Psychology of Music, © 1999 by the Society for Research in

1999,27, 71-83 Psychology of Music and Music Education

The Functions of Music in Everyday Life:

Redefining the Social in Music Psychology

DAVID J. HARGREAVES
School of Education, University of Durham, Leazes Road, Durham, U.K.,
DHJ ITA.
E-mail: d.j.hargreaves@durham.ac.uk

and

ADRIAN C. NORTH
Music Research Group, Department of Psychology, The University,
Leicester, U.K., LEI 7RH.
E-mail: acn5@le.ac.uk

Abstract
What psychological functions does music serve in everyday life? In this paper
we argue that the answer to this question is changing as a result of current social
and technological changes in music itself, and that these changes force us to
re-evaluate the role of the social context in music psychology. After describing
the changes we go on to outline the psychological functions of music in everyday
life in terms of the cognitive, emotional and social domains. We next attempt
a detailed redefinition of the social psychology of music by reviewing the contents
of our recent book of this title. The research findings lead us to conclude that
the social functions of music are manifested in three principal ways for the
individual, namely in the management of self-identity, interpersonal relationships
and mood. This leads us to propose a new agenda for music psychology which
places the social dimension at its core, and which considers the interdisciplinary
context; the effects of the "democratisation" of music; the role of theory; the
relationship between theory and practice; and the implications for research
methodology.

What is music for? What functions does it serve in modem life? Music itself,
and people's access to it, is changing quickly as we approach the millennium.
Since psychological research is beginning to reveal the enormous power which
music can exert upon people in different ways, the question of its function is
currently very topical. This question has of course been asked before by the
practitioners of various disciplines: biologists, anthropologists, musicologists,
philosophers, sociologists, and others adopt different perspectives which reflect
varying levels of attention to social and cultural influences. The anthropologist
Merriam (1964) proposed that "There is probably no other human cultural activity
which is so all-pervasive and which reaches into, shapes and often controls so
much of human behaviour" (p. 218), and identifies ten different functions of music
to which we will shortly return.
Our own interest is in the psychological functions of music: these can be broadly
summarised in terms of three main domains, namely its cognitive, emotional and

71

from the SAGE Social Science Collections. All Rights Reserved.

72 David J. Hargreaves and Adrian C. North

social functions. We contend that research in music psychology has concentrated

heavily on the first two of these at the expense of the latter, that the social functions
of music in the lives of individuals have been seriously neglected in psychological
research, and indeed that they subsume the cognitive and emotional functions in
certain respects. Our book The Social Psychology of Music (Hargreaves and North,
1997) is intended to redress the balance, and in this essay we shall attempt to
characterise this discipline, as well as to demonstrate that many of the functions
of music are primarily social in nature.
We start by describing current social and technological changes in music, and
then go on to outline the psychological functions of music in everyday life by
interpreting Merriam's ten proposed functions of music in terms of the cognitive,
emotional and social domains. We next attempt a detailed redefinition of the social
psychology of music by assessing what the contents of each chapter in our book
tell us about the social functions of music, and the research findings lead us to
conclude that they are manifested in three principal ways for the individual, namely
in the management of self-identity, interpersonal relationships and mood. This
leads us finally to propose a new agenda for music psychology with the social
dimension at its core.

Social and technological changes in music

In 1978, Bertil Sundin suggested that "children who begin school today have
probably listened to more music than their great grandparents heard during their
entire lives" (p. 9). Sundin made this suggestion to highlight the impact of television,
radio and the other mass media on people's musical experience during the I 950s,
'60s and '70s, and the pace of change has accelerated further in the last two decades.
Technological developments are revolutionising deep-rooted patterns of work and
leisure at all levels of society: and three particular developments are changing
the nature of musical experience at a fundamental level.
The first of these developments stems from the increasing access to and falling
cost of networked personal computers. The potential effects of the internet on
communication between individuals, groups and organisations will have a
profound impact on the music broadcasting and publishing industries. We are
already moving towards a situation in which vast libraries of digitally-stored musical
data are available to anyone with an internet terminal; and although the copyright
and security aspects of this remain to be worked out in detail, it does not seem
too far-fetched to suggest that almost any music of any style or period might be
readily available to any potential listener at any time within the next decade or
two. The issue for the consumer is likely to shift from "what is available?" to
"what are the best strategies for searching a virtually infinite data bank, all of
which is available?".
The second development stems from the increasing miniaturisation, portability,
relative cheapness and thus accessibility of playback equipment - the transistor
radio, Walkman, and now Discman, mean that music has become an essential
accompaniment to many aspects of everyday life. Frith ( 1996) suggests that "music
has become entirely mobile: it can follow us around the house, from living-room
to kitchen and bathroom; on journeys, as 'in-car entertainment' and 'the walkman
effect'; across national and political boundaries; in and out of love and work and
 Functions of Music in Everyday Life 73

