Music, empathy and cultural understanding

Report

In the age of the internet and with the dramatic proliferation of mobile listening technologies, music has unprecedented global distribution and embeddedness in people’s lives. It is a source of intense experiences of both the most individual (personal stereos) and massively communal (large-scale live events, and global simulcasts) kind; and it increasingly brings together or exploits a huge range of cultures and histories, through developments in world music, sampling, the re-issue of historical recordings, and the explosion of informal and ‘bedroom’ music-making that circulates via YouTube. For many people, involvement with music can be among the most powerful and potentially transforming experiences in their lives. To what extent do these developments in music’s mediated and mediating presence facilitate contact and understanding, or perhaps division and distrust, between people? This project has pursued the idea that music affords insights into other consciousnesses and subjectivities, and that in doing so may have important potential for cultural understanding. The project: 1) brings together and critically reviews a considerable body of research and scholarship, across disciplines ranging from the neuroscience and psychology of music to the sociology and anthropology of music, and cultural musicology, that has proposed or presented evidence for music’s power to promote empathy and social/cultural understanding through powerful affective, cognitive and social factors, and to explore ways in which to connect and make sense of this disparate evidence (and counter-evidence); 2) reports the outcome of an empirical study that tests one aspect of those claims – demonstrating that ‘passive’ listening to the music of an unfamiliar culture can significantly change the cultural attitudes of listeners with high dispositional empathy.

Authors: Clarke, E; DeNora, T; Vuoskoski, J

• Publication status: Not published
• Publisher: Arts and Humanities Research Council
• Host title: Arts and Humanities Research Council Cultural Value Project
• Commissioning body: Arts and Humanities Research Council
• Keywords: Music, Empathy, Cultural Understanding, Sympathy, Attunement, Intersubjectivity, Alterity