Abstract
Musical Group Interaction (MGI) has been found to promote prosocial tendencies, including empathy, across various populations. However, experimental study is lacking in respect of effects of everyday forms of musical engagement on prosocial tendencies, as well as whether key aspects—such as physical co-presence of MGI participants—are necessary to enhance prosocial tendencies. We developed an experimental procedure in order to study online engagement with collaborative playlists and to investigate socio-cognitive components of prosocial tendencies expected to increase as a consequence of engagement. We aimed to determine whether mere perceived presence of a partner during playlist-making could elicit observable correlates of social processing implicated in both MGI and prosocial behaviors more generally and identify the potential roles of demographic, musical, and inter-individual differences. Preliminary results suggest that for younger individuals, some of the social processes involved in joint music-making and implicated in empathic processes are likely to be elicited even by an assumption of virtual co-presence. In addition, individual differences in styles of listening behavior may mediate the effects of mere perceived partner presence on recognition memory.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about locally and governmentally imposed quarantine measures across the globe, resulting in prolonged social isolation
The principal limitation of the experiment was a relatively small sample of participants (n = 90) for a relatively large number of between-group splits; much larger sample sizes would need to be obtained for future iterations of this experiment to produce definitive findings
This distinction between >25 and ≤25 years of age corresponds roughly to the distinction between Generation Z, the first wholelife “digital native” generation (Dimock, 2019), and older cohorts. This indication that younger participants may be more inclined to perceive interactions occurring online as being social is not surprising; in 2018 it was reported that 70% of American teens aged 13–17 check social media several times a day (Richter, 2018), whereas use of at least one social media site for adults aged 18–29, 30–49, 50–64, and 65+ was reported to be 88, 78, 64, and 37%, respectively (Pew Research Center, 2018); research has shown that opportunities afforded by online social interactions may allow young people to experiment with and form their identity (Leung, 2011)
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about locally and governmentally imposed quarantine measures across the globe, resulting in prolonged social isolation. Research has shown that various forms of musical engagement with others can positively impact on an individual’s socioemotional well-being; this has been reported as an outcome of both specific interventions and other forms of participatory music-making (Hallam, 2010; Hallam et al, 2014; Wilson and MacDonald, 2019; Perkins et al, 2020) as well as of particular familial and cultural contexts on listening behavior (Packer and Ballantyne, 2011; Boer and Abubakar, 2014). Qualitative research on group musical engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic has suggested that involvement in online musical interaction in educational and improvisational settings may positively impact on individuals’ psychological well-being and communities’ connectedness (de Bruin, 2021; MacDonald et al, 2021). It has been postulated that prosocial transfer effects resulting from MGI arise from its underlying mechanisms activating those which are implicated in prosocial behaviors (Cross et al, 2012; Rabinowitch et al, 2013)
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