Alan Wells

The Emotional Use of Popular Music by Adolescents

This study follows up on some recent calls for study of music as a mass medium. An intensive study of high school teenagers finds that music serves as a powerful communication medium, speaking directly to emotions. Here, both men and women most often associated these emotions with music: excitement, happiness and love. Women were somewhat more likely to associate emotions with music and to use music for “mood management.” Social class, race and ethnicity generally did not discriminate among emotions felt by men and women. Cluster analysis allowed these youths to be sorted into different types of listeners: “mainstreamers” “heavy rockers,” “indifferents” and “music lovers.”