Early adolescents' emotional perceptions and engagement with popular music activities in everyday life

Abstract

This study explored young female and male adolescents' engagement with everyday activities involving popular music and their corresponding emotional perceptions. Sixty-six Grade 8 students (37 females, 29 males), aged 13–14 years from mostly White, English-speaking middle-class families near an urban centre in Western Canada completed a list of daily activities that involved popular music and corresponding personal meanings. Responses were coded according to emergent themes including emotional/value, physical, social/cultural, cognitive/competence and moral/spiritual experiences. Content analyses of personal music definitions showed that for all adolescents, a greater number of youth referred to popular music as an emotional or spiritual experience as compared to a cognitive/competence and physical experiences. Implications for gender-inclusive and developmentally appropriate education are discussed.

Keywords::

• popular music
• emotions
• early adolescence
• gender
• education

Introduction

Most recently, across psychoeducational research domains, there has been a rise in the interest of the emotional and social aspects of learning and development. This focus on the psychocultural or personal aspect of education (Bruner, 1996; Cole, 1990) includes the investigation of the emotions within the educational milieu (Rubin, Burgess, & Coplan, 2002). Popular music plays an important role in the emotional lives of adolescents, in that many researchers claim that contemporary youth are increasingly creating notions of self and community outside of school through their use of music (Miranda & Claes, 2004; North, Hargreaves, & O'Neill, 2000). Recent research with early adolescents shows that popular music plays an integral role in adolescents' social and emotional lives (Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007), with everyday music activities playing a significant role in youth's overall mental health and psychological functioning (DeNora, 2000). According to Saarikallio & Erkkilä (2007), music not only helps adolescents regulate their emotions, it also contributes depth and meaning to their daily lives. Despite the theoretical and practical implications of investigating adolescents' emotional worlds and their sense of self (Larson, 2011), empirical support for the mutual relations between engagement in daily activities involving popular music and emotional perceptions in early adolescence remains sparse and existing findings are inconsistent and variable (Vines et al., 2011).

Adolescents' emotional worlds

A relational developmental and psychocultural approach to development provides a new framework in which to investigate youth's emotional competencies including the ability to understand and make sense of emotions and various aspects of the ‘self’ within a larger cultural context (e.g. Bronfenbrenner, 2005; Harter, 1999; Overton, 2012). Different socialisation processes for males and females influence gender differences in emotional development, particularly emotions that motivate and regulate adaptive behaviours as a function of different sociocultural and interpersonal male and female roles (Brody, 1999; 2006). Although an in-depth exploration of theories of gender, emotion and popular music culture is beyond the scope of this article, most researchers agree that theories of emotion and gender development within a cultural context frequently represent one of two stances regarding the influence of the self or individual and society (see Beall, Eagley, & Sternberg, 2004; Nussbaum, 2000, for further discussion). That is, some theorists view the development of gendered selves and emotional life as universal in all respects, thus minimising the role of society. This position in evolutionary psychology and also in psychoanalytic theory is only beginning to discuss the role of cultural or environmental factors in shaping the developmental process (Overton, 2012).

In contrast, the relational developmental or psychocultural approach to emotional development and gender presents cultures as emotion systems (e.g. Gergen, 2001; Harre, 1986; Overton, 2012; Rogoff, 2003), but does not address the limits imposed on this social construction of emotion by either biology or common life experiences. Recently, more complex conceptions of culture have emerged that promote a balanced account of societies' specific social cognitive and emotional abilities. Such an account includes a gendered, psychocultural approach to emotional and self-development (Wierzbicka, 1994).

One aspect of metacognitive ability involves emotional competence. Emotional competence refers to the ability to express, regulate and understand emotions (Denham, 1998). When functioning optimally, these three sets of skills are intricately interdependent and work together in an integrated way. Emotional expressiveness is the ability to express and/or experience emotions such as positive affect. Emotion regulation refers to the ‘extrinsic and intrinsic processes responsible for monitoring, evaluating and modifying emotional reactions…to accomplish one's goals’ (Thompson, 1994, pp. 27–28). Finally, emotion understanding or knowledge refers to the ability to identify the expression on a peer's face or to comprehend the emotions elicited by common social situations (Denham, 1998; Denham et al., 2003).

Given the vast amount of theoretical literature on peoples' emotional competencies (e.g. Harris, 1989), this study focused on Saarni's (1999) definition of emotional competence as the ability to discern one's own and others' emotional states and to use the vocabulary of emotion effectively. Furthermore, this study built on Denham's (1998) conceptualisation of emotional competence and examined one set of skills referred to as emotion understanding that consists of children's ability to use emotion words or labels, and children's understanding of their own and others' situational determinants of emotions or their causal theories. Although emotion labels directly refer to emotional experiences (e.g. She is happy), explanations link emotion words to causal information (e.g. She is happy because she has a present) and thus reflect how children interpret and make sense of emotional experiences.

