill belongingness needs. For example, Greenwood and Long (2009b) found that the need to belong was a significant predictor of imagined intimacy with television characters. However, to our knowledge, the need to belong construct has not been considered in connection with music. As a sense of belonging is posited to help people cope more effectively with life stressors (Baumeister & Leary, 1995), this line of research could feed into the one proposed above concerning the use of music as a coping strategy. Similarly, attachment anxiety has been found to predict increased involvement with media programs and characters (Cole & Leets, 1999; Greenwood, 2008; Greenwood & Long, 2009b). Our findings suggest that music might serve an important attachment regulation function; specific songs appeared to help individuals self-soothe during periods of instability, as well as tolerate separation distress and the loss of significant attachment figures (e.g., parents, romantic partners). It would be valuable to clarify the positive and/or negative attachment implications of everyday music use.
The present study highlights the myriad reasons why a specific piece of music may have emotional significance for emerging adults. More research is needed to clarify the long-term implications of these selections for identity development and psychological well-being.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Author’s note
The authors would like to thank Cecilia M. Beglin for her assistance.