sickness" (p. 236). This leads him to the idea that musical experience has been
"individualised": it has become a soundtrack to everyday life, and thus a central
part of personal development and identity for many people.
The third vitally important development for composers, producers, arrangers
and musicians themselves over the last decade or so has been the development
and standardisation of the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI). This is
a digital language which enables the information that is produced by musical
instruments to be recorded, manipulated and transferred between different
locations by means of direct instrument-computer links. Techniques such as
overdubbing, sound processing and score printing are easily accomplished using
this technology, and this is revolutionising the working practices of the recording
and broadcasting industries, particularly in pop music.
These three developments necessitate a fundamental re-evaluation of the nature
of musical participation and education, and two distinct outcomes can already
be identified. First, since most information on the internet is currently available
to all - it is selected by the user rather than presented by a broadcaster or educator -
it is perceived as being more neutral and value-free. Previous attributions of music
in particular styles as "serious" or "popular" are becoming much more difficult
to make, and this is to be welcomed. Secondly, boundaries between different styles
and genres are becoming increasingly blurred and subject to rapid change: we
could say that musical styles are becoming increasingly democratised, and perhaps
also demystified, as access to them increases.
The second outcome is a likely redefinition of what is meant by musicianship,
performance skill, and musical literacy. It is becoming increasingly important to
understand aspects of computer programming, sound engineering and production,
and maybe even marketing and promotion techniques in order to be regarded as
a comprehensively competent musician in the modem world: the boundaries of
"ownership" of a given piece are blurring. The domains of the composer, improviser,
performer and arranger increasingly overlap, and so the goals of music education
are being redefined. It will increasingly be the case that people will be able to
compose, perform and record music without necessarily having been through the
traditional hard slog of hours of practice with a conventional instrument (see e.g.
Dalgamo, 1997). In other words, some fundamental redefinitions of the creation
as well as of the perception of music are clearly emerging. The increasing
diversification, availability and democratisation of music forces us to rethink its
social and psychological functions.

The psychological functions of music in everyday life

We start this by re-interpreting the ten functions of music identified by Merriam
( 1964), the first of which is emotional expression. This has been a major growth
area in music psychology over the last decade or so: the power of music to act
as a vehicle for feelings which may not be possible to convey by other means is
being investigated in different ways. Some research (e.g. Sloboda, 1991;
Gabrielsson, 1993) shows that specific musical excerpts can reliably produce
physical reactions, such as sweating, sexual arousal, and "shivers down the spine",
for example, and this links emotional expression with Merriam's sixth proposed
function, namely physical response. Other work has looked at the emotional effects
74 David J. Hargreaves and Adrian C. North

