Week 2 Summary article The role of music in adolescent development
Introduction
•Music can have many social psychological impacts and meanings for people at different periods of
their development.
•Music is a resource of considerable intellectual, artistic, cultural, technological, and economical
breadth and depth.
•Young people, especially, devote huge amounts of time and money to music listening.
•This article will argue that music has become a genuine developmental resource that deserves
much more attention from developmental psychology in adolescence.
But can music have any significant influence on individuals?
•At the outset, developmental psychologists may wonder whether music has any significant
influence on some of the biological, psychological and social factors that compose human nature.
The answer seems to be yes.
Biological effects
•From an evolutionary perspective, music could be an evolved psychological mechanism in as much
as it seems to have been potentially adaptive for increasing our fitness for survival in terms of better
mate selection, social cohesion, synchronised group effort, perceptual development, motor skill
development, conflict reduction, safe time passing, trans generational communication of culture, and
self-regulation.
Psychological effects
•The psychology of music and emotions helps to better understand emotions as synchronised
responses to changes in the environment.
•This area of research also contributes to our understanding of how musical emotions interact with
psychological phenomena.
•Furthermore, a promising research direction is that music can serve the adaptive purpose of
emotion regulation.
Social effects
•In infancy, lullabies promote a fundamental social bond, namely maternal attachment.
•The potency with which music stimulates and modulates interpersonal relationships in social events
have led authors to refer to is as a social lubricant.
•Music taste can be utilised as a badge about one’s personality and social status.
•People also develop social schemas and even stereotypes about fans of different music genres, and
this can influence intergroup dynamics by shaping in-groups and out-groups that are based on
different music tastes.
•At least two factors can explain why developmental psychologists can underestimate the
importance of music in adolescence: lack of scientific communication; and trends of publication in
developmental journals.
Lack of scientific communication
•Darwin hypothesised that music had probably been adaptive for sexual selection during human
evolution.
•James also hypothesised that music was adaptive in terms of self-regulations when he suggested
that the habit of excessive indulgence in music has probably a relaxing effect upon the character.
•In the first part of the twentieth century, music developed into a significant area of research in
psychology.
•It is paradoxical that mainstream psychologists so easily underscored the lack of research, whereas
music psychologists were enthused by the wealth of studies.
Introduction
•Music can have many social psychological impacts and meanings for people at different periods of
their development.
•Music is a resource of considerable intellectual, artistic, cultural, technological, and economical
breadth and depth.
•Young people, especially, devote huge amounts of time and money to music listening.
•This article will argue that music has become a genuine developmental resource that deserves
much more attention from developmental psychology in adolescence.
But can music have any significant influence on individuals?
•At the outset, developmental psychologists may wonder whether music has any significant
influence on some of the biological, psychological and social factors that compose human nature.
The answer seems to be yes.
Biological effects
•From an evolutionary perspective, music could be an evolved psychological mechanism in as much
as it seems to have been potentially adaptive for increasing our fitness for survival in terms of better
mate selection, social cohesion, synchronised group effort, perceptual development, motor skill
development, conflict reduction, safe time passing, trans generational communication of culture, and
self-regulation.
Psychological effects
•The psychology of music and emotions helps to better understand emotions as synchronised
responses to changes in the environment.
•This area of research also contributes to our understanding of how musical emotions interact with
psychological phenomena.
•Furthermore, a promising research direction is that music can serve the adaptive purpose of
emotion regulation.
Social effects
•In infancy, lullabies promote a fundamental social bond, namely maternal attachment.
•The potency with which music stimulates and modulates interpersonal relationships in social events
have led authors to refer to is as a social lubricant.
•Music taste can be utilised as a badge about one’s personality and social status.
•People also develop social schemas and even stereotypes about fans of different music genres, and
this can influence intergroup dynamics by shaping in-groups and out-groups that are based on
different music tastes.
•At least two factors can explain why developmental psychologists can underestimate the
importance of music in adolescence: lack of scientific communication; and trends of publication in
developmental journals.
Lack of scientific communication
•Darwin hypothesised that music had probably been adaptive for sexual selection during human
evolution.
•James also hypothesised that music was adaptive in terms of self-regulations when he suggested
that the habit of excessive indulgence in music has probably a relaxing effect upon the character.
•In the first part of the twentieth century, music developed into a significant area of research in
psychology.
•It is paradoxical that mainstream psychologists so easily underscored the lack of research, whereas
music psychologists were enthused by the wealth of studies.
