Why is music important to us?

Trends in music preferences and reasons for listening to music across the lifespan.

What do we already know?

Listening to music is an important aspect of daily life that helps to shape identity, manage mood, and relieve boredom1. However, as adults age, their engagement with music and reasons for listening to music change1. In particular, enjoyment of intense contemporary music such as rock and rap decreases, as does the tendency to listen to music while completing other tasks and exploration of new music2. This may be due to changing priorities and goals associated with the challenges of life roles such as student or parent3,4. Developmental theories4 suggest that as we age, we progress through different life roles that shift our goals. Indeed, life goals have been found to predict our use of music with age3. Furthermore, our ever-evolving sense of identity and increasing emotional intelligence may also reduce the need for music to manage mood or express ourselves5. Music has been found to improve the well-being of young adults6, but research adopting a lifespan approach is relatively scarce. The few studies that have adopted a lifespan approach are contradictory and inconclusive. There is a good reason to suspect that older adults may engage with music differently1,2. It is important to understand how people of all ages use music as the proportion of older adults is set to increase over the next few decades7.

Given the limited research on this topic, this research aims to investigate music engagement across the lifespan and to explore factors that may predict engagement.

How was this investigated?

The study distributed an anonymous online questionnaire.

The questions concerned the importance of music, time spent listening to music, music genre preferences (STOMP-R)8, reasons for listening to music (uses of music questionnaire)1, life roles, identity (AIQ-IV)9, and trait emotional intelligence (TEIQue-SF)10.

How many people took part?

401 people completed the questionnaire. The participants' ages ranged from 16 to 87 (M = 42.36, SD = 19.84) and were split into eight age groups for analysis: 16-18, 19-25, 26-30, 31-40, 41-50, 51-60, 61-70, and 71+.

Interestingly, participants aged 30-60 felt they were a decade younger than their actual age whilst those over 60 felt they were a decade older.

There were 132 males, 257 females, 6 non-binary, and 4 identified as another gender.

177 were musicians or had musical training and 224 were non-musicians.

What are the preliminary findings?

The importance of music, the time spent listening to music, and participants' reasons for listening to music were found to decrease significantly with age.
The importance of music and music consumption were found to be significantly predicted by being younger, being a musician, a strong sense of identity, low emotional intelligence, and life roles such as citizen, student, or unemployed.
Musicians rated music as more important than non-musicians.
Positive mood management was the highest-rated reason for listening to music across all ages and was significantly predicted by being younger, having a strong sense of identity, and identifying as a parent.
Other significant reasons for listening to music included developing identity, negative mood management, reminiscing, reliving boredom, arousal, keeping up with current trends and social interaction.
Younger adults and males prefer energetic or intense music (e.g., rap & rock), whilst older adults and females prefer upbeat music (e.g., pop & country).

What can we conclude?

Music engagement was found to decrease significantly across the lifespan.
Music engagement was significantly predicted by participants’ age, identity, emotional intelligence, and life roles

What's next?

The questionnaire will be distributed to different participants to replicate the findings. The age groups will have equal numbers of participants and genders, and an older age group of 81+ will be added.

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References

Lonsdale, A. J., & North, A. C. (2011). Why do we listen to music? A uses and gratifications analysis. British Journal of Psychology, 102(1), 108-134.
Bonneville-Roussy, A., Rentfrow, P. J., Xu, M. K., & Potter, J. (2013). Music through the ages: Trends in musical engagement and preferences from adolescence through middle adulthood. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105(4), 703.
Hird, E., & North, A. (2021). The relationship between uses of music, musical taste, age, and life goals. Psychology of Music, 49(4), 872-889.
Super, D. E. (1980). A life-span, life-space approach to career development. Journal of Vocational Behaviour, 16, 282-298.
Sharma, D. (2017). Impact of age on emotional intelligence and its components. International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, 1(1), 2454-6186.
Chen, L. (2023). Influence of music on the hearing and mental health of adolescents and countermeasures. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 17, 1-16.
Christensen, K., Doblhammer, G., Rau, R., & Vaupel, J. W. (2009). Ageing populations: the challenges ahead. The Lancet, 374(9696), 1196-1208.
Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2003). The do re mi’s of everyday life: The structure and personality correlates of music preferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 1236-1256.
Cheek, J. M., Tropp, L. R., Chen, L. C., & Underwood, M. K. (1994, August). Identity Orientations: Personal, social, and collective aspects of identity. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, Los Angeles, CA.
Petrides, K. V. (2009). Psychometric properties of the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire. In C. Stough, D. H. Saklofske, and J. D. Parker, Advances in the assessment of emotional intelligence. New York: Springer.

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