Susan A. O’Neill
The concept of adolescence is a familiar one, and, yet, the limits are expansive. There is no single way to characterize the many discursive constructions that shape what it means to be a young person growing up in today’s complex, technological, and globalized world. From a research perspective adolescence tends to be considered a psychological and social transition period between late childhood and early adulthood. Individuals enter this phase of development having acquired social-cognitive abilities during childhood—ways of orienting, constructing, and understanding the social world they inhabit—based on everyday life experiences at home, school, and through the media. During adolescence, social relationships and identity development are particularly salient. As adolescents interact increasingly with others in different physical and virtual life spaces, they find themselves “facing the external world” and meeting “diverse views” about the thoughts and emotions that are considered “‘reasonable,’ ‘appropriate,’ or ‘expected’” (Brizio, Gabbatore, Tirassa, & Bosco, 2015, p. 1).
Understanding the complex social world of adolescence requires an integrated approach to social cognition that is capable of addressing “real-world” issues in adolescents’ everyday life experiences (Augoustinos, Walker, & Donaghue, 2014, p. 6). For example, over the past 15 years, researchers have focused increasing attention on the relationships young people have with music and what this can tell us about their social worlds. Music has been shown to be an influential medium in areas such as emotion and mood regulation, and peer-group affiliation. Add to this the digital landscape where adolescents engage increasingly in self-directed and collaborative music activities with an unprecedented amount of autonomy through the use of technological advances, information sharing, and social media. Of interest is how young people engage with music to enhance their sense of wellbeing. Another key concern of current research is the identification of what constrains and enables adolescents’ choices and engagement in music activities within complex personal and social situations (O’Neill, 2017).
This chapter examines two main areas and several influential studies that shed light on the links between music and social cognition in adolescence: music listening and participation in organized music activities in everyday life, and the influence of music on emotion, mood regulation and socio-emotional communication. It begins with a brief overview of how social cognition has influenced our understanding of adolescence. This is followed by a discussion of the major developmental changes and challenges adolescents face as they embark on a key transition period into what is often referred to as emerging adulthood. Given that the present generation of the world’s population has the largest number of 10 to 19 year olds in recorded history (1.2 billion or nearly a quarter of the world’s population) (WHO, 2016), there is a sense of urgency in gaining a deeper understanding of adolescence in relation to multiple contexts of youth development and the transition to emerging adulthood. Add to this the notion that music is a prevalent activity in adolescents’ everyday lives (North, Hargreaves, & O’Neill, 2000), and we gain a sense of the importance of research on the capacity of music to make a positive difference in the lives of young people.
Social cognition is the means through which adolescents make sense of themselves, others, and the world around them. The phrase “make sense of” is crucial in distinguishing social cognition from a mere behavioral focus and in shifting the emphasis to psychological approaches that are embedded within particular social contexts. Brizio and colleagues (2015) argue that the literature on social cognition in adolescence is “scarce and scattered” (p. 1) with few empirical studies and no unitary theoretical framework. They claim that adolescent development is best described as a “yet-to-be-understood mix of biological and cultural factors” (p. 1), which makes context-free studies impossible to devise when researchers attempt to explain how adolescents “experience and enact their social life” (p. 10). They suggest phenomenological approaches are needed and that these are best captured in narrative form as researchers attempt to understand the life events of adolescents within “the situated, embedded, embodied, autobiographically rich first person” (p. 1). Other approaches to social cognition in adolescence focus on dynamic models of human development and emphasize the importance of relations between people and their “real world” ecological settings for understanding variations that promote future options, opportunities and trajectories (Silbereisen & Lerner, 2007).
Social cognition also “functions as a form of acting and as a mediator of action and development” during social interactions where “individuals engage dialogically with other persons through the use of mediational means ” (Mascolo & Margolis, 2004, p. 289, original emphasis). Mediational means include cultural tools such as music and dialogical or relational social interactions that take place within different sociocultural, economic, and educational contexts. These social interactions are interpreted through different lenses of cultural knowledge and social realities. As a result, the field of social cognition in adolescence has become increasingly diversified and complex. In particular, adolescents’ “everyday life” experiences combined with cultural factors have expanded the contemporary research landscape. Researchers in social cognition and related areas of psychology are uniquely placed among diverse academic perspectives “to advance understanding of the integrated biopsychosocial nature of humans and how they manage and shape the everyday world around them” (Bandura, 2001, p. 18). However, a key criticism associated with the majority of research and theory in social cognition is that it is “driven by an overwhelmingly individualistic orientation that forgets that the contents of cognition originate in social life, in human interaction and communication” (Augoustinos et al., 2014, p. 7). Although there appears to be a changing landscape of theorizing and research in adolescent social cognition, there is still much work to be done to encourage researchers, including those with interests in music-related areas, to examine aspects of adolescence as a dynamic and context-dependent process whereby individuals are continually engaged in a process of making sense of how they experience and enact their social life.
