For the John Templeton Foundation, I wrote about the ways music shapes our social interactions and psychological states.
Plato, in the Republic, gives the best-known explanation of the Greek theory of musical modes: “The musical modes differ essentially from one another, and those who hear them are differently affected by each. Some of them make men sad and grave,” he wrote, “another, again, produces a moderate or settled temper.” Today, as ever, we perceive music as having psychological and social effects. We describe songs as happy or sad, and note their effects on us alone and in groups, both as music-listeners and music-makers. In the journal Music and Science, Tal-Chen Rabinowitch, an assistant professor at the University of Haifa’s School of Creative Arts Therapies, offers a helpful overview of the history of musical-social theories, and the current state of research, including several compelling observations about how music can change how people relate to one other.
A fascinating series of studies have looked at the ways that music — and other forms of synchronous, repetitive movement — affects people from an early age. At 14 months, children who have been gently bounced in sync with an adult are more willing to later extend help than those who received out-of-sync bounces. After older children sing and dance together, other forms of cooperation increase. Group singing also increases children’s generosity in the classic prisoner’s dilemma game. A synchronous tapping exercise improved 8-year-olds’ assessment of their closeness to each other. With adults, a number of studies show that synchronization exercises can improve mutual attentiveness, and build feelings of rapport and compassion. All of these suggest that rhythms like those in music can bring people into forms of alignment that persist even after the beat dies down.