of music on mood at a more mundane, everyday level (e.g. North and Hargreaves,
1997), and at people's ability to identify emotional expressiveness in musical
performance (e.g. Gabrielsson and Juslin, 1996). In each case, emotional
responses to music are dependent on the social context within which they occur:
and Radocy and Boy le ( 1996) point out furthermore that music can convey group
as well as individual emotions, as in political protest songs, thus fulfilling a very
explicit social function.
Merriam's second and third proposed functions are aesthetic enjoyment and
entertainment, which are very likely to be interlinked. There is a good deal of
research on responses to music in the field of experimental aesthetics, though
philosophers and arts educators may use the term "aesthetic" in a very different
ways. In the broadest sense, an individual's response to a given stimulus or piece
depends on an interaction between the characteristics of the person (such as age,
gender, musical training, personality); of the music (e.g. its complexity, familiarity,
style, etc.); and of the situation in which it is encountered. Most research has
concentrated on the first two of these at the expense of the latter, and redressing
this balance is an important task for the social psychology of music.
Aesthetic responses clearly have an affective or emotional component: but they
also involve an element of cognitive appraisal of the piece in question. The social
dimension has been neglected in most research on the experimental aesthetics
of music, and our own studies have made some attempts to address this issue by
testing the validity of psychoaesthetic theories in everyday listening situations
such as cafeterias and aerobics classes (see e.g. North and Hargreaves, 1996).
The study of the entertainment function of music brings the social dimension
more clearly to the fore: sociologists and mass media analysts, for example, describe
"music consumption" in terms of the commercial demands of the entertainment
and leisure industries (see e.g. du Gay et al., 1997).
Merriam's fourth proposed function of music is communication. There can
be no doubt that people from widely different cultural backgrounds, who speak
quite different languages, can readily communicate with each other through music,
although the question of whether music is a "universal language" is much more
tricky (see e.g. Campbell, 1997). Nevertheless, the analysis of musical structures
in terms of their grammar, syntax and phonology appears to be very fruitful,
providing an excellent framework for research on musical improvisation, for
example (see Slaboda, 1985; 1988). This function is clearly cognitive in the sense
that specific information is conveyed by musical structures and messages: but it
is also social par excellence in the sense that these structures only acquire musical
meaning when they are interpreted in terms of the agreed cultural conventions
and aesthetic standards of a given group of listeners - i.e. within the appropriate
social context.
Merriam's fifth proposed function is symbolic representation. A major part
of the contemporary cognitive psychology of music deals with how individuals
internally represent the basic parameters of music itself, such as pitch, timbre
and harmony (see e.g. Krumhansl, 1990): symbolic representation thus involves
the direct communication of information, which overlaps with the fourth function.
However, Merriam uses the term to refer more specifically to the transmission
of non- or extra-musical information, such as narratives (e.g. in programme music),
 Functions of Music in Everyday Life 75

values, or ideals, and this representational or symbolic function involves the social
construction of musical meaning within particular cultural contexts.
Merriam's four remaining proposed functions of music are clearly and
explicitly social in nature, namely enforcing conformity to social norms,
validating social institutions and religious rituals, the continuity and stability of
culture and the integration of society. Through its cognitive, emotional and social
functions, music is an essential vehicle through which the cultural heritage is
passed on from one generation to the next. Sociologists and anthropologists like
Merriam himself have explored these last four functions, which work on a more
macroscopic level of analysis than most of music psychology. In this section,
however, we have tried to show that all ten of the functions which he identifies
have a social dimension at their heart. It is therefore all the more surprising that
this aspect of music psychology has been neglected until now.

Re-defining the social psychology of music

Our attempt comes thirty years or so after the publication of the second edition
of Famsworth's book The Social Psychology of Music (1969), and we are
encouraged to follow his pioneering example for two main reasons. The first is
simply that the immense pace of change in the social and technological
background of music itself, described in our opening section, demands a
fundamental reappraisal of musical behaviour. The second is that the study of
the social context as an integral part of behaviour and cognition itself has been
a central feature of several branches of psychology over the last decade or so:
texts describing the fields of developmental social psychology and social
cognition, for example, have been published in the 1990s. A reappraisal of the
social perspective in music psychology therefore seems timely and appropriate.
In the first chapter of our book we try to characterise the social psychology
of music with respect to developments in music psychology more generally, looking
at the inter-relationships between its cognitive, developmental and social
branches. These interdisciplinary boundaries are differentiating, and other sub-
disciplines such as cognitive musicology, biomusicology and the cognitive sciences
of music are being mooted and delineated. At the same time, the interactions
between cognitive, affective and social components of musical behaviour are
receiving increasing recognition: the emotional appeal of music derives partly
through its structure, for example, as well as through its social context. These
complementary processes of differentiation and integration are healthy signs of
development in our discipline.
In this opening chapter of the book we also outline some central issues of
definition in social psychology itself, which stem from the competing influences
of a number of different theoretical and research traditions. We tackle the problem
of defining different levels of social influence by drawing directly on Doise's
(1986) four "levels of analysis" or explanation in social psychology: these are
the intraindividual, the interindividual, the social-positional and the ideological
levels, and the different parts of the book are organised around these four levels.
Put simply, we can investigate musical behaviour at the level of the individual
(e.g. its role in the self-concept, or in emotional expression); at the level of
interpersonal interaction (e.g. the effects of significant peers on performance or
76 David J. Hargreaves and Adrian C. North