Over the past 20 years, researchers have learned much about children's and adolescents' understanding of emotions. Recent research has shown that children's emotional lives become increasingly complex, particularly during middle childhood (ages 8–12 years) (Denham, von Salisch, Olthof, Kochanoff, & Caverly, 2002; Tangney & Fischer, 1995). For example, research has shown that between the ages of 2 and 4 children learn to label emotions accurately and begin to understand that certain situations are linked to certain emotions (see Denham, 1998; Harris, 1989; Pons, Harris, & de Rosnay, 2004). Children and adolescents show substantial ability to use emotion-descriptive adjectives, understand those terms in conversations with adults and begin to employ emotion language to meet their own emotional needs. However, despite the increasing interest in children and youth's emotional development, much remains to be learned about the complex processes involved the emotional self, particularly within a larger cultural context including the role of popular music (Bosacki et al., 2006; Pons, Lawson, Harris, & de Rosnay, 2003).

Gendered and emotion understanding of popular music experiences

Recently, researchers have started to investigate how emotion scripts and other cultural scripts interact and thus may lead to some gender differences found in adolescents' emotional health (Lillard, 1997; Vinden & Astington, 2000; Wellman & Banerjee, 1991; Wierzbicka, 1994). Given that this study involves a focus on popular music and gender as particular cultures, this research is situated within a psychocultural and relational developmental approach. According to psychocultural and relational developmental theory and research (Bronfenbrenner, 2005; Overton, 2012), each person is embedded within a variety of cultural contexts (e.g. country or region or original, ethnicity, gender, profession), and each of these cultural contexts plays a role in creating a child's sense of self. In particular, researchers claim that emotion cultures (i.e. a group's set of beliefs, vocabulary and regulative norms that pertain to emotions) provide the adolescent with a cognitive toolkit that mediates social experience and organises behaviour towards others (Lutz & White, 1986; Saarni, 1999; White, 1994). In relation to music, O'Neill and Green (2004) argue that gender differences can be identified in terms of different musical practices (production, distribution and reception). They describe music as a ‘mirror’ that enables adolescents to recognise aspects of the self and that ‘specific properties of music also come to represent or transform the image reflected in and through its structures’ (p. 253). Thus, a reciprocal relation exists between the emotion culture and the adolescent's emotional competence in that emotion is envisioned as a language or script that acts as both a product and process co-created by experience within a particular culture such as popular music (Lewis, 1995; Russell, 1989; Saarni, 1999).

A substantial part of an adolescent's emotion understanding is mediated through language and social relational processes in particular cultural settings such as parent–child conversations in the home, or peer–peer and teacher–child conversations in the school context (Kitayama, Markus, & Matsumoto, 1995). A psychocultural approach to self and emotion development assumes that language and emotion development are interdependent, and have their origins in social interactions with more skilled partners (Gergen, 2001; Larson, 2011; Vygotsky, 1978). That is, cultural frames or culturally shared systems of meaning help to shape emotional experience and one's developing sense of self through social interactions and communication with others (Kitayama, Markus, & Kurokawa, 2000; Lutz, 1988).

Regarding emotional competence and music experiences in adolescence, many researchers suggest that emotion words or labels play a large role in the development of the child's conceptualisation of emotion (e.g. Harre, 1986; Russell, 1990; Saarni, 1999). Several recent studies have highlighted the importance of language abilities in children's understanding of emotions across gender and countries (Cutting & Dunn, 1999; Harris, 1989; Jenkins & Astington, 1996). More recently, Gergen (2001) has extended the notion that language and emotion are inextricably linked by proposing that to take responsibility for their actions, people should play a main role in creating their personal emotional forms or scripts. Thus, adolescents may acquire socioemotional and communicative competence and a sense of self within various interconnected cultural contexts such as popular music both within and outside of the classroom.

Gendered relations among popular music experiences and emotional competence

In general, the empirical evidence concerning gender-related differences in the links between everyday music experiences and emotional perceptions remains inconsistent and fairly scarce. Extant literature on socioemotional competence in older children and adults suggest that girls and women exhibit a higher level of socioemotional competence than do boys and men (Denham, 1998; Markus & Kitayama, 1994). Research on younger children has found that girls outperform boys in emotion understanding tasks and receive higher emotional competence teacher ratings (Cutting & Dunn, 1999; Parent, Normandeau, Cossett-Richard, & Letarte, 1999), as do middle-school children (Denham, 1998), adolescents and adults (Brody & Hall, 1993). Although some researchers claim that some girls may internalise earlier and more completely the message that it matters how people feel, some studies have demonstrated either no gender differences exist in emotional competence (e.g. Banerjee & Yuill, 1999; Denham, Cook, & Zoller, 1992) or that school-aged boys outperform girls (Laible & Thompson, 1998; Whissell & Nicholson, 1991).