As this chapter unfolds, we will consider how music-related research has contributed to a changing research landscape. We will explore how various social cognition perspectives have advanced our understanding of how adolescents draw on music to negotiate aspects of their everyday life, such as regulating their mood, coping with personal challenges, identifying with and evaluating themselves in relation to others, and creating an identity and making an external impression on others.
Adolescence is considered a transitional period between childhood and adulthood with two major transitional phases. The beginning of adolescence is associated with puberty as a complex biological transition. There has been much research devoted to maturational changes associated with the onset of puberty and increased levels of distress during the transition to early adolescence as well as impacts on social and emotional well-being (Sawyer et al., 2012). The second transitional phase is from late adolescence to early adulthood or what is often referred to as emerging adulthood. Both of these transitional phases may take on different meanings depending on the groups and society in which individuals live (Brizio et al., 2015).
Due to increased fragmentation, mobility, and uncertainty in the world today, adolescents face considerable developmental changes and challenges in what Larson (2011) refers to as “coming of age in a disorderly world” (p. 330). As adolescents prepare to embark on emerging adulthood, they are “setting the stage for continued development through the life span as individuals begin to make choices and engage in a variety of activities that are influential on the rest of their lives” (Zarrett & Eccles, 2006, p. 13). During this transitional phase, which often coincides with the completion of compulsory schooling, adolescents move into a period marked by decisions that include “education or vocational training, entry into and transitions within the labor market, moving out of the family home, and sometimes marriage and parenthood” (p. 13). The transition to emerging adulthood is also marked by increased independence and greater responsibility as young people take a more active role in their own life course.
Some attention has been given to how adolescent music learners negotiate the transition to young adulthood (Davidson & Faulkner, 2016; Evans & McPherson, 2016). Much of this work focuses on changes in adolescent identity development drawing on an Eriksonian (Erikson, 1986) view of identity formation and extensions of this work by Marcia (1980). A key finding from this approach is that “adolescence involves a process of continually exploring various identities, and making decisions and commitments to those in which one identifies” (Evans & McPherson, 2016, p. 215).
This chapter continues by examining two main areas and several influential studies that shed light on the links between music and social cognition in adolescence: music listening and participation in organized music activities in everyday life, and the influence of music on emotion, mood regulation and well-being.
Music is ubiquitous in adolescents’ everyday lives; it enables them to portray an “image” of themselves to the outside world and satisfy emotional needs (North et al., 2000). In considering the influence of music in how adolescents manage and shape their everyday lives, studies at the end of the 1990s began to explore the reasons for adolescents’ music consumption (Zillmann & Gan, 1997). As Boekhoven (2016) explains, music was found to assist adolescents in many aspects of their lives such as communication, connection, representation, comfort, identity and rebellion (Campbell Connell, & Beegle, 2007). Earlier research helped to establish links between social factors and everyday life experiences of music with psychosocial development and adolescent identity (Larson, 1995). Participation in music activities was also found to support identity exploration, personal goals, agency and self-determination (Denny, 2007). Although many adolescents engage in both playing and listening to music, the trajectories of these activities are divergent. Time spent listening to music tends to increase during the adolescent years, while interest in music as a subject at school tends to decline (McPherson & O’Neill, 2010).
In the sections that follow, three key features of adolescents’ experience of music in their everyday lives will be considered: music preferences, musician role models, and music participation in organized activities. Each of these music-related activities offer different perspectives on understanding the capacity of music to make a difference in the lives of young people.
Music preferences reflect and shape young people’s values, conflicts, and development (Schwartz & Fouts, 2003). Friendships based on shared musical tastes are particularly important during adolescence (O’Neill, 2005). In considering the importance of music preferences, several previous studies employed the uses and gratification approach (Rubin, 1994)—a theory developed to explain how and why people make different media choices depending on personal characteristics and needs. For example, adolescents tend to gravitate toward particular kinds of music based on personality characteristics, issues, and/or needs that are either reflected in the music they choose or that the music satisfies (see Bosacki & O’Neill, 2012). Adolescents’ music preferences have been found to be related to issues of identity, dependence–independence, and separateness–connection (Avery, 1979; Mainprize, 1985); values, images, beliefs, and identifications (Arnett, 1995; Larson, 1995). Steele and Browne’s (1995) “media practice model” for adolescents incorporates identity, music selection, and social interaction to describe the nature of their involvement with media that, in turn, shapes their sense of themselves. Lull (1987) concluded, “young people use music to resist authority at all levels, assert their personalities, develop peer relationships and romantic entanglements, and learn about things that their parents and the schools aren’t telling them” (p. 152).
