Affective Dimensions of Music and Identity
Summary
The interplay between emotion and selfhood in musical contexts has emerged as a key focus across psychology, neuroscience and cultural studies. Music serves not only as a conduit for affective expression but also as a scaffold for personal and collective identity. Emotionally salient melodies and rhythms engage reward and memory circuits in the brain, anchoring individual narratives through autobiographical recall and mood regulation. At the same time, shared musical repertoires—whether rooted in ethnic tradition, youth subculture or online communities—provide markers of belonging, social cohesion and intergenerational transmission. Recent work highlights how affective experiences of music operate at multiple levels: intrapersonal (mood modulation and self-reflection), interpersonal (empathic attunement and group synchrony) and sociocultural (symbolic boundaries and political mobilisation). Practical applications span therapeutic settings, digital recommendation algorithms and community arts programmes, underscoring the global relevance of understanding how music shapes and is shaped by identity.
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Affective Dimensions of Music and Identity publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in affective dimensions of music and identity across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Affective resonance: The degree to which musical features engage emotional processing systems, leading to felt experiences of joy, sadness or tension.
Autobiographical memory: The retrieval of personal life events stimulated by familiar music, anchoring identity through emotional recollection.
Musical identity: The aspect of self‐concept characterised by an individual’s musical tastes, participatory practices and group affiliations formed around shared repertoires.
References
- ‘People Were Waiting for That’: Protest Rap and Public Mood in Bishkek. Europe Asia Studies (2022).
- Voicing voicing: attuning to the material in studio recording the Lullaby Choir. Music Education Research (2024).
- Not Secular: Interrogating the Sacred-Secular Binary through Gospel-Pop Performance. Religions (2023).
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