Research suggests that self-regulatory mechanisms are rooted in personal standards linked to self-evaluative sanctions and that emotion understanding is considered to be a stereotypical feminine trait consistent with stereotypic knowledge about gender attributes (Bussey & Bandura, 2004; Maccoby, 1998; Miller & Scholnick, 2000). Past studies have found that preadolescent girls possess a less coherent and positive self-theory than boys (e.g. Bosacki, 2008), and school-aged girls show more frequent mental state talk than boys (Dunn & Hughes, 1998). In addition, regarding emotional perceptions of music, (Hunter, Schellenbert, and Stalinski, 2011) found that adolescent females were more likely to report positive feelings than males after listening to various examples of emotionally expressive music. North et al. (2000) also found that female and male adolescents differed in the way that they used music listening as they found that females reported that music could be used as a way of regulating their moods, whereas males reported that they were more likely to use music as a means of making an impression on others.

To help explain gender-related differences in music and emotions, gender-role stereotyping has been proposed as a means of explaining adolescents' musical behaviour (see Hunter et al., 2011; O'Neill, 1997). In particular, young people seem to have clear, stereotypical notions of whether particular instruments are primarily for boys or for girls. For example, O'Neill and Boulton (1996) presented 9–11-year-olds with six musical instruments and asked the children to rank order these in terms of the extent to which they would like to learn to play them.

Girls showed a stronger preference for flute, piano and violin, whereas boys expressed a stronger preference for drums, guitar and trumpet. In addition to gender-role stereotypes in musical instruments, there is also evidence of gender-related differences in musical activities. More recently, in a comparison study of over 24,000 students aged 9–21 years from eight countries, McPherson and O'Neill (2010) found overall gender differences with females reporting higher competence beliefs and values for music as a school subject than males. Thus, this research on youth's musical experiences and preferences suggests that gender might be an important factor in determining the importance of music to adolescents and more specifically in relation to their engagement in everyday activities involving music.

The present study

In contrast to the amount of research on the links between adolescents' emotional development and self-perceptions (e.g. Harter, 1999), surprisingly little research exists on the role emotions play in early adolescents' popular music in everyday life (Schwartz & Fous, 2003). To date there remains little research on the relations between adolescents' emotional perceptions and how they engage in popular music activities in everyday life (Campbell, Connell, & Beegle, 2007). Given this gap in the literature, the purpose of this study was to explore the role emotion plays in adolescents' understanding of their engagement in everyday activities involving popular music.

To explore the emotional landscape of adolescents' engagement with popular music within and outside the school context (Denham et al., 2003), an investigation of emotional competencies in adolescents may help to illustrate the gendered relations among emotional competence and popular music experiences. Accordingly, from a correlational developmental and psycho-ecological approach to the development of understanding mind and education (Bronfenbrenner, 2005; Bruner, 1996; Bruner & Kalmar, 1997; Dunn, 2005; Overton, 2012), this study builds on past and current research by investigating the emotional perceptions of young adolescents and their popular music experiences (North et al., 2000; O'Neill, 2006).

Specifically, this paper will explore the questions: How does engagement with everyday activities involving popular music play a role in adolescents' identity and emotional competencies? More specifically, how do adolescents' use their daily experiences with popular music to help them to understand other minds and navigate their relationships with themselves and their peers? As adolescents consume of the literacy arts and popular culture, how do their experiences with popular music (e.g. viewing/creating a music video, listening to music, composing music and/or writing lyrics, playing a musical instrument, etc.) influence their understanding of emotional experiences? To address these questions, this study explored adolescents' engagement in everyday activities involving popular music and their personal definitions and emotional perceptions of these experiences.

This study also explored the gendered connections between adolescents' perceived emotion understanding and their everyday popular music activities. The main line of inquiry explored adolescents' responses (i.e. general pattern of responses and gender-related differences) regarding: (1) engagement in everyday activities involving popular music, (2) perceived emotional understanding connected with the self-reported popular music activities and (3) personal definitions of what music means to them. Based on past gender development research that emphasises the dynamic process of reciprocal relations among personal, behavioural and environmental factors (Bussey & Bandura, 1999, 2004; Maccoby, 1998; Saarni, 1999), gender-related differences in the findings were expected to reflect stereotypic gender role expectations. Given the past research described above, we were curious to explore if females would report more positive emotions regarding popular music experiences, and if their engagement in activities involving popular music would differ from the males.

