Music and adolescents interview podcast [Audio

transcript]
Skewes McFerran, K. and Saarikallio, S. (2019). Music and adolescents [Audio transcript]. University of
Melbourne.
Presenters: Professor Katrina Skewes McFerran, The University of Melbourne (Interviewer); Dr Suvi
Saarikallio, The University of Jyväskylä (interviewee).

Interviewer: Hi Suvi Saarikallio, welcome. It's really exciting to have you here and especially talking about the
topic today, which is really focused on music and adolescents.

Interviewee: Thank you Kat. It's such a pleasure to be here and it's my favorite topic of course. Brilliant [cross
talk 00:18].

Interviewer: It is your favorite topic and it's worth noting that your article that came out of your PhD where you
really systematically investigated the literature about music in adolescents is one of the most
highly cited articles in this space. I thought we might just start with going right back to whatever
year that was. When did you do your PhD?

Interviewee: I graduated in 2007, so that article actually is dated on the same year and yeah, it was a very
novel topic at the time to combine music, adolescents from a psychology perspective. These
mood regulation uses of music hadn't been very systematically studied.
We had acknowledged that yes, music is used for mood regulation, but how in particular? That
hadn't been elaborated at that point. I guess that's why it became so cited because it was kind of
pioneering during that time.

Interviewer: Yeah. It was pioneering. Sometimes I think the greatest discoveries in research look quite simple.
I think that that there was a beautiful diagram as a part of that article where you just said, "Hey,
there's a lot of different ways that teenagers use music in their lives. It's around mood and it's
around identity and it's around connectedness." How did you come up with that, given that there
wasn't a lot of writing at that time? Why did you choose those ideas?

Interviewee: Well, I am actually trained as a music teacher by my background, and I was always fascinated
about the understanding that why do we want to teach the subject to these young people, and it
seems that it's important to them? I want to understand why is it important to them then, so I
would somehow be better able to relate to what it means in their lives. That's where it all started
my interest to try to understand the adolescent's own perspective of why might it be?

Interviewer: That's such a good point, because you and I have gone on to talk about the way that teenagers
use music, but actually that's right. It was about the functions of music at that time, and it was
why is it important? Either fast forwarding to now, or reflecting on what you learned from your
PhD then, why is music important to teenagers? Where have you come to with that?

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Interviewee: I think it's a twofold thing that music is so easily available, and so acceptable tool in a way – such
easily everywhere, and yet it touches upon very fundamentally important functions. It affords a
lot of issues that really relate to very, very fundamental aspects of adolescent development, of
identity, emotions, peer group development or all that. It provides a possibility for very
fundamental things, but in a very easily approachable way.

Interviewer: Yeah, it is. It's the access, which has changed incredibly since you first did your research. What
I remember really striking me from those initial moments is that, you spoke to and you
interviewed, I think it was eight Finnish adolescents, and you ask them like, "Really tell me about
what's important." They started to describe the ways that they used it, but they used it without
thinking.

Interviewee: Yes, very much so. It seemed that they had like a, a strong feeling that this is the kind of music
that I need now. They never went into contemplating of why would I need it? They were just—
they got that gut feeling that I need this music now, and it seemed to work for them.

Actually, now coming back to what we're studying right now, it seems that it still is the case that
when we compare adolescents and then young adults, the young adults are much more already
aware of the kind of strategies that they are using music for. Their reasons for music listening
actually are much more correlated with the effective outcomes in their daily life.

If they say that I use music for energy boosting, actually when we measure their daily
experiences, their mood rises. Whereas for adolescents it's not that straightforwardly linked. They
still seem to—there's no difference. In both age groups music improves mood equally much in a
way, but for adolescents they still seem to do it in a more intuitive way. They're not specifying the
actual strategy so much.

Interviewer: That's so interesting, and indeed we've done a number of studies that show that they're not only
unaware, but sometimes what they think music is doing is different to what it's doing. Do you think
that might be, because for teenagers their emerging identity is such a dominant part of their lives?
If they're lucky enough to be able to just focus on natural developmental processes that, that
relationship between music and identity might be even more outstanding rather than the kind of,
how am I gonna use music to manage my mood, to regulate myself, to get through this boring
public transport moment. Although we all do that, but I don't know about identity maybe.

