Abstract
Families are central to the social and emotional development of youth, and most families engage in musical activities together, such as listening to music or talking about their favorite songs. However, empirical evidence of the positive effects of musical family rituals on social cohesion and emotional well-being is scarce. Furthermore, the role of culture in the shaping of musical family rituals and their psychological benefits has been neglected entirely. This paper investigates musical rituals in families and in peer groups (as an important secondary socialization context) in two traditional/collectivistic and two secular/individualistic cultures, and across two developmental stages (adolescence vs. young adulthood). Based on cross-sectional data from 760 young people in Kenya, the Philippines, New Zealand, and Germany, our study revealed that across cultures music listening in families and in peer groups contributes to family and peer cohesion, respectively. Furthermore, the direct contribution of music in peer groups on well-being appears across cultural contexts, whereas musical family rituals affect emotional well-being in more traditional/collectivistic contexts. Developmental analyses show that musical family rituals are consistently and strongly related to family cohesion across developmental stages, whereas musical rituals in peer groups appear more dependent on the developmental stage (in interaction with culture). Contributing to developmental as well as cross-cultural psychology, this research elucidated musical rituals and their positive effects on the emotional and social development of young people across cultures. The implications for future research and family interventions are discussed.
Highlights
The positive effects of music for human well-being and social bonding have long been acknowledged by scholars, by ethnomusicologists and anthropologists (e.g., Merriam, 1964; Dissanayake, 2006)
Based on the premise that both families and peer groups are relevant socialization agents impacting on the emotional development of young people, we propose that musical rituals in both contexts contribute to emotional well-being via enhanced social cohesion (Musical ritual hypothesis 2)
CONFIRMATORY FACTOR ANALYSIS confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) separating the items loading on five latent factors4 revealed satisfactory model fit of the data {χ(2219) = 590.92, p < 0.001, CFI = 0.93, TLI = 0.92, SRMR = 0.04, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = 0.05 [90% CI = 0.046/0.056]; see Figure 2 for details on factor loadings and error terms}
Summary
The positive effects of music for human well-being and social bonding have long been acknowledged by scholars, by ethnomusicologists and anthropologists (e.g., Merriam, 1964; Dissanayake, 2006). Evolutionary theorists emphasize that one central function of music is to mobilize social cohesion and to improve mental health and subjective well-being. These notions have an intuitive appeal that applies to musical family rituals as beneficial social activities fostering family cohesion and emotional development in adolescence. Scholarly attention to music listening as a family ritual is scarce. The role of culture in the shaping of musical family rituals and their psychological benefits has been neglected entirely (cf Miranda et al, 2013). In line with the definition of family rituals (cf. Fiese et al, 2002), musical family rituals are hereby defined as a set of musical behaviors (engagement and listening) that are reported within a family context and hold symbolic meaning for the family members
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