Method

Participants

Participants included 66 Grade 8 students (37 females, 29 males), aged 13–14 years from three classes at a secondary school in British Columbia. Participants were from mostly White, English-speaking, middle-class families and the school was located in a suburb close to a large urban centre.

Measures

Engagement in everyday activities involving popular music

To assess adolescents' perceptions of their engagement in everyday activities involving popular music, participants were asked to report all the activities in their daily life that involved popular music (this was a broadly defined category that included all popular music genres and styles). For example, an adolescent could report engaging in listening to music (generic), playing an instrument, singing, dancing/tapping, whistling, playing videogames (e.g. RockBand, Dance Dance Revolution), listening to music in the car, singing/humming/karoke, using technology to listen to music (e.g. iPod/iPhone, computer, mp3, television) and writing songs. Responses were transcribed and coded according to whether or not they participated in the type of activity (1 = yes, 2 = no), and also if they listed the particular activity (frequency count).

After each reported activity, participants were also asked to report their emotional experiences of the activity and the responses were coded according to the emotion understanding (emotional valence) that each statement conveyed as follows: (1) positive emotions (e.g. positive, happy, calm/relaxed, energetic reinvigorated, interested, active/in shape, meaningful, optimistic, excited, satisfied, accomplished, carefree/free, well, good mood, dynamic, amused, social, playful, motivated, talented), (2) negative emotions (e.g. tired, confused, bored, bad, sad, nerdy, tense, mad, annoyed, stupid, worried) and (3) neutral (e.g. focused/intense/concentrating, cool, desire to sing, normal/so-so, shy, artistic, creative, indiscreet, dreamy, surprised).

Personal definitions of music

Adolescents were also asked to report what music means to them within 1–12 statements (e.g. music is happiness, music is creativity, music is love, etc.). Responses were categorically coded according to the content of the response: 1 = emotional/values (e.g. ‘music is emotion’, ‘music is love’, ‘music is sadness’, ‘music makes me feel relaxed’, ‘music is happiness’, ‘music makes me feel unstoppable’, ‘I like/love music’, ‘music makes me feel confident’, ‘music is affection’), 2 = cognitive/competence (‘music is creativity’, ‘I like: rhythm, melody, lyrics, composition, refrain, harmony’, ‘I want to be a musician’, ‘I play bass’, ‘music is important’), 3 = spiritual/moral (‘music is magic’, ‘music is kindness’, ‘music is vital to me’, ‘music is hope’, ‘music is celebration’), 4 = social/cultural (‘music is universal’, ‘music is friendship’, ‘music is celebration’, ‘I like/love: Avril Lavigne, Hedley, Slash, RushBowie, Buble’, etc.), 5 = physical (‘music is energy’, ‘I like dance’).

Design and procedure

Following ethical clearance from the university and school board, written permission was obtained from the participating schools including the participants' parents/guardians. Only those adolescents who received written parental permission and agreed verbally participated in the study. A trained female researcher visited three Grade 8 classes at the school and group administered a pencil-and-paper self-report questionnaire to participants to obtain their list of music activities and the emotions they associated with each of the popular music activities they reported and up to 12 statements of what music means to them. The researcher monitored the class session and addressed any questions that participants had as they completed the task. This task was completed within a 50-minute class period and participants were reminded that their responses would remain confidential, and that they had the opportunity to ask questions or stop at any time during the research.

Based on previous research of adolescents' engagement with music activities (e.g. O'Neill, 2005), this study used adolescents' self-reports as a means to access their perceptions and experiences with everyday popular music experiences. Adolescents' preferences to communicate through self-reporting were respected by providing familiar tools and materials (worksheets and pencils) as well as a psychologically safe context (Einarsdottir, Dockett, & Perry, 2009). Based on previous research, we applied research methods with young children to the current sample of young adolescents in that for all individuals across the lifespan researchers need to be flexible and accommodating of their needs (Larson, 2011); hence the in-school approach provided a familiar and safe context for adolescents to express themselves.

Analysis

As mentioned above, an inductive process of analysis was utilised in the study (Einarsdottir et al., 2009), and all self-report questionnaires were analyzed thematically as well as descriptively regarding frequency of responses. After each of the sessions with the participants was concluded, the data were recorded. After multiple reads of the data, the authors individually engaged in the analysis of the data record and identifying common patterns and elements utilising Creswell's (2011) themed-based approach. This approach extends the constant comparative method to create an in-depth synthesis of adolescents' personal experiences and definitions of everyday activities involving popular music and perceived emotion understanding. Initial theme-based codes were developed by the researcher and followed upon with a collaborative winnowing approach (Wolcott, 1990), where individually identified themes were narrowed, collapsed and combined until a consensus was reached between the two. This method involves simultaneous coding and analysis through the generation of plausible categories by comparing responses to generate categories followed by integrating categories and their properties according to existing and emerging theory.