listening behaviour); at the level of small group membership (e.g. friendship patterns
and group identity in adolescence); or at the broader level of cultural identity.
The rest of this section is organised according to the headings of the parts of the
book.
Individual differences
This part of the book contains two chapters. The first, by Anthony Kemp, deals
with the personality characteristics of musicians. Although research to date has
concentrated on the psychometric dimensions of introversion, independence,
sensitivity, anxiety, etc., several other strands of personality research also
suggest that music may serve a social function for those who perform it. For
example, Kemp points out that male musicians "may be required to adhere more
rigidly to their ... (sex-typed) characteristics in order that their masculinity should
not be questioned" (p. 37): he goes on to suggest that playing a stereotypically
"macho" instrument allows male musicians to retain their masculinity whilst
working within a stereotypically effeminate profession. Similarly, Kemp ends
his chapter by describing research concerning the potential effect of listening to
particular musical styles on personal beliefs.
Susan O'Neill's chapter emphasises Kemp's argument that gender may be one
of the key individual differences in musical behaviour that serves a social function.
She points out that, historically, women have been discriminated against when
performing: for example, brass instruments were thought to "spoil their good looks"
(p. 46). O'Neill argues that prejudice of this nature has occurred because of gender
stereotyping, and that research on its causes may help to perpetuate the trend
towards encouraging women's involvement in music, and thus their empowerment
and opportunities for self-expression. She particularly emphasises the need to
break down the gender-based constraints on young musicians' instrument choices
which are imposed by parents, others, and indeed themselves.
Social groups and situations
The many roles of music in small groups are discussed by Ray Crozier. He
stresses the social function of music by noting in his first paragraph that "Music
contributes to many of the ceremonies that mark the significant events in
people's lives - weddings, funerals, bar-mitzvahs, parties, dances, church
services, thanksgiving, etc.", and the theme of this chapter is how music serves
to promote and regulate interpersonal relationships. For example, Crozier talks
of formal dances which allow courting couples to talk in private and to make
physical contact in a socially acceptable manner. He also notes how these musically-
based interpersonal relationships are essentially identical to other social
relationships in that they involve rules and norms evolved over time, conformity
to which is essential if the activity is to continue. Crozier's review of the literature
on conformity to the aesthetic judgements of a peer group testifies to this, and
the arguments concerning the role of music in establishing and maintaining
personal/group identity further demonstrate the potential role of music in group
formation.
The next chapter, by ourselves, considers another aspect of the immediate social
environment in which musical behaviour occurs, namely the physical context itself.
We draw on research in experimental aesthetics to explain how people use music
 Functions of Music in Everyday Life 77

in everyday listening environments to help achieve their goals in that situation.

For example, people who are in a state of unpleasantly high arousal (e.g. driving
in busy traffic) will prefer quiet, relaxing music, whereas people who are in a
state of pleasantly high arousal (e.g. exercising) will prefer loud, stimulating music.
The chapter also examines the reciprocity of the music-situation relationship by
considering the effect of music on responses (e.g. willingness to return) to the
listening environment. Music affects our relationships with the everyday social
circumstances in which it is heard.
Cultural issues
Dean Simonton begins this section by considering evidence on compositions,
composers and composition eras from a historiometric perspective. This involves
the use of archival data (e.g. radio airplay) and computerised databases to investigate
historical trends in music, and has led to several interesting insights into another
social function of music. For example, there is evidence that composers may express
personal distress through the increased "melodic originality" of their music; use
music to sum up their lifetime achievements by means of the "swansong
phenomonon"; or become more musically distinctive over time as a means of
asserting their independence from peers. Simonton also describes evidence showing
that spurts of compositional activity correspond with spurts of activity in
literature, philosophy and science, which in tum suggests that composition can
be a means of passing comment on the current state of the world. He argues that
this synchronicity in human endeavour may reflect "underlying sociocultural forces"
(p. 118) such as warfare.
This relationship between music and broader sociocultural forces is developed
in Andrew Gregory's chapter. He considers the social functions of music in non-
Western societies from an ethnomusicological perspective, and describes the role
of music in work, battle, ceremony, communication, storytelling and ethnic identity.
For example, Gregory describes the Griots of West Africa, who are "perhaps the
cultural equivalent of a tabloid newspaper" (p. 128), as they spread news and
gossip between villages. Similarly, Gregory describes the use of music by the
Ashanti people of Ghana who submitted to British rule in 1900: the British Governor
was greeted with ceremonial talking drum music which only the Ashanti listeners
were able to translate as saying "Slowly but surely we shall kill"! This example
serves to indicate that the direct social functions of music may be even more
pronounced in non-Western than in Western cultures.
Philip Russell's chapter deals with the functions of music at perhaps the broadest
sociocultural level by explaining how music is employed by people as a means
of identifying themselves with particular subcultures, lifestyles, ethnic groups
and social classes. Indeed, this may explain the evidence cited in Ray Crozier's
chapter (see above) that listeners report preferring those musical styles which
they perceive as prestigious. Such evidence may well tell us that people declare
a preference for those musical styles which correspond with their aspirations to
be (and to be seen to be) members of certain social groups.
Developmental issues
The role of music in interpersonal and inter-group relationships is developed
by Dolf Zillmann and Su-lin Gan, who describe the functions of music in
78 David J. Hargreaves and Adrian C. North