The effects of shared music preferences on intergroup bias in adolescence were the focus of a study of 97 adolescents in England (Bakagiannis & Tarrant, 2006). Drawing on social identity theory, the researchers assigned participants to one of two social groups that were told had similar or different music preferences compared to a control group who were not told anything about the music preferences of the groups. Next, participants completed measures designed to assess their perceptions of the ingroup and outgroup (by rating trait adjectives referred to as an intergroup discrimination measure) and to rate how their group was perceived by the outgroup (referred to as a meta-stereotyping measure). The results indicated that when participants perceived that the ingroup and outgroup had similar music preferences, there were lower levels of intergroup discrimination. The authors concluded that “adolescents’ preferences that their own groups and outgroups have similar musical preferences can facilitate the development of positive intergroup relations” (Bakagiannis & Tarrant, 2006, p. 134). In other words, it appears that music preferences can indeed bring adolescents together.
Research also indicates that music listening preferences can be a resource for adolescents’ self-evaluations. In a study by Kistler and colleagues (2010), social cognitive theory was used to interpret the pathways between early adolescents’ music media consumption and three domains of self-concept (physical appearance, romantic appeal, and global self-worth). SCT suggests that adolescents are “likely to remember and create mental representations of (i.e., retain) music media images when they connect personal meaning to them” (Kistler et al., 2010, p. 617). Since media portrayal of music artists tends to depict them “as powerful, attractive, or successful” (p. 618), adolescents’ “self-appraisals against the norms projected through music media” may influence their self-concepts. The findings indicated a mediational model whereby higher consumption of music media was associated with “perceiving one’s self as less physically attractive (i.e., having less competency in the physical appearance domain) and having a lower overall opinion of one’s self (global self-worth)” (p. 627). According to the authors, the results suggest “that through involvement processes with music media characters, adolescents may use music media as a venue for social comparison against which they evaluate their own physical attractiveness and self-worth” (p. 616). This notion of identity and social comparison is explored further in the next section on adolescents’ identification of musician role models.
Role models play a large part in adolescents’ understanding of themselves and the social and media worlds in which they live. In the 1990s, research demonstrated that adolescents tend to identify celebrities as their role models rather than non-famous people (Bromnick & Swallow, 1999; Duck, 1990). Role models were defined as “adults who are worthy of imitation in some area of life” (Pleiss & Feldhusen, 1995, p. 163) or as “someone to look up to and base your character, values or aspirations on” (Gauntlett, 2002, p. 211). And yet, even if adolescents admire the same role model, they might vary in the extent to which they expect or aspire to become similar to that particular person.
In a study of adolescents’ choice of musician role models, we asked 381 adolescents (aged 13–14 years) to identify the musicians they admired the most and the reasons why (Ivaldi & O’Neill, 2008). Our findings indicated that the majority of adolescents identified famous figures as role models and most of these were male singers of popular music styles. The three main reasons adolescents gave for admiring a role model were dedication, popular image, and ability. The adolescents also mentioned that whether or not the role model played a musical instrument was of little importance when identifying a famous musician. We concluded that high levels of media exposure experienced by adolescents is likely to influence their preferences not only for musical styles but also for the musician role models that they admire.
In a follow-up based on this study, we drew on social identity theory to examine how adolescents talked about musician role models during focus groups (Ivaldi & O’Neill, 2008). Through their talk, we found that adolescents constructed and negotiated a complex understanding of musical subcultures, whereby high levels of expertise and success were perceived within the notion of privilege. For example, when discussing a photo of one young classical musician, one adolescent participant said “he just looks like rich and posh and got whatever he wanted” and another replied “because if you’re playing the cello when you’re six it just seems like you know, you’re really posh.” The adolescents talked about being “posh” as an undesirable characteristic that is an inevitable consequence of having money and high social status. These findings suggest that adolescents’ perceptions of privilege may act as a barrier or constraint to their exploration of alternative conceptualizations of musical expertise and success, thereby limiting their own musical potential. We concluded with a call for further research to explore practical ways to assist young people in critical reflections about what it means to be a musician to assist them in overcoming possible barriers or constraints to their own musical aspirations.
