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When schools need to make cuts to save money, music is often top of the list. In the UK, funding for music in schools and the training of music teachers continues to be cut. This comes despite assurances from the coalition government that children’s access to music will be protected. In North America, NAMM point out that ‘many schools across the country have cut music programs because of lack of funding’. So are music lessons just a luxury—something better-off kids can add to their resume when applying to the Ivy League?
A lot of people have investigated the role of music in social bonding and generally found that people get along better after making music together. The problem with many of these studies, which involve adults, is that music is such a big part of any culture, and has so many associations, and that makes it very difficult to be sure just what it is people are reacting to.
Sebastian Kirschner and Michael Tomasello, being very aware of these problems, recruited 48 pairs of 4 year-old German pre-schoolers into a study on music and prosocial behaviour. Each pair of children moved around a pond (a blue blanket) trying to wake up 9 toy frogs with either a ‘morning song’ or a non-musical ‘morning exercise’. The inclusion of a proper control condition like this (the non-musical ‘morning exercise’) is often sadly lacking in studies of this kind making it impossible to tell whether it really is the music, rather than say, the facial expression or body language, that is influencing participants.
Results showed that children who woke the frogs using music went on to be more helpful and cooperative than those who didn’t use music. Music apparently increased levels of empathic concern between the children. And although girls generally scored higher on measures of helpfulness and cooperation, the musical activity brought about the same increases for both sexes.
I wondered whether those kids who had bonded though music would show any increased empathy for other kids. If someone’s empathy is increased by making music, does that extend universally or is it only for those you were making music with? Is this just a way of maintaining in-group cohesion or more general friendliness? An earlier study found that 12-year-olds at a music school had higher general empathy scores (and higher self-esteem) than those from a regular school.
These findings also have a bearing on the long-running debate over whether music has any adaptive function for humans. Was musical ability actively selected for, or is it just a pleasurable by-product of human brain evolution—‘auditory cheesecake’ as Pinker has suggested. Most evolutionary biologists agree that complex social interaction has been under selection in humans. If music increases empathy and prosocial behaviour at the most basic level—even in young children without the complex trappings of adult culture and ritual—then maybe music has been under positive selection too.
In today’s modern world, we exert our own powers of selection via culture: for better and for worse. If we want our children to grow up with more ‘empathic concern’, to be less disruptive and more cooperative, then maybe music should be as essential throughout the school curriculum as math and English.
