{"id":123242,"date":"2025-08-06T09:28:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T09:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/123242\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T09:28:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T09:28:11","slug":"can-music-be-good-company-research-shows-it-makes-our-imagination-more-social","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/123242\/","title":{"rendered":"Can music be good company? Research shows it makes our imagination more social"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year, we asked a group of older adults<\/a> what music they listened to when feeling lonely, and why. We discovered music was a powerful coping mechanism and source of escapism. <\/p>\n

Other studies have also found listeners use music \u201cto keep them company<\/a>\u201d. Such reports suggest music might be able shape listeners thoughts and imagination to provide social solace. <\/p>\n

But can we establish scientifically how music affects imagination? In short, can music really be good company? Our latest research<\/a> tried to find out.<\/p>\n

Music and mental images<\/p>\n

It\u2019s common to experience mental imagery \u2013 that is a mental simulation or imagining something that is not there \u2013 while listening to music. Studies have found 77%<\/a> of music listeners online, 73%<\/a> of participants in the lab, and 83%<\/a> of concert-goers report experiences of mental imagery during music listening.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s going on here? To get a better understanding, we previously carried out a series of experiments<\/a> with mental imagery and music.<\/p>\n

We showed participants a small clip from a video game called Journey<\/a>, which featured a small figure travelling towards a mountain. We then asked them to imagine the continuation of the journey.<\/p>\n

Participants reported how vivid or life-like their imagination was. In addition, they provided details on distance and time travelled in their mind and shared detailed descriptions of their imagined journeys.<\/p>\n

Across multiple studies, we asked hundreds of participants to do the task in silence or while listening to various types of music. We observed much more vivid and emotionally positive imagination when listening to music<\/a>. In addition, listeners\u2019 imagined longer distances and time travelled when listening to music compared to silence.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Participants were shown a short clip from the video game Journey, either with or without music, and were asked to imagine a continuation of the journey towards the mountain in the distance.
\n Thatgamecompany<\/a><\/p>\n

Music shapes listeners\u2019 imagination<\/p>\n

Previous research has also found that what people imagine while listening to music often forms elaborate imagined stories. These share greater similarity among listeners with a shared cultural background<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Thoughts and themes in the imagined stories are shaped by the music. For example, heroic-sounding music induces empowering themes<\/a> into imagined content. <\/p>\n

Occurrences of new events in these imagined stories also tend to be similar between listeners, and are related to the pattern of musical tension and relief<\/a>. <\/p>\n

So there is strong scientific support for the idea that music can indeed affect what is imagined. But can it specifically induce imagined social interactions?<\/p>\n

Our<\/a> latest study is the first to explicitly investigate this question.<\/p>\n

Does music make imagination more social?<\/p>\n

We asked 600 participants to perform the imaginary journey task, either in silence or while listening to Italian, Spanish or Swedish folk music. To understand the potential effect of vocals and the meaning of lyrics on imagined content, the music was presented with or without lyrics to the participants, half of whom were native speakers and the other half non-speakers of the respective languages.<\/p>\n

We then used tools from natural language processing \u2013 a set of computational methods for analysing language \u2013 to find underlying topics across participants\u2019 reports of their imagined journeys. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Imagined themes of social interactions were more common while listening to music than during silence.
\n Herff et al. \/ Scientific Reports<\/a><\/p>\n

One topic stood out: social interaction. Not only was it the predominant topic in participants\u2019 reports of what they imagined, but it was also much stronger while listening to music compared to silence.<\/p>\n

This suggests music can indeed affect social thought. The effect was stable regardless of whether listeners\u2019 understood the lyrics or whether there even were lyrics in the first place. <\/p>\n

But we can go one step further.<\/p>\n

We used a generative AI system which produces images from text prompts (Stable Diffusion<\/a>) to visualise participants\u2019 descriptions of their imagined journeys. <\/p>\n

\"Example<\/a><\/p>\n

Example images generated from descriptions during silence (left: \u2018I imagined a dark walk, without emotions, alone, looking for some hope\u2019) and music (right: \u2018I imagined a walk in the mountains with my family, all together, happy and carefree, we played, we laughed\u2019).
\n Herff et al. \/ Scientific Reports<\/a><\/p>\n

By combining the natural language processing model with the image generator, we could visualise what the language processing model had learned to be a \u201cstereotypical\u201d representation of content imagined during silence and music listening.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a><\/p>\n

What the computational model learned people tend to imagine during silence (left) and music (right).
\n Herff et al. \/ Scientific Reports<\/a><\/p>\n

The results of the computational model were further supported with manual annotations that showed three times more social interactions in journeys imagined during music listening compared to silence.<\/p>\n

A shared imagination of music<\/p>\n

Finally, we showed the images created from the descriptions to another group of people. <\/p>\n

These people were able to pick out which images showed content imagined during music listening, and which showed content imagined while in silence \u2013 but they were only able to do it when listening to the same music that inspired the image. <\/p>\n

This shows there is a shared understanding, or \u201ctheory of mind\u201d of what another person might imagine while listening to a piece of music. <\/p>\n

Taken together, our results suggest music can indeed be good company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this year, we asked a group of older adults what music they listened to when feeling lonely,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":123243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[171,975,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-123242","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114981116992736453","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}