Interviewee: Yeah, I think you've got something there, 'cause for a young person, I think music is more like,
it's my music, it's my music and it's not my tool of regulating myself into a certain mode. It's not
that very systematic—

Interviewer: Functional, yeah.

Interviewee: - function. Separate functional entity that I use to make myself something, but now it's more like,
me and my music. You want to fill your life with those kinds of music that resonate with whatever
you were going through and who you are. It's much more holistic thing in a way that… that very
mechanistic tool to use it for something.

Interviewer: Well, when I think about the studies that have been done, there's kind of two different ways, and
you might say that its music psychology looks one way and music sociology looks another way,

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 but maybe that's too simple. There is that sense that people are performing their identity with
their music on the one hand.

Then in music psychology, there's that tendency to look at, well, if I'm this kind of person, I like
this kind of music. What does that correlate with? If I like metal music, what does it go with? I
don't know. Do you feel like in music psychology that's a particular interest that people have?

Interviewee: I think there's a lot of always in psychology—there is a lot of interest in understanding individual
differences on any behavior. There's research into how personality for instance impacts our music
engagement patterns, or how we are impacted by music. We know for instance that if you are an
extrovert then you hear in the music—whatever the music is, you hear more positive shades,
than if you're not an extrovert.

Or if you're an empathic person, you tend to be more emotionally influenced by of the music that
you listen to. There are these differences that we can identify in a very general scale, but then
again, those are of course, huge generalizations always. Of course, it's much more in individual
in the end, but at least there are some of these findings about how certain personality tendencies
might be visible in the way we are impacted by music.

Interviewer: Yeah. I think this is the perfect time to talk about that. I'm often critical of universal statements
about people, but music psychology has contributed some really interesting findings. I remember
back in the early days it used to be about, that the instrument that you chose to play actually
could be correlated with particular personality types, and that seems kind of relevant too in terms
of emerging adolescent identities. I don’t know. What do you think of that research?

Interviewee: Yeah, I think it's interesting to observe these general patterns of how we behave, and how well
tendencies might guide us to certain types of behaviors. There's always this—you have to look it
through a lens of, a little bit critical lens, that these are always generalizations and they are—the
effect sizes are usually relatively small. So it's not like that if you are a bit more extroverted than
I, then you definitely will like pop music more than I do, and I would like more of a metal. It's not
that straightforward that it would direct your behavior, but there are these patterns, and it's
interesting to understand the big picture that – what are all the potential individual variables that
might explain why we choose to behave in a certain way.

Interviewer: Yeah. I'm really conscious that at the moment you are a leader in our field who is really trying to
pull apart, to tease apart all of the various influences that might be at play. I really appreciate that
you're not simplifying that, despite the fact that it's so fun when you read those studies. It's like,
"Oh wow, so there's a relationship between extroversion and pop music. That's amazing." Then
you meet somebody the next day, and they're an extrovert and they don't like pop music at all,
and it's that kind of conflict, isn't it?

Interviewee: Yeah.

Interviewer: Let's play with another massive generalization. We were talking earlier about the difference
between perhaps Finnish adolescents and Australian adolescents, and we won’t go into a big
debate about what is an Australian adolescent, which is a much-contested notion. But for now,
what do you notice internationally? Is there differences, in your opinion?

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Interviewee: I'm sure there are some differences, but there is very, very little systematic comparative research
comparing cross-culturally, the music engagement patterns, or musical experiences. We ran a
study with an Indian colleague of mine Vinoo Alluri, and we are now looking at the data and
seeing that yes, for both young people in Finland and in India, music important for quite the same
reasons. It's a mood management tool. It provides connectedness. Some self-reflection, but there
are some differences too. For the Indians it was more important. They emphasize more, they
state music keeps you in a good mood, and helps you to manage your mood.

Whereas for Finns, they also appreciate it, sometimes feeling a bit low if it provided sort of self-
reflective insight onto their difficult experiences, and how they then found empowerment through
getting through those difficult times. They wanted to reflect more and dwell a bit and then get
some insight and empowerment through that.

