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Listening to music is often perceived as a leisure activity or a background accompaniment to daily life, yet the human mind is rarely still during the experience. A new study reveals that the specific genre of a musical piece, combined with the listener’s familiarity and enjoyment of it, actively steers the brain toward distinct types of thoughts.
These mental excursions range from vivid autobiographical memories and made-up stories to critical evaluations of the composition itself. The findings, which offer a detailed map of the “thoughtscapes” evoked by different musical styles, were published in the journal Psychology of Music.
Psychologists and musicologists have established that music acts as a potent trigger for the imagination. It is well documented that a simple melody can spontaneously conjure visual imagery or retrieve deep-seated memories from a listener’s past.
However, prior investigations into these phenomena have typically been quite narrow in scope. Previous studies often isolated specific types of thoughts, such as concentrating solely on memory or solely on visual daydreams, without looking at how they interact.
Furthermore, earlier research frequently relied on a very limited selection of musical styles, often testing only two or three genres at a time. This restricted approach made it difficult to understand why a classical symphony might elicit a fictional narrative while a pop song triggers a specific memory of a person or place.
To address these gaps, a research team led by Hazel A. van der Walle from Durham University undertook a comprehensive examination of the listening mind. The team included Wei Wu and Kelly Jakubowski, also from Durham University, and Elizabeth H. Margulis from Princeton University. Their primary objective was to investigate the impact of genre, familiarity, enjoyment, and musical features on the stream of consciousness. They sought to determine how different musical contexts shape the mental landscape of the listener.
The researchers designed a large-scale experiment involving 701 participants recruited from the United Kingdom and the United States. To ensure the study reflected the diversity of real-world listening habits, the team curated a library of 356 musical excerpts. These clips spanned 17 distinct genres, representing a broad spectrum of Western music.
The selection included styles such as Ambient, Country, Heavy Metal, Video Game music, Jazz, Folk, and Hip-hop, alongside decades-specific categories like Sixties and Eighties pop. Each excerpt was 30 seconds long and instrumental, preventing any lyrical content from directly dictating the listener’s thoughts.
Participants listened to a random selection of these clips and were asked to report what occupied their minds during each track. The study provided several categories for these thoughts. Some options focused on the music itself, while others covered “music-evoked” thoughts. These included memories of past media consumption, such as films or video games, and fictional imaginings, where the listener invented a story or scene.
Other categories captured autobiographical memories from the listener’s own life or abstract visualizations of shapes and colors. The researchers also tracked “mind-wandering,” defined as thoughts about everyday matters or future plans that were unrelated to the music.
In addition to categorizing their thoughts, participants rated each musical excerpt on several scales. They indicated how familiar they were with the piece and how much they enjoyed it. They also assessed the music’s emotional qualities, specifically its valence, which refers to how positive or negative it sounds, and its arousal, or energy level. Finally, listeners rated the degree of contrast within the clip, noting whether the music changed dynamically over the 30-second duration.
The results demonstrated that the genre of music exerts a powerful influence on the listener’s internal experience. Film music, in particular, stood out for its ability to transport listeners away from the technical aspects of the composition. This genre frequently triggered memories of other media, such as scenes from movies or television programs.
Even when the specific track was unidentified, the stylistic conventions of the genre seemed to prompt listeners to construct their own fictional narratives. The researchers suggest that Film music is compositionally designed to support storytelling, which naturally leads the mind toward narrative imagining.
The study also identified a unique effect regarding Video Game music. This genre was notably effective at reducing thoughts about “everyday stuff,” such as chores or daily anxieties. The immersive nature of music composed for gaming appears to engage the listener in a way that blocks out mundane distractions. This finding highlights the potential utility of specific genres in managing attention and regulating mood.
Familiarity with the music proved to be a major driver of where the mind wandered. When listeners recognized a track, they were more likely to experience autobiographical memories. This aligns with the idea that familiar songs often serve as “soundtracks” to specific periods in a person’s life. Familiarity also increased the likelihood of having thoughts focused on the music itself, perhaps because the listener could anticipate what was coming next. Conversely, unfamiliar music was generally less likely to trigger specific media memories.
However, an exception to this familiarity rule emerged within the Film music genre. While unfamiliarity usually decreased media memories, participants reported more media-related associations when they recognized a piece of Film music. This suggests that when listeners know a film score, they actively retrieve the cinematic context they have previously experienced.
The degree of enjoyment a listener felt played a central role in fostering creativity. The data showed that when participants enjoyed the music, they were more likely to engage in fictional imaginings. High enjoyment ratings also correlated with an increase in autobiographical memories.
This supports the psychological theory that positive emotional states encourage an open, exploratory mindset. When listeners liked what they heard, they were less likely to tune out and think about their daily to-do lists.
Structural features of the music, such as contrast and energy, also shaped the thought process. Songs that were rated as having high contrast, characterized by changes in dynamics or rhythm, tended to hold the listener’s attention more effectively. This reduced the frequency of mind-wandering about everyday matters. It appears that a dynamic musical landscape gives the brain enough stimulation to stay focused on the auditory experience.
Unexpectedly, music rated as having high arousal, or high energy, was associated with an increase in thoughts about everyday stuff. One might assume that energetic music would command attention, but the findings suggest otherwise. It is possible that the stimulation provided by high-energy tracks triggers an active cognitive state that spills over into practical concerns. This distinction indicates that musical energy and musical contrast influence the brain in fundamentally different ways.
The researchers also examined how different types of thoughts tended to cluster together. There was a moderate connection between media memories and fictional imaginings. This implies that recalling a movie scene might inspire the listener to spin off a new, invented narrative.
Conversely, when listeners were focused on analyzing the technical features of the music, they were less likely to engage in fictional storytelling. This suggests a potential trade-off between analytical listening and creative immersion.
The authors acknowledge certain limitations in the study. Because the experiment was conducted online, the researchers could not control the audio quality of the participants’ listening devices. Additionally, the study relied on self-reported data, which depends on the participants’ ability to accurately introspect and categorize their fleeting mental states. The focus remained exclusively on Western music genres, leaving open the question of how non-Western musical traditions might influence thought patterns.
Despite these caveats, the study offers a rich and nuanced view of the listening mind. It moves beyond simple emotion-labeling to describe the complex “thoughtscapes” that music generates. The findings have practical implications for various fields. In therapeutic settings, practitioners could select specific genres to encourage memory retrieval or creative visualization.
For the average listener, understanding these effects allows for more intentional curation of one’s daily soundtrack. Whether the goal is to spark creativity, revisit the past, or simply focus on the present, the choice of genre appears to be a key variable. The research highlights that music is not merely a passive backdrop but an active participant in shaping the flow of human consciousness.
The study, “Thoughtscapes in music: An examination of thought types occurring during music listening across 17 genres,” was authored by Hazel A. van der Walle, Wei Wu, Elizabeth H. Margulis, and Kelly Jakubowski.
