Associations Between Empathy and Collective Music-Making for Adolescent Musicians

Research shows a positive relationship between collective music-making and empathy development in general music classrooms, but associations between empathy and specific forms of collective instrumental music-making have been underexplored. The purpose of this study was (1) to examine the relationship between different forms of collective music-making and empathy development and (2) to investigate the relationship of co-performer empathy and performance achievement for adolescent instrumental music students. An experimental pre- and post-test design was applied to examine these relationships. High school instrumental music students ( N  = 185) were randomly assigned to one of three music-making conditions: improvising dyad (ID; n  = 64), notated duet (ND; n  = 62), and large performance ensemble ( n  = 59). Participants completed musical interventions related to their respective condition assignments for 20 min a week for a period of 8 weeks. Regression analysis was used to compare the pre- and post-test empathy scores of participants in the three music-making conditions. Co-performers in the ID and ND duet conditions were categorised as High–High, High–Low, and Low–Low empathy pairs using gender-weighted medians from pre-test empathy scores and compared pre- and post-test performance achievement for the different pair combinations in the different conditions with a repeated-measures analysis of variance. Findings showed that there were no statistically significant differences in empathy development within or between music-making groups. However, High–High empathy co-performers did demonstrate significantly higher levels of performance achievement when compared with Low–Low empathy pairs.