There was a little bit of a difference in what people emphasized in their important music
experiences. I think there definitely are some, but then again, huge generalizations again. I think
it would be something we should look a bit more in the future just to be grounded in contexts that
we apply our findings to. Because if I do a study with Finns, I would like to be a bit more
knowledgeable about how it is in the other parts of the world so that I don't just go, and say that
this is an adolescent in every part of the world who is gonna behave like this.

Interviewer: Yeah. It's such a huge piece that I started thinking immediately about Freud and the
generalizations that Freud made out of a particular Austrian culture at a moment in time. The way
that even though there were truths in what he discovered, it was making them so universal that
probably may have been his undoing, but that is probably a little bit of a sidetrack.

Getting back to music and adolescents in our world right now, I wonder about—not just individual
identity and the ways that people say, "Hey, this is what I'm listening to," but also then that
connection to their peers, and whether or not music does play an important role in the way that
people connect to one another.

Interviewee: Yeah, I think it's crucial. Especially in that time of your life when your most important relationships
go through a transition. You are no longer just the child of some family, but you are a peer in your
peer group. Music of course, symbolizes that kind of peer relation so fundamentally, and now
with the new technology, it's so easy to just share your favorite playlists, and it's a new form of
connecting through the new technology. It's really a very, very good tool [unintelligible 14:13]
when I use that word for also connecting with the peer groups.
Interviewer: Yeah. Which makes me remember in the book that we just had edited, the Handbook of Music,
Adolescence, and Wellbeing, we did have a whole set of chapters which are about online
communities as well as face to face communities and the ways that so many more possibilities
exist. Now to feel connected to people beyond the people that you happen to meet at university,
or at school, and how music can be such a meaningful point of connection.

Interviewee: Yeah. In this modern world, you can feel connected to people all over the globe just, because
you like the same band, or something. It's very—in a way, a nice global connectedness tool as
well.

Interviewer: Yeah, and that takes me back to the qualitative analysis that you and I did of the 50 young
Australians talking about the ways that they were using music in their life. How feeling connected
was quite complex in a way, because if you feel connected to people online, but not connected

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 in your everyday life, how that can sometimes lead to a sense of being actually unconnected, but
being virtually connected.

Interviewee: Yeah. It's something that my generation is only trying to sort of understand. It's a new way of
connectedness and how that works. It's also a challenge for us to research, because we've been
grown up in different connectedness in our youth.

Interviewer: I remember right back to when Simon Frith, is it? Who talks about the badge of identity, how
music is like a badge of identity? When he was constructing that idea that was absolutely about,
you're going to gigs with people, and you are turning up, and you wore the same kind of clothes.

Like, I've got my '80s reference on now, and it's, because that was how you identified you going
to that kind of gig. You're wearing these kinds of clothes, whereas when it's online, there's so
much more anonymity, and yet music transcends all of those problematics that we might have
about the difference. Because when people connect through their music, it does feel real, doesn't
it?

Interviewee: Yes. That's the beauty of the music that it feels real, and it can allow you to so close to very, very
deep personal experiences, but yet at the same time, it is a—there's always a way out and you
can keep your cool and just say “Ahh it was just a song”. You can easily regulate that, and you
know that from music therapy very much, but it's the same thing with the kids. They can really
put all their heart into the music, or they pour their heart into the music, and then they can still
just save their face and yeah.

Interviewer: Yeah. I always thought like the worst thing that could possibly happen is if somebody takes your
phone, and then actually looks through what's your most frequently played, which might be quite
different from what you might describe as your most favorite music right now. This is like a
modern-day phenomena.

Interviewee: Yeah, it's definitely a very, very gentle dynamics there between your private identity, and the one
that you post around.

Interviewer: Okay. Well thank you so much, Suvi. It's really fantastic just to hear where you're at currently.
Also, just to reflect on the fact that so much great research starts with a PhD and a reasonably
small-scale study. A little systematic literature review, a study of eight Finnish adolescents, and
actually that contributed to an explosion in the music psychology literature around music and
adolescence. I think it's a really amazing honor to be here with you today, and to hear about just
where you're sitting with things at the moment.

Interviewee: Thank you. I'm so happy. I think that the more you study something, the more, of course you will
realize that there's so much more that I want to understand. I'm so happy that this field is growing
and blooming, and there are so many young researchers who are into this now. It's so wonderful
to see that.

Interviewer: Thank you so much.

[End of Audio]

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