Music is a commonly chosen organized or extracurricular activity that is associated with numerous positive personal and social benefits to adolescents including the development of music and performance skills, opportunities to develop discipline and commitment, increased communication, connections and cooperation with peers and adults, enhanced creativity, and increased initiative and perseverance in the face of challenges (Boekhoven, 2016). Organized activities are characterized by “structure, adult supervision, and an emphasis on skill-building” and are “generally voluntary, have regular and scheduled meetings, maintain developmentally based expectations and rules for participants, offer supervision and guidance from adults, and are organized around developing particular skills and achieving goals” (Mahoney, Larson, Eccles, & Lord, 2005, p. 4).
One approach to participation in organized activities that has gained increasing momentum over the past two decades in developmental psychology draws on the concept of positive youth development (PYD) (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). PYD offers an alternative approach to previous deficit-based models of adolescence by emphasizing instead the “manifest potentialities rather than the incapacities of young people” (Damon, 2004, p. 15). Past PYD research has focused on the outcomes of adolescents’ participation in extracurricular activities such as music (Fredricks et al., 2002). For many young people, music participation is the most favored leisure activity (Lonsdale & North, 2011) and is associated with both personal and social benefits such as opportunities for young people to define and express their identity (O’Neill, 2002; O’Neill, Ivaldi & Fox, 2002). For example, wearing a band or choir jacket during high school is often a source of pride that symbolizes identification and belonging for many young people (O’Neill, 2005). Other benefits include emotional understanding, development of life-skills, and increased social skills (Barrett & Bond, 2015).
In this section, we examined the relationships young people have with music and what this can tell us about their social worlds. We gained some insights into what constrains and enables adolescents’ choices and engagement in music activities within complex personal and social situations. In the next section, we examine the capacity of music as an influential medium in areas such as emotion and mood regulation, and as a coping strategy that influences adolescents’ sense of well-being.
A growing corpus of research suggests that adolescents use music purposefully to express and regulate their emotions (Miranda & Claes, 2009; Saarikallio, Vuoskoski, & Luck, 2014), and that emotion-related abilities and competencies, such as emotion recognition and empathy, are key factors in adolescents’ development of social communication and well-being. According to MacDonald (2013), everyday uses of music “may be uniquely suited to managing or regulating emotions and stress in everyday life since it has the capacity to both distract and engage listeners in a variety of ways” (p. 4). Well-being tends to be broadly defined in most studies of music and adolescents and tends to refer to positive psychological functioning and experience. In youth development research, four concepts of wellbeing are especially prominent: life satisfaction, positive affect, confidence, and future orientation (Jose, Ryan, & Pryor, 2012). Music-related research has tended to focus on the positive affect of music in everyday life for monitoring the self and mood maintenance “as a form of psychological self-help” (MacDonald, 2013, p. 4). Music is second only to exercise in being the most commonly used mood regulation strategy among young people (Thayer, Newman, & McClain, 1994).
In a noteworthy study, Saarikallio and Erkkilä (2007) explored the role of music in adolescents’ mood regulation in an in-depth qualitative research study of eight adolescents. The authors focused on the concept of mood regulation rather than emotion regulation arguing that “moods are generally differentiated from emotions by their longer duration and lack of specific cause” (p. 89). Mood regulation was thought to be linked more to music experiences in everyday life by “regulating undifferentiated mood states and subjective experiences rather than regulating behaviour, or specific emotional responses to specific events” (p. 90). Participants were divided into two groups and attended two interview sessions, one week apart, where their music activities, preferences, and experience were discussed. During the intervening week, participants were asked to complete a form each time they engaged in a music activity to describe the affective experience (pleasantness and energy level) and reflect on the affective experience. The findings indicated seven processes of mood regulatory strategies. These were: entertainment, revival, strong sensation, diversion, discharge, mental work, and solace. Engaging in music activities to increase positive moods was particularly salient and the authors proposed that the “pleasures of musical experiences may produce a sense of well-being, stability, wholeness and purpose in life” (p. 104). According to one young female in the study, “If you’re in a terribly depressed mood, then, in my view, it’s much nicer to start listening to something uplifting” (p. 99).
To investigate further music as a coping resource in adolescence, Miranda and colleagues (2010) followed 336 adolescents over a six-month period to examine whether three styles of coping by music listening (emotion oriented, problem oriented, and avoidance/ disengagement oriented—based on a measure developed by Miranda and Claes, 2009), could predict changes in levels of neuroticism (based on an eight-item measure). The results indicated a modest short-term effect of coping by music listening as a predictor of neuroticism in both a positive (adaptive/protective factor) and negative (maladaptive/risk factor) direction. Specifically, problem-oriented coping predicted lower neuroticism in adolescents who were high in neuroticism (at baseline) and low in avoidance-oriented coping. In contrast, adolescents who were high in neuroticism (at base-line) and showed high avoidance-oriented coping, predicted higher levels of neuroticism. The results are intriguing as they indicate a complex interplay of mediating and moderating factors in considering how adolescents use and respond to music as a coping strategy and pressing need for future research in this area.
