The power of music

Adrian C. North, David J. Hargreaves

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Adrian C. North and David J. Hargreaves introduce the special issue with a look at how music psychology is changing in the digital era

The digital revolution has led to music being increasingly integrated into the stream of daily life. This in turn has led to researchers showing greater interest in the effects of music on a wide range of thoughts and behaviours. This article looks at three potential roles of music; namely, in self-injurious behaviours; in reducing pain and increasing immunity; and in promoting animal welfare. self-injurious behaviours; in reducing pain and increasing immunity; and in promoting animal welfare.

The digital revolution means that the manner in which people obtain and listen to music has changed radically since the early 1990s. Legal and illegal websites make it possible to obtain a massive range of music within moments. These sites are complemented by a panoply of digital radio, TV and internet-based stations broadcasting 24/7. High-capacity portable digital music players mean that we can, and often do, carry our entire music library with us.
All this has an important implication. North et al. (2004) and Sloboda et al. (2001) produced quantitative evidence that people’s everyday use of music is goal-directed – we use it to achieve a particular mood or state, to pass the time, to enhance interpersonal interactions, or any of many other possible tasks. The sheer range of music available to us at any point in our everyday life means that, in the digital era, people have access to precisely the kind of music that would help them to achieve whatever specific goals they are trying to meet. This in turn has a further implication for psychologists. If the opportunity widely exists to, and a significant number of people actually do, use music to achieve a wide range of goals, there is a need for an applied psychology of music.
In our recent book The Social and Applied Psychology of Music (North & Hargreaves, 2008) we attempted to map out what this field might look like. We argued that the digital revolution and subsequent emphasis of music researchers on the implications of musical behaviour means that the paradigm in which many conduct their research has shifted over the past 20 years. During the 1970s and 1980s, research on listening to music was dominated by cognitive issues, such as memory, attention and understanding of musical syntax. It is tempting to view this dominance as resulting from the less-contextualised manner in which listening typically occurred at the time. Under these less-contextualised circumstances, the music would, of course, more likely be the focus of attention. So rather than considering the social, external world, it made more sense to focus on the listener’s inner mental world. Moreover, this cognitive focus and lack of consideration of the interaction between musical behaviour and the context in which it took place led to highly reductionist, experimental procedures. This approach contrasts sharply with much of the present-day research which, although it certainly does not ignore cognitive factors, is primarily concerned with the reciprocal influence between these and contextualised, real-life musical behaviours.
This special issue of The Psychologist looks at musical ability; how and why people let music into their lives, and the impact of musical proficiency (or a lack of it). It becomes clear that music is important to us; a source of pride, enjoyment, even solace. At least two of the articles here reflect the long-standing interest within the field, dating back to Ancient Greece, in clinical- and health-related issues among particular subpopulations. For the remainder of our article, we address three other health-related implications of music that lie outside those that have been studied traditionally.

Rock music and self-injurious behaviour

The rise of heavy rock with supposedly pro-suicide lyrics in the 1970s and 1980s led to legislation (e.g. attempts to ban sales of CDs featuring a ‘parental advisory’ sticker), public protest (e.g. by the Parents’ Music Resource Center), and many apparently bizarre local actions (e.g. the suspension of a Michigan high school pupil for wearing a T-shirt promoting Korn that featured no lyrics or words apart from the band’s name). The assumption on which these were based, namely that the music causes self-injurious thoughts and actions, is not so far-fetched as might seem, as several studies suggest at least a correlation between music and suicide. For example, Stack et al. (1994) found a link between suicide rates among teenage Americans and variations in subscriptions to a heavy rock magazine; and we (North and Hargreaves, 2006) have found that fans of rock and rap were more likely than others to consider suicide and to self-harm. Other research, though, is less suggestive of a link. We have also found (North & Hargreaves, 2006) that thoughts of suicide and self-harm precede an interest in rock, so that the latter can’t have caused the former. Similarly, merely describing a song as ‘suicide-inducing’ or ‘life-affirming’ leads listeners to perceive it as such (North & Hargreaves, 2005); by labelling music as suicide-inducing, campaigners and legislators may be helping to create the problem they aim to eradicate. Other research (North & Hargreaves, 2006; Scheel & Westefeld, 1999; Schwartz & Fouts, 2003; Stack et al., 1994) shows that the correlation between suicidal tendencies and an interest in rock is mediated by family background and self-esteem, which raises the issue of which of the latter is the better predictor of the former.