Each of the researchers coded the complete data set individually prior to an assessment of inter-rater reliability analysis that indicated an average Cohen's κ of .90 across all categories. After consensus on the coding was achieved between the two authors through a collaborative ongoing dialogue, the data record were coded using Excel and SPSS.

Results

Overview of the main analyses

The main analyses involved a series of cross-tabulations and frequency percentages with χ² analyses to test for gender-related differences (α level set at .05). All analyses were conducted on the categorically coded responses to the self-reporting of participation in everyday activities involving popular music and their emotional perceptions associated with these experiences and personal definitions of music.

Consistent with past research that suggests adolescents' popular music experiences play a role in their emotional well-being (e.g. DeWall, Pond, Campbell, & Twenge, 2011), descriptive and frequency analysis revealed that emotional experiences were often reported in response to adolescents' engagement in activities involving popular music and personal expressions of these experiences. Following this, separate cross-tabulations and χ² analyses were conducted on all responses of frequency of engagement in everyday popular music activities.

Descriptives and frequencies

Table 1 illustrates the adolescents' most preferred activities in their daily life that involved popular music, as follows: 1 = listening to music (generic category included all popular music genres), 65/66 (98%) – only one male did not include this as his top activity, 2 = singing, 3 = playing an instrument, 4 = video games, 5 = technology (iPod/mp3 Player/cellular phone/iPhone).

Table 1 Top everyday popular music activities by gender and overall.

Activity	Overall (N = 66)	Girls (N = 40)	Boys (N = 26)
Listening (generic)	67%	29 (73%)	15 (58%)
Singing	15%	7 (18%)	3 (12%)
Playing an instrument	14%	3 (8%)	6 (23%)
Video games	2%	0	1 (4%)
iPod/iPhone	2%	0	1 (4%)

Gender-related differences in reported frequency of engagement in popular music activities

Adolescents' responses to the personal expressions of preferred popular music activities and emotional experiences were also coded according to themes. To investigate the influence of gender on the variables, for all categorical coding, χ² analysis of all coded responses did not reveal any significant patterns concerning gender. Frequency percentages of the responses are described below.

Results showed a significant gender-related difference in whistling and karoke or sing-along as a preferred popular music activity (see Table 2). Results showed that males were marginally significantly more likely than females to whistle and engage in tapping more often than females as a way to express their musical interest. In contrast, results showed that females were more likely than males to prefer karoke or sing-along and listening to radio activities to represent their interest in popular music activities (see Table 2). Only one female listened to her music on a computer and two females used CDs, whereas the majority of all adolescents reported listening to popular music on their iPads/iPhones and also MP3 players.

Table 2 Frequency of engagement in everyday popular music activities by gender and overall (e.g. Do you listen to music – yes/no?).

Activity	Overall (N = 66)	Girls (N = 40)	Boys (N = 26)
Listening (generic)	98%	38 (98%)	26 (100%)
Singing	15%	7 (18%)	3 (12%)
Playing an instrument	67%	24 (60%)	20 (77%)
Video games	36%	12 (30%)	12 (46%)
iPod/iPhone	94%	36 (90%)	26 (100%)
iTunes/MP3	70%	26 (65%)	20 (77%)
Laptop/computer	2%	1 (3%)	0
Whistling^a	32%	9 (23%)	12 (46%)
Karoke/sing-along^a	26%	13 (33%)	4 (15%)
Dancing	61%	26 (65%)	14 (54%)
Tapping^a	38%	11 (28%)	14 (54%)
CD	3%	0	2 (8%)
Radio*	41%	20 (50%)	7 (27%)
Car (radio/stereo)	71%	30 (75%)	17 (65%)
Humming	44%	16 (40%)	13 (50%)
Television	41%	18 (45%)	9 (35%)
Writing music	8%	3 (8%)	2 (8%)

Note. * Significant gender difference (p < .05): radio, χ² = 5.092, p < .05.

a Marginal differences (p < .10), tapping, χ² = 3.037, p = .089; whistling, χ² = 2.732; p = .098, karoke/sing along χ² = 3.347, p = .067.

Patterns in popular music activities and emotional perceptions

To explore the connections between adolescents' reported popular music activities and their emotional experiences, cross-tabulations were performed on the first five statements of the self-report questionnaires (see Table 3). For example, regarding the first chosen musical activity, cross-tabulations between music activity and associated emotional experience revealed that the majority of 57/66 responses stated a positive emotion (e.g. positive, happy, excited), 6/66 reported a neutral emotion (e.g. normal/so-so, creative), whereas only 1 negative emotion was reported by the participants, with one male listing tired as an emotional response to listening to his iPod/iPhone.

