It’s better together: The psychological benefits of singing in a choir
By Nick A. J. Stewart, A. Lonsdale. 2016
103 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Previous research has suggested that singing in a choir might be beneficial for an individual’s psychological well-being. However, it is unclear whether this effect is unique to choral singing, and little is known about the factors that could be responsible for it. To address this, the present study compared choral singing to two other relevant leisure activities, solo singing and playing a team sport, using measures of self-reported well-being, entitativity, need fulfilment and motivation. Questionnaire data from 375 participants indicated that choral singers and team sport players reported significantly higher psychological well-being than solo singers. Choral singers also reported that they considered their choirs to be a more coherent or ‘meaningful’ social group than team sport players considered their teams. Together these findings might be interpreted to suggest that membership of a group may be a more important influence on the psychological well-being experienced by choral singers than singing. These findings may have practical implications for the use of choral singing as an intervention for improving psychological well-being.
Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Music, Social Psychology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/58587bfb88674b1b35e8a46313c62fdf9e6e6d69
How researchers see this paper
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In Cognitive Neuroscience
- Emery Schubert
- Gary E. McPherson
- P. Evans
- Peter Miksza
- Tuomas Eerola
- E. G. Schellenberg
- A. Lamont
- Aaron Williamon
In Music
- Emery Schubert
- Gary E. McPherson
- P. Evans
- Peter Miksza
- Tuomas Eerola
- E. G. Schellenberg
- A. Lamont
- Aaron Williamon
In Social Psychology
Citations in the corpus
- The definition of a musician in music psychology: A literature review and the six-year rule (2018, background): “…study required at least an undergraduate level in music; one study required music training; one study required music (Continued) singing required (Stewart & Lonsdale, 2016), > 500 on the Ollen Musical Sophistication Index (Lahdelma & Eerola, 2016), and self-reports as musician (Fiveash & Luck,…”