You Are the Music: How Music Reveals What it Means to be Human (7 page)

Saarikallio used this research to develop a scale for measuring mood regulation with music. She tested 1,515 adolescents and found that girls use music in this way more than boys and that older adolescents use it more than younger ones; this latter result makes sense as we tend to use strategies more as we learn and get better at using them.

In addition, Saarikallio showed that greater life involvement with music predicts greater use of music for mood regulation but, perhaps surprisingly, this link was not limited to formal musical training; it included how important someone thought music was in their life and how much they heard music in their home. She also found that music listening for mood regulation tends to occur more in private than in public.

Adolescents who used music successfully for music regulation tended to have a wider variety of tastes – in Saarikallio’s study they were better able to choose from a large selection of music that they liked for just about any mood. Having said this, the use of music in mood regulation was most strongly connected to a preference for rock and heavy metal music. Saarikallio suggested that the strong intensity, volume, and ‘roughness’ of these styles may reflect the emotional experience of youth and therefore enable better reflective coping.

Music to aid coping

There are two ways in which music helps coping. The first is the behavioural response. That can be anything from dancing and singing to laughing or crying (as in my Ray Charles example). Music helps with mood regulation by stimulating physical behaviours that have a positive effect on a person’s ability to regulate how they feel; to maintain a desired mood, make it more intense, or change it depending on the demands of the situation.

The second mechanism of music coping is cognitive, where music stimulates thoughts and memories that help us review experiences, link the meanings together in our minds, and learn for future occasions.

This two-part model (physical and cognitive mechanisms) gives us a framework to understand how music has its effect and how, in our adolescence, it becomes a ‘tool’ for us to use to stimulate body and/or mind in order to get us to where we want to be in terms of our physical or mental state.

Dave Miranda and Michel Claes
¹⁹
collected questionnaires from 418 French-Canadian adolescents to assess musical preferences, depression levels, and styles of coping by music listening (emotion oriented, problem oriented or avoidance/disengagement). They were also interested in the importance of lyrics and peer reactions.

They found that social peer groups agreed strongly on the types of music that they used for coping with emotions, supporting the idea that music is an important factor in social relationships in adolescence. They also showed that problemoriented coping when listening to music was associated with lower depression levels in girls. This finding sits well with the idea proposed by Amiram Raviv and colleagues that female adolescents identify with song lyrics and artists for solace and advice about personal problems.
²⁰

By contrast, emotional coping with music was more associated with depressive symptoms in boys. This was not a strong relationship, however, nor did it represent severe depressive symptoms; this may reflect a type of maladaptive ‘venting’ of emotions through music that is more common in male adolescents.

An important caveat with this last finding is the influence of time. Adolescents who listen to music in order to relieve negative moods tend to feel worse initially but then after some time has elapsed they often feel better.
²¹
This was definitely
my experience when I was trying to cure my heartbreak with Ray Charles. I felt rotten at the time but the catharsis was an important part of the healing process. And even though the song still makes me cry I tend to feel better quickly as the song reminds me that I got through that difficult time and everything worked out for the best.

The study of French-Canadian teenagers combined with Saarikallio’s work shows us that adolescents who are surrounded by and enjoy music use listening to cope with the stresses that they experience as they encounter personal problems and emotional challenges for the first time. Some of the music coping strategies may be more helpful than others, especially at first, but this is all a learning experience and must be considered in terms of long-term outcomes. The adolescents in these studies are learning to use music to regulate their moods and emotions in a way that many of them will go on to dip into throughout their lives.

Can some music be bad?

At this point I would like to make a comment or two about the idea that music (in particular songs from certain genres) can ‘corrupt’ a young person; the idea that music can do damage to emotional development that may lead to problem thoughts and/or behaviours.

Adrian North and David Hargreaves published an excellent review of this thorny issue
²²
wherein they pointed out that this idea is nothing new; in 1951 a number of radio stations banned Dean Martin’s ‘Wham! Bam! Thank You, Ma’am’ because of the apparent salacious nature of the lyrics. And a Florida judge famously threatened to arrest Elvis Presley in 1956 if he shook his body during his upcoming performance at a local theatre.

As strange as it may seem to us now, the Florida judge was quite justified in his desire not to offend the older audience
and parents/carers, many of whom thought that Elvis’s music had a bad effect on young people. One of the quotes about Elvis’s music at the time was made by Frank Sinatra:

It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people … It is sung, played and written for the most part by cretinous goons and by means of its almost imbecilic reiterations and sly, lewd – in plain fact dirty – lyrics, and as I said before, it manages to be the martial music of every sideburned delinquent on the face of the earth.
²³

The debate about whether or not adults should protect young people from music modified over the years but certainly did not disappear, as many might believe, in the swinging sixties. In 1985 the US senate held a debate on the morality of music, one outcome of which was the famous ‘Parental Advisory’ sticker. Among the first albums to feature the sticker were Soundgarden’s
Louder Than Love
and Guns N’ Roses’
Appetite for Destruction
. The sale of a CD with this sticker to a minor in parts of the US can still result in prosecution and albums with the label can be banned from sale in some countries.

Is there any science to support the notion that music, as well as aiding emotional and mood regulation, could in some cases be harmful to coping styles and/or behaviours?