Table 3 Amount and percentage of emotional perceptions of top five everyday popular music activities for female and male adolescents.

	Positive		Negative		Neutral
	N	%	N	%	N	%
Playing an instrument
Female	13		0		23%
Male	1117%		0		12%
Singing
Female	69%		0		1	2%
Male	12%		0		0	0
Dancing
Female	46%		0		0%
Male	35%		0
Technology (iPad/iPhone)
Female	23%		0		0	0
Male	23%		12%		0	0
Listening (generic)
Female	46%		0		0	0
Male	23%		0		1	2%

Content analysis of personal meanings of popular music experiences

Adolescents were also asked to write up to 12 statements of what music means to them or their personal definitions of music (e.g. What does music mean to you?). The contents were coded according to content as explained in the previous section and illustrated in Table 4. All participants (100%) completed at least five statements, and across both genders, the most common first response across the first four statements was emotional (first sentence contained emotional component 46/66) and the remaining two either mentioned equally emotions or cognitions. By the 5th to 12th statement 26/66 or 40% of adolescents was more likely to refer to social-cultural references such as Canadian music, etc. Moral and spiritual issues were mentioned rarely, as only 8% reported spiritual or moral meanings in the first four statements of what music meant to them such as peacefulness, hope, magic, etc.

Table 4 Amount and percentage of themes to describe personal meanings of music for total sample.

	Emotional		Cognitive		Spiritual/moral		Socio/cultural		Physical
Statement	N	%	N	%	N	%	N	%	N	%
1	46	70	3	5	5	8	3	5	1	2
2	5	8	38	58	6	9	4	6	5	8
3	11	17	26	40	8	12	10	31	3	5
4	16	24	15	23	5	8	17	26	4	6
5	7	11	9	1	5	8	26	40	3	15
6	6	17	5	8	1	2	22	11	21	28
7	3	5	3	5	1	2	19	44	2	3
8	2	3	2	3	0		16	24	1	2
9	1	2	0		1	2	10	15	1	2
10	0		0		0		8		1	2
11	0		0		0		4		1	2
12	0		0		0		1	2	1	2

Discussion

This study explored individual differences and gendered links in the role emotions play in adolescents' engagement in activities involving popular music in their everyday lives and how adolescents make personal meaning of music. The findings are discussed in terms of main research questions that guided our exploration of (1) the general pattern of responses across both genders and (2) the differential patterns found between emotion experiences and preferred popular music activities and meanings according to gender.

Overall, for all adolescents, positive emotions were reported when engaged in everyday popular music activities. The majority of adolescents reported listening as the most preferred everyday popular music activity. Past research that indicates music listening by adolescents and young adults is often related to developmental issues (e.g. Schwartz & Fouts, 1998). For example, teenagers having few friends prefer music with themes of loneliness and independence (Christenson & Roberts, 1998). Students with greater trust in others and greater independence from peer influence prefer music that elicits positive emotional states (e.g. love, hope) more than those who are less trusting and needing to be accepted by others (Gordon et al., 1992).

Although results showed that many music experiences were similar for both genders, we also found that females and males differed in very few of their various everyday life experiences with music, with many differences found as marginal suggesting a trend. Overall, females were more likely than males to report listening to music and engaging in karoke or sing-along activities. In contrast, males were more likely to report engaging in activities such as whistling and tapping as a means of expressing their interest in everyday popular music. Interestingly, these results support past research on gendered preferences for language activities as karoke and listening to radio involve music lyrics or vocabulary, whereas whistling and tapping are non-verbal activities (Tannen, 1994). Past research in music education has also documented the ‘missing males’ problem in relation to young adolescent boys' reluctance to sing, particularly in public or group singing activities (Freer, 2010).

Finally, across both genders, technology played a large role in their popular music activities as the majority of adolescents reported listening to music on their iPod/iPhone as well as MP3 players, etc. Overall, the findings present an intriguing picture of how gender plays an important role in adolescents' engagement in everyday popular music experiences and emotions and suggests that all adolescents irrespective of gender may share similarities as well as differences regarding engagement in musical activities and related emotional experiences. The theoretical and educational implications of these findings are also discussed below.