adolescence. They claim that the "staggering" (p. 161) record sales of the pop
music industry suggest that music must have some utility for adolescents. They
go on to describe research within the "uses and gratifications" approach, which
indicates that adolescents believe that music serves a variety of functions in their
lives (such as a distraction from troubles; a means of mood management; or a
means of reducing loneliness). In particular, Zillmann and Gan conclude that music
serves as a "badge" of identity by which adolescents define themselves and others.
One example of this is provided by research on the correlation between preference
for "rebellious" forms of pop music (e.g. heavy metal) and delinquent behaviours.
Such findings provide empirical evidence consistent with popular lay beliefs
concerning the negative effect of pop music on adolescents' behaviour, although
we concur with Zillmann and Gan's view that the paucity of this evidence makes
it extremely difficult to draw conclusions about the causal direction of this
relationship.
The following chapter by Jane Davidson, Michael Howe and John Sloboda
describes the environmental antecedents of expert performance in classical music.
The chapter examines the effects of particular social relationships (e.g. between
the learner and teachers, parents, siblings, etc.) on the development of expertise.
It is interesting to note that to date there has been little research on the reciprocal
relationship, namely the potential effects of developing performance skills in
classical or indeed pop music on social relationships. This might constitute an
interesting area of future research in the social psychology of music, since
developing performance skills could well give rise to changes in existing
relationships, in forming new relationships, and thus broader changes in the lifestyle
of the musician.
Musicianship
Jane Davidson's chapter considers research on the social psychology of
performance. She describes the social norms for audience and performer
behaviour, the potentially damaging or positive effects of the presence of others
on musical performance, and also the crucial role of non-verbal communication
within groups performing music, and on listeners' responses to that music. One
particularly interesting issue that has not been investigated would shift the emphasis
from musical to social psychological issues. Given the availability of high-quality
recordings, it is perhaps surprising that people should go to the trouble of attending
concerts at all: the fact that they do, and in such numbers, indicates that there
are likely to be many social psychological reasons for attendance.
Glenn Wilson's chapter deals predominantly with arousal-based theories of
performance anxiety (or "stage fright"), and with the means which performers
use to manage the symptoms, such as legal and illegal drugs. These issues are
intrinsically social psychological in nature, and one obvious avenue for future
research is to investigate the role of performance anxiety in discouraging
potential musicians from becoming involved in musical performance, or indeed
in dropout from musical careers.
Three areas of application
The final three chapters deal with the application of research in different applied
areas. The first of these, by Leslie Bunt, deals with the functions of music in
 Functions of Music in Everyday Life 79

therapeutic and medical contexts. Bunt deals with music therapy as a treatment,
and considers how the client-therapist relationship is crucial in determining
therapeutic outcomes. He then examines the use of music as a part of therapy,
specifically with its use in alleviating pain, and in a number of medical and dental
disorders.
The next chapter, by ourselves, investigates the effects of music on consumer
behaviour: the use of music as a means of increasing profit provides perhaps the
most explicit demonstration of the social power of music. The research reviewed
concerns music in television advertisements and commercial environments (e.g.
shops, restaurants), and also the music industry itself: by promoting the efficiency
of business and the market place, such research may promote wealth creation.
The final chapter, by Bengt Olsson, is perhaps the first to deal with the social
psychology of music education. He considers school influences on musical
preferences, and how these relate to students' aspirations for the future (their "social
destinations") or their degree of commitment to/disengagement from school values.
He goes on to consider students' attributions for success or failure in music
education, which highlights the role of self-perception. This is also highlighted
in Olsson' s account of the process of learning to become a music teacher.

