Sing Out! Communal Music as a Tool to Support Social and Emotional Health

Abstract

Communal music – songs experienced in group contexts that share a common identity, such as stadiums, schools, or churches – has long been a part of humans’ social life. Despite its relevance, the psychological impact of this type of music has received little attention. The present thesis introduces and explores the construct of communal music as a distinct music category, separate from familiar, preferred, or nostalgic music, and investigates its potential to improve affect and support mental and behavioral health by increasing a sense of belonging in experimental and applied settings. Chapter I introduces the construct of communal music and briefly presents two experimental studies designed to test its psychological impact. The findings support the idea that communal music warrants investigation, as it differentially regulates affect in situations of ostracism and negative mood. What follows is a theoretical background for the use of communal music in pediatric applied settings, with particular emphasis on evidence from social, clinical, and neuroscience research. Chapter II comprises a paper that translates these findings into an applied context through a pilot randomized controlled trial investigating the impact of a 10-session communal singing intervention in preschoolers (ages 4-6). Compared with a matched control condition, children in the communal singing group had significantly higher posttest scores on the prosocial behavior scale of the Strengths & Difficulties Questionnaire (a secondary outcome) than those in the control condition. Other group differences were not statistically significant, but effect sizes (generally small to medium) consistently favored communal singing over communal drawing across total, internalizing, and several symptom subscales (measured by the Child Behavior Checklist 1.5-5 and the Survey of Well-being of Young Children). Chapter III integrates the theoretical and empirical findings and proposes a model of the relationship between communal music and mental health. The model posits that communal music engagement promotes behavioral and neural synchrony, enhances a sense of belonging, engages the reward, limbic, and stress regulation systems, supports affect regulation, and manifests as prosocial behavior. Over time, these processes interact to promote mental well-being and decrease risk for psychopathology. Taken together, these findings provide initial evidence that communal music functions as a psychologically meaningful construct likely via facilitating a sense of belonging. Our findings also suggest that communal singing is a promising, low-cost, and scalable component for early-childhood interventions. The work highlights communal music as a valuable target for future, larger-scale, and longitudinal research on music, belonging, and mental health.