In a preliminary study considering the link between musical behavior and adolescents’ social-emotional communication, Saarikallio and colleagues (2014) investigated emotion perception and expression on music-related tasks and self-report measures of empathy and externalized behaviors (conduct problems) among 61, 14-year-olds in Finland. Participants were asked to listen to 50 music excerpts and rate emotion words on a 7-point scale for each. The musical task was designed to measure the ability to accurately recognize emotions expressed by music. The authors emphasized the importance of choosing stimuli “that could be considered indisputably expressive of the intended emotion” (p. 6). They reported choosing carefully five basic emotions used most in music research: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and tenderness. The results suggest that sensitivity to music may provide an indicator of broader socio-emotional communication abilities. Perspective taking (the cognitive component of empathy) was related to the accurate recognition of tenderness in music and the expression of anger. Empathic concern (the affective component of empathy) was related to a general tendency to perceive fear in the music and to music expressing sadness (with slow tempo) and anger (with loud volume). Conduct problems (features relating to psychological maladjustment) were associated with participants’ recognition of incongruent (opposing) patterns (dull timbre for anger and staccato articulation for sadness). Despite the support for their hypotheses, the authors call for caution in interpreting the results as more studies are needed to understand these links as well as other emotional-related competencies. The authors concluded that, “the results preliminarily support the idea of using musical behavior as an indicator of the broader socio-emotional communication abilities, which in turn play a major role in adolescent adjustment and wellbeing” (p. 1).
Although more research is needed, there is growing evidence that music can be used “to enhance relationships, immerse in emotions, modify emotions and modify cognitions in young people” (Papinczak, Dingle, Stoyanov, Hides, & Zelenko, 2015, p. 1131). However, the complex findings by Miranda et al. (2010) also remind us that music may not be beneficial for all adolescents in all situations. More research is needed to increase our understanding of the links between music, emotion and mood regulation and coping strategies and the extent to which music provides a protective factor or benefits the well-being of emerging adults within the context of their everyday lives.
Drawing on a range of influential studies that shed light on links between music and social cognition in adolescence, this chapter provides an overview of current thinking about how adolescents draw on music to negotiate aspects of their everyday life, such as regulating their mood, coping with personal challenges, and evaluating themselves in relation to others. Findings of studies reviewed here suggest how music shapes the ways young people orient, construct, negotiate, and understand themselves and the social world they inhabit. We saw in this chapter how music preferences and musician role models can serve as symbolic representations of what matters to young people as they use music to communicate their values, attitudes and opinions to others. We also saw how increased media consumption among adolescents can impact negatively on their perceptions of themselves and others, for example resulting in lower self-evaluations of their attractiveness and self-worth. As well as music serving as a vehicle for self-expression, adolescents also use music in their private lives to help them reflect on thoughts and emotions and to accompany various moods and activities. And, as a commonly chosen extracurricular or organized activity, music participation brings positive personal and social benefits to adolescents.
The key role that music plays in the lives of adolescents may serve important functions during this transitional phase of their development when social relationships and identity development are especially salient. Advancing our understanding of the role of music in the lives of adolescents appears to be moving towards an increasingly integrated perspective whereby social cognition research examines the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of individuals within different life places and spaces.
Beyond considerations of identity formation and self-determination, few theoretical approaches provide insights into the affordances and constraints that young people experience as they encounter music across different activities and resources, with different companions, and in different places and spaces over time. There is a need for future research examining the trajectories of relationships and outcomes in adolescence and situations where young people’s changing lives and a changing society converge with important implications for their musical development. There is also a need for research focused on interventions that might assist young people in understanding media influences on their beliefs about themselves and others, perhaps involving techniques such as critical reflection and cognitive reappraisal. According to Papinczak et al. (2015), “music provides one way through which young people could be taught to regulate their emotions to enhance well-being.” (p. 1131). Within the dynamics of person-environment relations, transitions to adolescence and young adulthood are impacted in ways that are likely to create musical opportunities for some and barriers and constraints for others. Since music is a resource that serves a variety of functions in the everyday lives of adolescents, future research is likely to benefit from a consideration of music as both constitutive and functional in how adolescents experience and understand themselves in their social world.
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