The social functions of music for the individual

Our brief review has examined the social functions of music for individual
differences, for small and large social groups, and for society and culture as a
whole. It might be useful to summarise what this expanding research literature
is currently telling us about how these functions are manifested in the everyday
behaviour of individuals. Our review shows that the social functions of music
are manifested in three main ways for both musicians and non-musicians alike,
namely in the management of self-identity, interpersonal relationships and mood
in everyday life.
Music plays a clear part in the formulation and expression of self-identity.
Research on individual differences indicates that music is related to the sex-role
development of musicians: historiometric research suggests that composers express
their distinctive identity and opinions of the world through their music: and research
on music in adolescence suggests that listeners join musical subcultures as a means
of defining themselves. Research on teacher training also suggests that pupils
increasingly identify with the role of "music teacher" as their training progresses.
The second social function of music lies in the establishment and maintenance
of interpersonal relationships. Conformity and prestige effects in musical
preference judgements reflect a desire for acceptance into particular social groups.
Research on the sociocultural functions of music suggests that it provides a means
of defining ethnic identity in both Western and non-Western cultures. Research
in adolescence indicates that pop music preferences form the basis of social groups,
and can determine stereotypically appropriate ways of responding to them: this
can eve11 mediate the perceived physical attractiveness of others. Research on
the development of skilled performance in classical music and on the social
psychology of performance itself also reveals the importance of interpersonal
relationships, and the ways in which the development of performance skills might
80 David J. Hargreaves and Adrian C. North

influence existing and future relationships remains unexplored. The same

message emerges from research on music therapy, which indicates that the
client-therapist relationship is of fundamental importance in determining the
probability of a positive outcome. Finally, research on music and consumer
behaviour indicates that music can mediate and promote the relationships
between individuals and businesses.
Finally, there is clear evidence that music serves as a means of mood
management in everyday life. This comes from research on how musical taste
is mediated by the immediate listening environment, such that musical tastes reflect
situationally-determined and -specific goals. It is also apparent in ethnomusicological
research, which investigates the specific roles of music in the everyday lives of
many people in non-Western cultures. "Uses and gratifications" research also
indicates that adolescents use music as a means of optimising their mood: and
investigations of the uses of music to alleviate pain, and to influence customers'
behaviour in shops and stores, are two further examples of its explicit use in mood
management.

Conclusion: a new agenda for music psychology

The evidence we have reviewed makes it clear that the social context of musical
behaviour should be a much more integral part of music psychology than has
hitherto been the case. This view has a number of far-reaching implications which
amount to a new agenda for music psychology, whose five main points are outlined
below.
Recognising the interdisciplinary context
Most music psychologists see themselves as being engaged in scientific
endeavour, and some of the skills which are required for successful contemporary
musicianship are those traditionally conceived of as belonging to the sciences.
At the same time, music is one of the central artistic domains, and its relationships
with other art forms are of considerable theoretical and practical interest. The
question of the domain-specificity of aspects of creative thinking and aesthetic
perception is of central concern to philosophers and arts educators as well as to
psychologists, for example (see Hargreaves, 1989). Integrating the social context
into our research forces us to acknowledge that the study of musical behaviour
and experience is an interdisciplinary enterprise which must necessarily draw
upon the theories, insights and perspectives of other disciplines, and this cross-
fertilisation can only serve to promote its healthy development.
Implications of the democratisation of music
The definition of music itself raises various philosophical, cultural and even
political questions: ethnomusicologists suggest that its definition depends on the
social context and function of the behaviour in question in a given cultural group.
We would maintain the same view that one of us expressed some years ago, namely
that "music psychology must consider its subject-matter in all its forms, 'classical'
or 'popular', ethnic or Western, old or new, good or bad, if it is to possess scientific
validity" (Hargreaves, 1986a, p. 29). Evaluations of quality or "seriousness" are
still often linked directly with particular genres or styles, and these links are often
inappropriate. The social perspective requires us to evaluate each composer, piece
 Functions of Music in Everyday Life 81