Research has established relationships between many music genres such as rap, heavy metal – even classical and country music
²⁴
– and problem adolescent coping (depression, anxiety and anger) and behaviours (violence and substance abuse).
²⁵
As such it is not wise to brush aside the idea that some music might contribute to harm. If we want to make the argument that music can be powerful enough to do some good then we must accept that in some cases it may contribute to problems.

A pinch of salt is required, however, as the majority of studies in this area are correlational in nature.
²⁶
This means that the researchers measure music listening and problem behaviour or coping separately, and then use statistics to look for a relationship between the two things. Now, you can get a nice significant relationship between hours of sunshine and ice cream eating behaviour, but that doesn’t mean that eating ice cream makes the sun come out. What a correlation study can never establish is a direct
cause
.

The main problem with a correlation finding is that there could be any number of additional factors involved in the relationship between music and problem coping/behaviours. So, for example, one study found that adolescents who feel sadder after listening to heavy metal music have more depressive symptoms.
²⁷
This result can be accounted for by maladaptive coping behaviours that could have developed entirely separately from the music. The important caveat is that music does not necessarily
cause
whatever coping style a person is using, though it can become part and parcel of the whole thing.

Another issue with studies that
have
found an effect of music on maladaptive coping, meaning they played music and measured how it made people feel, is that the majority employ music videos.
²⁸
This is legitimate and interesting scientific investigation but I wonder why most studies in this area use videos and not just a CD or MP3 track. The evidence (or lack of it) in this area seems to suggest that maladaptive responses to music are weaker in the absence of visual images, though this is an idea that remains to be tested.

Finally with regards to maladaptive responses to music, we must accept a lack of knowledge at present on two important issues: long-term effects and placebo effects. One series of experiments that found short-term effects of listening to music with violent lyrics on ratings of aggression
²⁹
concluded that comparable direct long-term effects were unlikely; such
feelings could easily dissipate if exposure to violent lyrics was interrupted by non-violent music or a positive event. And one study found that teenagers’ impressions of the same piece of music (either ‘suicide-inducing’ or ‘life-affirming’) were driven by what they were told about its meaning.
³⁰
This last finding suggests that responses to music are sometimes less about the music itself and more about how it is marketed.

In conclusion, we must be careful not to label any one musical song, artist or genre as simply ‘bad’; rather we need to look more carefully at how particular music, lyrics, and visual media influence young people, and at the effects of how the artists and their materials are presented to and interpreted by the adolescent listener.

We also need to look more at the link to long-term behaviours
³¹
and not so much at immediate reactions – many of us might fill in a questionnaire to say that we feel temporarily more aggressive after listening to heavy metal but that doesn’t mean we intend to go out and indulge in violence. Future studies will hopefully narrow down any potential direct negative influence of music on behaviour, if any exists, and thereby enable us to offer more useful guidance than just a roughly drawn idea of what adults think is ‘safe music’.

My music, my self

Music becomes an important part of who we are and how we want other people to see us during our adolescence. Music can provide a group identity; my brother was a skater boy in his teens and this defined the music that he listened to as well as his ‘look’ (including exaggerated moptop) and aspects of his behaviour as he strived to be part of an in-group.

Remember the research by Miranda and Claes, who found that the French-Canadian teenagers all tended to agree about the music that their close friends liked? And remember Saarikallio’s finding that listening to music in adolescence
is linked to
identity
and
interpersonal relationships
? This is the section of this chapter where all that comes together as we explore how music becomes not only a tool in our box of coping mechanisms but a part of who we are as adolescents.

The concepts of self-identity and social (or group) identity are linked. It is often by asserting our self-identity that we clarify our social identity. And we gain important components of our self-identity, such as self-esteem, through other people’s evaluations of our social identity. While they are entwined concepts, music contributes selectively to self- and social identity, so we will deal with them one at a time, starting with the self.

Self-identity

Learning about ourselves (what is important to us, how we think, our morals and sense of justice) is one of the most difficult but important psychological transitions that we face in adolescence. Many individuals seek to understand themselves better through their reactions to the world: what they like or don’t like; what seems right and what seems wrong; what moves them and what leaves them cold. The reflective nature of music explains why it is such a useful medium for learning about self-identity in this way. It is not strictly right or wrong in and of itself, but it can be evaluated in this way depending on each person.

A conductor once told me that a great piece of music is like a mirror and everyone sees themselves. We can add anything we like to music and it will still make sense. Music is therefore one of the greatest recipes for self-definition – just add meaning as required!

Some people, like my partner, find their personal inspiration and ideals in reflective literature. Some will find them through visual arts. It is fair to say that most of us find them through music.

I will use myself as an example. As a teenager and into my twenties I spent hours listening to the music of John Lennon. His music taught me a lot about how I felt with regards to human nature and the world. I didn’t need anyone to tell me, ‘You need to listen to this music and appreciate and learn from the sentiment.’ In fact, my parents were not Beatles fans, though their taste did go to sixties music. My peers were mostly into modern music, to which I had little access. I found Lennon all by myself and I loved him right from the start.

He was different, and in my young eyes so was I. His journey, the things he sang about and the way he composed music all triggered reflective thoughts in my head that encouraged me to think about both the fun and the difficult things in life. I learned from his good and bad examples, and through his music I was able to interpret for myself where I had come from, how I wanted to be seen by others, and where I wanted to go with my life. Of course, this was partly to do with my interpretation of him as a person but I did not spend hours reading books about him or watching his films. I wanted to listen to his music.