How different features of music influence how and what we remember
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Different features of music evoke different types of memories, with softer acoustic music bringing back unique and vivid memories, while more upbeat, lively tracks lead to exciting and social memories, new research from Goldsmiths shows.
The findings revealed that more acoustic music with lower energy such as re:stacks by Bon Iver and Claire de Lune by Claude Debussy is associated with evoking more vivid, unique and important memories. While more energetic music with lower acousticness such as Trap Queen by Fetty Wap and When Doves Cry by Prince is associated with excitement, amusement and more social memories.
The study led by Safiyyah Nawaz and Dr Diana Omigie at Goldsmiths Music, Mind and Brain research group helps deepen our understanding of how music relates to personal memories and may have applications when considering how to use music in care settings for people with memory impairments.
Participants were asked to self-select a particular song that they associate with a personal memory, and to describe that memory. They were also presented with songs that featured in the Billboard Top 100 charts when they were aged between nine and nineteen, one for each year, and asked if any of these sparked memories. If so, they were asked about characteristics of the memory, such as how vividly they recalled it, how unique and important the particular memory is to them, as well as the emotions they associated with the memory, at the time it originally occurred.
Uniquely participants were given a wide range of different emotions to select from to describe how the autobiographical memory, spurred by the music, felt at the time it happened – rather than selecting on scales of how positive/negative or calming/exciting the memory was. This was important to capture the nuances of people’s experiences.
Over 1400 musical memories were collected from 233 participants and then analysed. The features of the songs were analysed using data from Spotify’s API (application programming interface), which categorised songs by features such as danceability, loudness or acousticness. Using statistical analysis, the researchers determined whether any particular qualities of the songs were strongly associated with certain qualities of the memories they evoked. The most significant findings were connected with the energeticness and acousticness of songs.
Safiyyah Nawaz explained, “We all know of the experience of hearing a song and being transported back in time to a vivid memory associated with that song; as it turns out, the properties of the music itself – characteristics like acousticness, loudness and energy – relate to the emotional and phenomenological qualities of the same musical memories.”
Higher acousticness was associated with emotional memories like calmness, romance, sadness and adoration. Significantly, this does not mean that higher acousticness and lower energy correlates only with negative emotions and higher energy with positive emotions, as acousticness triggered memories with a wide range of emotional states, a mixture of positive and negative.
Interestingly, music with a higher level of energy was associated with faster retrieval and greater likelihood of evoking memories, meaning that energeticness of music may influence the cognitive mechanisms underlying memory retrieval.
Among many interesting findings, we discovered that more acoustic songs were associated with memories that were more vivid, unique, and characterised by complex emotions like romance and adoration, whereas louder, more energetic songs were linked to social, exciting, high-energy memories that were recalled faster.
Safiyyah Nawaz, PhD Student, Psychology and Associate Lecturer
The memories associated with the self-selected songs tended to be more specific, vivid, positive and important than those associated with the popular songs from the Billboard Top 100. Whether a song is familiar or has personal significance - alongside the musical features of the song - is also a highly influential factor in the ways in which memories are recalled and described.
“Our in-depth analysis showed that it’s not just the musical features that influence memory, but also how much a person likes a song and how familiar it is to them. We hope future research will explore how musical elements interact with such personal elements to bring about the deep and meaningful memories that people experience in everyday life,” Dr Diana Omigie explained.
The research is published in the journal PLOS One.
The team are now building an online archive of music memories, Memory Records, which already comprises over 200 memories and music associated with them. “Some of the memories analysed in this project—shared with the consent of participants—are available to read now. We aim to expand the archive beyond the predominantly Western samples that have traditionally shaped psychology research,” Safiyyah added.