Changes in musical behaviours and interest in coronamusic predict socio-emotional coping during COVID-19 lockdown
Forbes summarized our research
Survey of >5000 people from 6 countries (3 continents)
During the COVID-19 lockdown, people have turned to music for regulating their emotions.
People experiencing different degrees of emotional changes showed different patterns of musical engagement.
Music listening and music making may provide different coping potentials.
Coronamusic played a key role in socio-emotional coping.
Detailed Findings
1. We asked people, "Compared to before the onset of the coronavirus crisis, how important are the following 1) leisure activities and 2) functions of music listening to you?"
We ranked the importance of all surveyed items across individuals, within each country. The image below shows 1) which activities became most important to people during lockdown, and 2) which functions of music listening became more important.
2. During the pandemic, people are less able to rely on some methods of coping, like ones that may be expensive (therapy) or unavailable (socializing inside). We used a machine learning approach to investigate how people are using music to cope with the stress of the coronavirus crisis.
We defined coping as the average of feeling connected to others, serving as a replacement for social interaction, and coping emotionally with the present situation.
*Fink, L., *Warrenburg, L. A., Howlin, C., Randall, W., +Hansen, N. C., & +Wald-Fuhrmann, M. (2021). Viral tunes: Changes in musical behaviours and interest in coronamusic predict socio-emotional coping during COVID-19 lockdown. Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, 8(180). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00858-y
*+ indicates equal contribution