Soundtrack to the social world: Emotional music enhances empathy, compassion, and prosocial decisions but not theory of mind.
Author(s):
Brennan McDonald
Anne Böckler
Philipp Kanske
Publication Year:
2022
Type:
journal article
Journal/Book Title
Emotion
Publisher
Editor(s):
Pages:
19-29
Volume:
22
Issue:
1
Abstract:
Music is a human universal and has the ability to evoke powerful, genuine emotions. But does music influence our capacity to understand and feel with others? A growing body of evidence indicates that empathy (sharing another’s feelings) and compassion (a feeling of concern toward others) are behaviorally and neutrally distinct, both from each other and from the social–cognitive process theory of mind (ToM; i.e., inferring others’ mental states). Yet little is known as to whether and how these dissociable routes to feeling with and understanding others can be independently modulated. The goal of the current study was to investigate if emotional music has the potential to enhance social affect and/or social cognition. Using a naturalistic, video-based paradigm which disentangles empathy, compassion, and ToM, we demonstrate selective enhancement of social affect through music during the videos. Specifically, we found enhanced empathy and compassion when emotional, but not when neutral music was present during videos displaying emotionally negative narrations. No such enhancement was present for ToM performance. Similarly, prosocial decision making increased after emotionally negative videos with emotional music. These findings demonstrate how emotional music can enhance empathic responding, compassion and prosocial decisions as well as contribute to the growing evidence for separable processes within the social mind.
Citation (Chicago Author-Date):
McDonald, Brennan, Anne Böckler, and Philipp Kanske. 2022. “Soundtrack to the Social World: Emotional Music Enhances Empathy, Compassion, and Prosocial Decisions but Not Theory of Mind.” Emotion 22 (1): 19–29. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001036.