From music making to affective well-being in everyday life: The mediating role of need satisfaction.

Abstract

How music can provide a pathway to affective well-being has mostly been investigated with regard to listening to music or music therapy. Comparatively less is known about the effects of active music making on well-being in everyday life or its underlying mechanisms. Self-Determination Theory emphasizes the importance of fulfillment of the needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness for well-being and offers a valuable framework for explaining the postulated link between music making and well-being. In the present daily-diary study, 1,042 hobby musicians (age range 13 to 82 years; 65.3 % female) completed online assessments of their music making, need fulfillment, and positive and negative affect each day for ten consecutive days. Results showed that need satisfaction and positive affect were higher, while need dissatisfaction and negative affect were lower on days when participants reported music making. Multilevel structural equation models indicated that the effect of music making on positive affect was mediated by satisfaction of all three needs, with statistically significant indirect effects via autonomy and competence at both the within-and between person level, and relatedness only at the between-person level. There were no statistically significant mediation effects for negative affect. This study is the first to provide evidence for higher affective well-being of hobby musicians on days of music making.Results further suggest satisfaction of basic psychological needs as a mediating mechanism and emphasize the importance to distinguish between indicators of positive functioning (positive affect, need satisfaction) and negative functioning (negative affect, need dissatisfaction).

A Little Autonomy Support Goes a Long Way: Daily Autonomy‐Supportive Parenting, Child Well‐Being, Parental Need Fulfillment, and Change in Child, Family, and Parent Adjustment Across the Adaptation to the COVID‐19 Pandemic

“…This scale can be used to measure daily need fulfillment as a six-dimensional construct, with fulfillment of the three needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness split into their satisfaction and their frustration components. Prior work using this scale has reported the associations of need satisfaction and need frustration with indicators of well-being and ill-being (Koehler & Neubauer, 2020;Neubauer & Voss, 2018). Internal consistencies were satisfactory on both levels of analyses for all six subscales, autonomy satisfaction (x Between = .89/x Within = .73), competence satisfaction (.94/.76), relatedness satisfaction (.97/.78), autonomy frustration (.90/.72), competence frustration (.91/.62), and relatedness frustration (.91/.71).…”

A Little Autonomy Support Goes a Long Way: Daily Autonomy-Supportive Parenting, Child Well-Being, Parental Need Fulfillment, and Change in Child, Family, and Parent Adjustment Across the Adaptation to the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…This scale can be used to measure daily need fulfillment as a six-dimensional construct, with fulfillment of the three needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness split into their satisfaction and their frustration components. Prior work using this scale has reported associations of need satisfaction and need frustration with indicators of well-being and ill-being (Koehler & Neubauer, 2019;Neubauer & Voss, 2018). Internal consistencies were satisfactory on both levels of analyses for all six subscales, autonomy satisfaction (ωBetween = .89 / ωWithin = .73), competence satisfaction (.94 / .76), relatedness satisfaction (.97 / .78), autonomy frustration (.90 / .72), competence frustration (.91 / .62), and relatedness frustration (.91 / .71).…”

Flourishing in Resonance: Joint Resilience Building Through Music and Motion

“…Although passive engagement with music likely triggers the same neural pathways involved in active musical interaction through the activation of motor regions of the brain during music listening (Levitin and Menon, 2003), active music making may contribute even more to progress on the pathway to eudaimonia through nurturing resilience. Despite a growing number of studies, in comparison to music listening and music therapy, less is known about the effects of active music making on well-being in everyday life or its underlying mechanisms (Koehler and Neubauer, 2020). However, it might be argued that active music making not only may reinforce or intensify aspects of music listening (e.g., prediction, anticipation, engagement, bonding, and positive emotion) but also may contribute to a sense of achievement or accomplishment.…”