Gender-related differences in adolescents' engagement in everyday popular music activities and emotional experiences

How do we explain these findings? From a psychocultural and relational developmental approach (e.g. Bronfenbrenner, 2005; Bussey & Bandura, 2004; Maccoby, 1998; Overton, 2012), the present findings can be explained in terms of the interplay between self-influence and stereotypic societal gender-role expectations. The present findings suggest that complex gendered connections (similarities and differences) between everyday popular music preferences and emotional experiences. The gender-role stereotypic findings of reported popular music activities support Fine's claim (2010) that such gender-related differences may illustrate the influence of gender-role stereotypes in that females were more likely to report engaging in verbal musical activities, whereas males reported engaging in non-verbal. Interestingly, across both genders, technology played a significant role in adolescents' engagement with popular music and support past research that suggests that social-communicative technology such as iPhones, etc. may help to promote further social and emotional understanding (Turkle, 2011). Further, the present results found that the only mention of a negative emotional response to a popular music activity was one male reported feeling ‘tired’ when using his iPod/iPhone to listen to music. It is possible that this male was listening to music for a particular function. For example Sloboda, O'Neill, and Ivaldi (2001) reported that music is often used to help individuals change their mood. Future research needs to continue to explore the role of emotions and technology in adolescents' experiences of everyday popular music activities, including both positive and negative implications of reliance on technology for particular functions as well as musical and emotional experiences.

Regarding the adolescents' personal meanings of music, the main themes gleaned from the personal definitions of music illustrate the importance of internal worlds such as thoughts and feelings, as well as aspects of spirituality, and the larger cultural context. The findings across gender support the literature on gender research that suggests adolescent females and males within the context of everyday popular music experiences may share many similarities (e.g. Maccoby, 1998). Finally, the present findings also support both Bussey and Bandura's (2004) agentic social cognitive theory and Maccoby's (1998) self-socialisation theory that claim children and adolescents' social cognitive abilities determine in part how the environment influences their sense of self and emotional health. Thus, future research needs to examine the role emotional and inner state vocabulary play in adolescents' ability to discuss their emotional experiences within an everyday popular music context.

This study did not find significant gender differences between mean scores of emotional terms related to everyday popular music activities. The findings contradict past research findings that have shown preadolescent girls to score higher than boys on emotion understanding, particularly complex emotions (Bosacki, 2008; Cutting & Dunn, 1999), and research that has found school-aged boys to score higher than girls (Laible & Thompson, 1998; Whissell & Nicholson, 1991). Thus, this study adds to the growing number of studies that demonstrate contradictory and puzzling findings concerning the impact of gender on children's and adolescents' self and emotion understanding within the context of popular music engagement in everyday life (Beall, Eagly, & Sternberg, 2004; Hughes & Dunn, 1999).

Such findings also support the notion that perhaps sophisticated, or advanced emotional competence within the context of popular music experiences may have both intrapersonal and interpersonal costs and benefits (Cutting & Dunn, 1999; Sutton, Smith, & Swettenham, 1999).

For example, regarding interpersonal implications, adolescents with highly advanced emotional understanding ability may also have the ability to interpret subtle messages and judgments from others that may be construed as either negative or positive included in either song lyrics or other alternative popular media. Compared to other youth who may not necessarily have the ability to understand such subtle messages, those that have this skill may also be more sensitive to criticisms and negative comments from others as well as possible negative emotions elicited in popular music. As Denham (2003), Dunn (2005) and others remind us, the fact that an adolescent may understand someone's emotional state does not tell us how that adolescent may behave in a relationship with that person or how they will cope with that information, and whether or not she/he will incorporate other's negative judgments into her or his identity as an artistic learner. To address this complexity, future research needs to explore the role emotions play in adolescents' connections between popular music experiences and personal relations and friendship.

Educational implications, limitations and future research

Given this study's findings that music listening and positive emotions play an important role in adolescents' everyday music experiences, this study's results support past research that connections between adolescents music and their general emotional well-being in that different music listening behaviours may be associated with emotional and social motivations as well as using popular music listening as a coping resource to negotiate challenging emotional experiences during adolescence (Miranda & Gaudreau, 2011; Miranda, Gaudreau, & Morizot, 2010). Future research should explore adolescents' popular music listening and emotion regulation in more detail, as Miranda et al. (2010) suggest, by exploring how youth use different types of music listening to focus on emotions, problem solving or avoidance. Recent related research on adolescents' conversational role preferences shows that adolescents prefer to listen over talk when in conversations with peers as opposed to family (Bosacki, 2013), and related studies shows the importance of listening to socio-communicative functioning. Thus, more research needs to be conducted on the role that music listening plays in adolescents' overall social and emotional health.

