How Music Affects Our Self-Esteem

Music has always played an important role in society. It has accompanied times such as the struggle against discrimination, it has given birth to fashions and new lifestyles.

In addition to creating social cohesion and shared messages, music can also affect our relationship with ourselves. Listening to music that conveys positive messages can positively influence mood, help create a more optimistic view of reality, lower stress levels, and improve self-esteem.

Music influences thought

Research has shown that music-induced mood changes, although temporary, help improve our self-evaluation. An experiment revealed how involved participants showed an increase in self-esteem if subjected to listening to music that conveyed positive thoughts, compared to those who were subjected to listening to music that, instead, appealed to feelings associated with sadness. The result was even more evident among those who had previously reported having low self-esteem: in this case, listening to sad music had the effect of lowering self-esteem even more significantly.

Empathy effect

How does this mechanism work that allows music to affect our self-esteem? First of all, we say that no music can be called useful for this purpose a priori. It all depends on our perception, our taste, how a song reaches us, and the relationship we have with it. Empathy plays a key role.

When we listen to a song that can create a feeling of empathy between us and those who sing it, we spontaneously think that we can make its life experience our own, even sharing it, and we tend to identify with it. by making the concepts it expresses our own. If the song expresses a positive self-evaluation, we will also be led to evaluate ourselves in a more forgiving way.

We see a lot of international music stars coming forward with a “winning” image. Strong, confident, determined to pursue their dreams, and determined to succeed in what they set out to do. The message they want to convey to their audience is also based on an idea of ​​sharing through which the listener feels that he can make this way of thinking his own and use it to also face his challenges and his daily difficulties with more determination.

As a result, the messages that come to us through music can also weight shaping the way we think and behave. Idealizing an artist can lead to sharing, and sometimes even justifying, his ideas by making them our own and consequently influencing our cognitive process. That said, it's easy to see the power of music when you consider its ability to convey messages and reach large numbers of people. In this regard, we have already touched on this subject when talking about the relationship between adolescents and music.

Musical idols: who they are and what they are for

We cannot neglect to dedicate a few lines to a form of relationship that is created between the musician, perhaps better said the interpreter of a song or the singer of a song, and the most passionate part of his listeners. which is normally defined as a fan.

It must be said that today the spread of the media has increased the interest in well-known characters and their lives, it is easy to have the impression of being able to enter the life of an artist, to share experiences and thoughts as we have seen with the emergence of empathic relationships. What is born, more than a real social relationship can be defined as a parasocial relationship, in which the typical reciprocity of a relationship is not real but simulated by one of the parties.

The need to satisfy needs

As in any type of relationship, even that between a fan and his idol responds to specific needs. American psychologist George Stever categorizes the sources of attraction as the basis of those psychological needs that are satisfied by a parasocial relationship:

attraction to the abilities and performances of the idol: in this case, the idol can have the positive effect of encouraging by his example the commitment to achieve his goals;

romantic attraction that gives rise to and nourishes fantasies: it allows you to experience emotions in a safe context, without fearing the disappointment of an opposing party who could turn out to be indifferent or hostile;

idealization of the hero: the idol embodies the perfect figure that reality hardly offers us, its flaws are justified or not considered;

identification: all the elements, real or presumed, that bring us closer to our idol are sought to reflect on us the characteristics that make it so unique and consequently increase our self-esteem;

parental attachment: a typically female aspect that consists of the desire to protect and care for those we love and cherish.