Scientists prove that music makes people feel less alone

By Stephen Beech

Music really is good company - because it triggers thoughts of connection, warmth and companionship, according to new research.

The study has proved for the first time empirically that music reduces feelings of loneliness by enabling imagined social interactions.

The findings showed that music increases the strength of imagination and facilitates mental imagery of "elaborate" narratives - whether celebrating or grieving.

Researchers say their findings provide an evidence-based basis for the use of music to support clinical settings that use mental imagery techniques, as well as creative uses for musicians.

Study leader Dr Steffen Herff, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Sydney, Australia, said: “Music appears to act as a catalyst for social imagination.

“Even without words or voices, it can trigger thoughts of connection, warmth and companionship.

“Whether we’re celebrating or grieving, music is something we can turn to.

“This study shows that beyond shaping our emotions, music can also shape our thoughts and imagination, highlighting that music can indeed be good company.”

Dr. Herff said the findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports, offer new insight into how music can shape "higher order" cognitive processes such as imagination.

The team hopes that the finding may help develop low-cost, easily accessible ways of systematically using music to alleviate feelings of loneliness - especially in times of isolation such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and complement existing recreational, artistic and professional usages of imagination.

Dr. Herff said: “We observed compelling support that music can systematically strengthen and shape mental imagery and induce social themes into imagination.

"That is a very powerful thing.

“It has great implications for our understanding of music, understanding of imagination, but also carries practical implications for cognitive behavioural therapies that use mental imagery techniques.”

For example, he says music could be used to enhance clinical therapeutic practices that rely on mental imagery, such as exposure therapy for specific phobias or guided visualisation, such as those used in therapy for PTSD.

Dr. Herff and his research team set out to examine if there is an empirically observable effect of music on social thought.

Over four years, they conducted a study involving 600 participants around the world to understand how music can shape imagination.

The participants were asked to close their eyes and imagine journeys towards landmarks, such as a mountain.

They did this either in silence or while listening to music.

After each imagined journey, they provided responses and detailed accounts of what they imagined.

The research team used computational models to identify common themes in the descriptions and found that music consistently inspired thoughts of social connection such as spending time with others.

The effect appeared across different songs and even when lyrics or vocals were removed, which the researchers said showed that the feeling of companionship came from the music itself, not just the words.

The research team also used Generative AI to create visual representations of what people imagined.

The findings showed that compared to silence, when participants listened to music, their imaginations "sparked" and they described vivid imaginary social scenes, such as dancing and laughing with other people.

The study deliberately used folk music - from Italy, Spain and Sweden - due to its history of social interaction and its perceived ability to induce social thoughts.

Participants listened with and without the lyrics and found the voice was not a prerequisite – the music alone increased social imagination.

The researchers emphasize the need to explore other musical genres and cultural contexts – in particular non-Western genres – to deepen understanding of mental imagery and open more, diverse and better-tailored ways of supporting recreational and clinical use of mental imagery techniques.

The publicly available dataset collected by the team now includes more than 4,000 imagined journeys, complete with sentiment ratings, topic weights, and visual representations.

In a second experiment, a different set of participants was able to look at the AI-generated images and identify which ones were inspired by music or not – but only when they did the task listening to music themselves.

Dr. Herff added, “This tells us that there is a ‘theory of mind’ when it comes to music-evoked mental imagery.

“That is, people can imagine what others might be imagining whilst listening to music, which is fascinating.”