or style according to the discourses and aesthetic standards which are appropriate
to its particular cultural contexts (see Frith, 1996; Walker, 1996).
Research should be theory-driven
This point has been elaborated by many previous writers, including ourselves
(e.g. Swanwick, 1977; Hargreaves, 1986a): here we need to revisit it from the
social perspective, and will do so by making three brief points. The first is that
research can reveal that some theories are situation-specific: changing the social
context can lead directly to different kinds of theoretical explanation, as in our
own research on musical aesthetics. The second is simply that music psychology
can benefit greatly from the incorporation of theoretical models from the
mainstream of social psychology, which have hitherto played little part: the research
literature on group identity and musical taste is a good case in point.
The third is a more general point concerning the nature of theorising itself.
Different cultural and research traditions give rise to different kinds of theorising,
and there are distinctive international variations. A good deal of music psychology
in Eastern Europe, for example, is characterised by an interest in the ideological
and cultural functions of music: "top-down" theoretical discussion takes place
at a fairly high, macroscopic level of generality (see e.g. Manturszewska,
Miklaszewski and Biatkowski, 1995). This contrasts with research carried out in
the empirical Anglo-American tradition, which typically tests "bottom-up", smaller-
scale hypotheses formulated at a more microscopic level within specific situations.
Observing this contrast shows that that the social and cultural context shapes not
only musical behaviour itself, but also our explanations of it.
Recognising the interdependence of theory and practice
No amount of theory building is of any use unless it is capable of practical
application: theory and practice are interdependent. Practitioners in fields such
as music education, marketing, broadcasting and therapy need theories in order
to make sense of the problems they face in working life: but to be of practical
use, those theories themselves need to be grounded in the everyday reality of the
classroom, the marketplace, the studio or the hospital. We have discussed this
issue at length with respect to music education (Hargreaves, 1986b): psychologists
should be able to give valuable help to teachers in dealing with issues in assessment
and curriculum design, for example. The broader view of the social context of
music which we now propose, which encompasses applied fields such as
consumer behaviour and advertising, clinical and health applications, broadcasting
and the media reinforces the point: we clearly need an applied psychology of
music.
Increasing diversity of research methodology
There has been a good deal of discussion over the last decade within social
science research methodology about the use and status of qualitative techniques,
and the theoretical assumptions on which some of them are based. Mainstream
psychology has traditionally been dominated by experimental research employing
quantitative methods, and there obvious limitations in the extent to which these
can capture the richness and diversity of human behaviour in all its different cultural
and social settings. Although qualitative techniques are designed to overcome
82 David J. Hargreaves and Adrian C. North

some of these limitations, there is still a certain amount of resistance to their

introduction. This resistance is declining, however, so that the current emphasis
is more upon delineating the different varieties of qualitative methods and assessing
their usefulness for different research problems than on debating their overall
validity (see e.g. Richardson, 1996).
A parallel adjustment is also going on within music psychology and music
education, to the extent that two large-scale conferences were organised by the
Council for Research in Music Education (C.R.M.E. Bulletin, 1996). One of the
central issues which drives the qualitative-quantitative debate is the extent to
which research data are truly representative of real-life musical behaviour and
experience in all its complexity. An important determinant of this complexity is
the social and cultural context in which musical behaviour takes place, and this
represents another aspect of our general argument. We concur with Persson and
Robson's view (1995) that music psychology has a great deal to gain by
investigating the "real world" of music in the field, and suggest that a greater
range of methodologies should be used to investigate the variety of uses which
people make of music, as well as their experiences of it.
In conclusion, there can be little doubt that music exerts an increasingly powerful
influence on the lives and everyday behaviour of individuals, and that this should
be reflected in psychological research. We contend that many of the psychological
functions of music are primarily social, and that a redefinition of the social in
music psychology is a task which is long overdue. In this article we have ranged
widely in attempting such a redefinition, and have tried to show that it has far-
reaching implications for theory, practice and research methodology in music
psychology as a whole. The five main implications as we see them constitute our
"new agenda", which necessarily exists at a very broad, general level: the rapid
changes which are taking place in music itself, and in how people experience it,
will demand that it is worked out at a more detailed level.

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