Music Listening as Coping Behavior: From Reactive Response to Sense-Making

Abstract

Coping is a survival mechanism of living organisms. It is not merely reactive, but also involves making sense of the environment by rendering sensory information into percepts that have meaning in the context of an organism’s cognitions. Music listening, on the other hand, is a complex task that embraces sensory, physiological, behavioral, and cognitive levels of processing. Being both a dispositional process that relies on our evolutionary toolkit for coping with the world and a more elaborated skill for sense-making, it goes beyond primitive action–reaction couplings by the introduction of higher-order intermediary variables between sensory input and effector reactions. Consideration of music-listening from the perspective of coping treats music as a sound environment and listening as a process that involves exploration of this environment as well as interactions with the sounds. Several issues are considered in this regard such as the conception of music as a possible stressor, the role of adaptive listening, the relation between coping and reward, the importance of self-regulation strategies in the selection of music, and the instrumental meaning of music in the sense that it can be used to modify the internal and external environment of the listener.

Neural Correlates of Music Listening: Does the Music Matter?

“…Listeners, in their search for rewarding stimuli, may behave as biological beings who have recourse to their neural apparatus for coping with sounds. This involves the neural mechanisms for evaluation of the environment in terms of threats and dangers, but also for the search of possible benefits for survival [ 10 , 71 ]. The latter include, among others, the generation of affective reactions—both positive and negative—, which may be considered to have adaptive functions.…”

“…Much is to be expected here from a naturalistic approach to musical sense-making and a conception of listening in terms of “coping” with the sounds [ 10 , 112 ] with the aim to explore how an ordinary sensory experience can be transformed into an aesthetic experience. Two components of core affect seem to be involved in this transition, namely arousal and valence , both of which are triggered by the visceral and peripheral sensory systems.…”

“…As a vibrational phenomenon, it may put stress on the body and the brain, it can have a role in maintaining, restoring, or even disrupting the homeostatic balance, and can, in the worst case, even become a source of allostatic load. It makes sense, therefore, to conceive of music listening in terms of “coping behavior” (see above) with a major distinction between adaptive and maladaptive ways of listening [ 10 , 126 ].…”

“…Applied to music, this means that it makes sense to attune ourselves to sound environments and sonic landscapes, including music, that provides stimulation in the optimal arousal zone [ 10 , 138 , 139 ], allowing us to cultivate positive adaptive reactions to beneficial stressors as well as to avoid possible distress triggered by harmful stimuli. It brings us to Selye’s concept of eustress , which he contrasted with distress , as the syndrome that is triggered by unspecific harmful stimuli or activities [ 127 , 128 , 140 ].…”

“…It may be described also as an aesthetic experience, which, when referring specifically to music listening, is defined by Brattico & Pearce as "[an experience] in which the individual immerses herself in the music, dedicating her attention to perceptual, cognitive, and affective interpretation based on the formal properties of the perceptual experience" [8] (p. 49). Following this view, listening can be conceived as a sequence of "states" induced by active engagement with the music and by processes which can be labeled as "coping" with the sounds [9,10]. Such definition of a musical aesthetic experience is strongly founded on empirical research but it is also in line with previous philosophical/phenomenological accounts aiming to describe the nature of the human relation to art in general as a subjective experience.…”