The results of this study may help to remind educators and researchers that adolescents' mentalising and listening abilities and emotional experiences should not be underestimated. Educators need to be cognizant that early adolescence is a time when females and males begin to become aware of increased social consciousness and social pressures to conform to gender-stereotypic norms (Maccoby, 1999; Noddings, 2003). This study may help to increase educators' awareness of how gender-stereotypic beliefs may affect adolescents' socioemotional development within the context of everyday popular music. Accordingly, the current findings may encourage educators and teachers to minimise the extent to which they use gender-stereotypic language and behaviour around young adolescents. Moreover, adults should be encouraged to emphasise emotion vocabulary and to articulate often how they are feeling and thinking. As noted by Kitayama et al. (1995), to provide a ‘thicker’ description of adolescents' emotional understanding, researchers need to examine the ‘emotional culture’ of the school, home and larger community by focusing on the influences of all family members – mothers, fathers and siblings as well as peers and popular media.

The illustration of gender patterns between emotional perceptions and popular music activities highlights the need for future research to include the role of gender when exploring the connections between adolescents' everyday popular music experiences and their emotional well-being. The current study also highlights the importance of everyday popular music in adolescents' mental and social lives. The finding that for both females and males, popular music activities were most related to positive emotions supports past research that claims popular music may help youth to cope with their social and emotional challenges during adolescence (Erkkilä & Saarikallio, 2007). That is, our findings suggest that involvement with popular music activities such as listening to music may be perceived by some youth as having emotional meaning and personal meaning.

The current results may also suggest that the ‘physical’ being was less identified by youth as compared to emotions, which may be a reflection of the mind–body mismatch that may occur during early adolescence (Maccoby, 1998). For example, past research suggests that during adolescence some youth may become more sensitive about their bodies and physical appearance, and that although body image plays an instrumental role in popular music and celebrity musicians that young people admire, paradoxically adolescents may be less likely to discuss ‘embodiment’ and their perceptions of their body and appearance (Halpern, 1992; Hunter et al., 2011). Further, physical activity and body image also play a large role in the dance culture that many youth become increasingly involved in during their adolescent years. Given this incongruity, researchers need to further explore the role emotions, body image and physical experiences play in adolescents' engagement with popular music activities in everyday life.

Given the limitations of this study (e.g. cross-sectional, correlational study, lack of general intelligence measure, ethnically homogeneous sample, etc.), interpretations of the present findings are to be made with caution. As mentioned in the introduction, given the complex process of the co-construction of emotions and popular music experiences, the method of self-report questionnaire may not be able to capture a complete reflection of such a dynamic process.

With research on early adolescents' popular music activities in everyday life and emotions still in its infancy, this study provides a starting point for future research on adolescents' emotional competence to include observational measures in naturalistic settings such as discourse analysis of peer conversations in the classroom and extracurricular music-related activities, peer conversations, etc. Moreover, given the complex process of emotion socialisation within the culture of popular media, other factors not assessed in the present study may have influenced adolescents' reporting of music activities and their emotional perceptions (e.g. SES, siblings, family context, exposure to popular music and/or literature that focuses on emotions, music activities in and out of school, etc.). For example, this study supports past research on coping methods and music listening such as Miranda et al.'s (2010) study that suggested links exist between how adolescents felt after music listening (happy or sad) with their general emotional well-being (positive or negative). Miranda et al.'s findings suggested possible gendered associations may exist between different behaviours such as music listening emotional and social motivations (Lee et al., 2006; Miranda & Gaudreau, 2011; Miranda et al., 2010).

Overall, the present findings suggest that interconnections exist among adolescents' emotional perceptions, sociocommunicative abilities and their involvement in popular music activities. The current findings may further the discourse on emotion development by highlighting the complexity of children's emotional and social experiences during early adolescence. Consistent with the increasing claim among researchers (Coplan & Armer, 2005; Wichmann, Coplan, & Daniels, 2004), the results of this study warrant further investigation regarding adolescents' psychological development within the context of popular music involvement, and may encourage further longitudinal study of the links and their directions between adolescents' popular music experiences and additional metacognitive abilities (e.g. emotion regulation, self-understanding, moral sensibility, etc.) Furthermore, this study may also motivate researchers to borrow from the areas of both popular music and emotional development among Canadian youth in the hope that such a multidisciplinary and inclusive approach to popular music and emotional development may provide some fresh insight into the inner life of the adolescent.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported in part by a Standard Research Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (410-2008-729). We thank the students and their teachers for participating in the research. Portions of this research were presented at the 2012 biennial meetings of the Society for Research on Adolescence, Vancouver, British Columbia, and the International Society for Behavioral Development, Edmonton, Alberta.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sandra L. Bosacki

Sandra Bosacki teaches in the Faculty of Education at Brock University. Her main research interests involve social and emotional development in children and adolescents within the educational context.

Susan A. O'Neill

Susan O'Neill teaches in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. Her main research interests involve music education and youth engagement.