“It is the Soundtrack for my Life” – Cinematic Construction of Self- Identity Through Music Listening

Abstract

Transitional changes in youth are directing young people to ponder about themselves and who they want to become. Previous research has largely focused on identity construction as a psychosocial process, overlooking the way these processes are situated in our everyday life. This study explores identity construction processes in young people's everyday lives through music listening within the framework of musical affordances. We conducted interviews with 15–25-year-old Finnish participants (N = 64) utilizing photo-elicitation methods to discuss their self-collected digi-ethnographical material related to their everyday music uses, which consisted of photos, videos, and/or audio-recordings of a one-week time period. The interview material was analyzed using Braun and Clarke's reflexive approach to thematic analysis. In our analysis, four psychological mechanisms for self-construction processes were identified: a) self-exploration, b) self-enhancement, c) self-efficacy and agency, and d) self-regulation. These four mechanisms were further defined by processes relating to 1) self-awareness, and 2) self-enactment. We suggest that music listening provided affordances for cinematic musical episodes, such as situating self within current time and space, creating fictional narratives of self and own life, and seeing self as a main character of one's own life from a third-person perspective. Based on our results, music provides affordances for self-constructive processes by increasing listeners’ self-awareness and abilities exercising self-enactment through these cinematic musical episodes. These episodes illustrate the rich and multidimensional affordances that can be picked up for construction of self-identity. Our study empirically identifies how identity construction processes are situated within personal, environmental, and temporal dimensions of everyday life. We encourage future research to investigate identity construction processes from the perspective of 4E cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive) to deepen our understanding of how music listening can support young people's psychological development and well-being by providing a set of affordances in their everyday lives.

Introduction

Identity construction is a psychosocial process individuals engage with throughout their lives (Erikson, 1968; McAdams & Zapata-Gietl, 2015). Various transitional changes in youth, such as biological, cognitive, and social changes, prompt young people to think about themselves and their lives (Erikson, 1968). This makes youth a particularly fruitful timeframe to study identity construction. In the field of music psychology, identity research has gained a lot of attention in recent years. The phenomenon has been studied from multiple viewpoints, focusing on, for example, definitional clarifications (e.g., MacDonald & Saarikallio, 2022), developmental perspectives (e.g., Evans & McPherson, 2017), or individual differences (e.g., Spychiger, 2017). Even though there have been comprehensive theoretical contributions of identity construction processes, the research has treated identity construction as an intrapsychological phenomenon, overlooking the contextual nature of identities (e.g., McLean & Syed, 2015). Yet, identities are constructed in everyday life situations, which are socio-culturally and psychologically complex situations (MacDonald & Saarikallio, 2022). This poses challenges in capturing the nature of how identities are constructed in the context of everyday life. Thus, more empirical and ethnographical research incorporating the voice of the youth and their own experiences is needed to better understand the situated nature of identities.

Our aim in this article is to explore the construction of self-identity through music listening in young people's everyday lives. Music listening plays an important role in identity construction (e.g., Hargreaves et al., 2002; Saarikallio, 2019b). It directs listeners’ thoughts to self-related statements (e.g., Schäfer et al., 2013) and offers a platform for constructing and re-constructing self-conceptions (e.g., DeNora, 2000; Saarikallio, 2019b). Music listening has a crucial role for emotional self-regulation, for achieving self-related insights, and for giving acceptance to personal experiences (Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007), as well as facilitating listeners’ agency by helping them to acquire ownership of their actions (Saarikallio, 2019b). Since engaging with musical activities is a behavior that is embedded in contextual settings, cultural environments, and technological platforms (MacDonald & Saarikallio, 2022), it offers a particularly useful lens through which to research the situated nature of identities.

Theoretical approaches related to 4E cognition offer a particularly interesting framework to address the situated nature of identities (MacDonald & Saarikallio, 2022). The concept of 4E cognition combines the early approaches of embodied and situated cognitive processes, such as the embodied mind (Varela et al., 1991) and the extended mind (Clark & Chalmers, 1998), into one approach. This sees all cognitive processes – such as language processing, memory, and perception, for example – as embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive (Newen et al., 2018). Thus, the 4E perspective lays a philosophical framework for future research to address the complex phenomena of cognitive processes from more dynamic point of view. In our study, we examine the construction of self-identity within the framework of musical affordances (Krueger, 2014). This framework addresses 4E cognition from the viewpoint of musical engagement and sees music as a scaffolding for emotional, cognitive, and self-related processes.

Affordances and Musical Affordances

Music provides many psychological and emotional resources because of its material, social, and cultural qualities. People's sensorimotor processes that constitute their embodied experiences take place in an interactive relationship with the surrounding material and socio-cultural environment, and the opportunities it provides. These opportunities, or affordances, are surfaces, substances, objects, and other entities in the environment that offer functional significance for an individual (Gibson, 1979). This functional role of affordances has typically been related to motor possibilities, such as sitting, standing, or walking (Gibson, 1979; Rietveld & Kiverstein, 2014). Yet, affordances can provide more than mere motor possibilities, as they can be seen to include values, attitudes, and other meanings that are embedded in our historical and sociocultural practices (Rietveld & Kiverstein, 2014; Reybrouck, 2017). Furthermore, affordances are seen to be dependent on individuals’ abilities and the exercise of these abilities. The way individuals are able to engage with affordances can vary from adequate to inadequate, where the concrete situation determines whether an individual’s activity is adequate or not (Rietveld, 2008; Rietveld & Kiverstein, 2014). This ability becomes a skill when the individual can engage with the affordance adequately, responding appropriately to various situations (Rietveld & Kiverstein, 2014).

Krueger (2011) proposes that the reason music is such an effective tool for self-regulative purposes is because music facilitates sonic worlds that further can afford different possibilities for individuals, related to emotion regulation and social coordination. Individuals are active agents, who are able to construct and create self through actively participating in different forms of musical engagement, such as music listening (Krueger, 2011). Also, Reybrouck (2017) proposes that in addition to concrete musical objects (such as instruments or technologies), musical affordances can include the affects and emotional reactions evoked by musical sounds, as well as socially shared meanings, values, and attitudes associated with these sounds and bodily experiences. Furthermore, the model of musically extended mind (Krueger, 2014) describes the active role of music listening in everyday life contexts and proposes that music listening can afford experiences for developing abilities that would not exist without music. This approach acknowledges the dynamic, embodied, and situational role of active musicking, where everyday music listening is seen to be not just an aesthetic object but as an external resource for various motor, regulative, and attentional capacities that are related to our emotional experience (Krueger, 2014). In this study, our theoretical framework relies on these notions, since we see music listening as an engagement that can offer various affordances for different individuals, depending on their acquired abilities and skills, and the exercise of these abilities.

Identity, Music, and Self-Regulation

Identity is a sense of self that can be defined by “(a) a set of physical, psychological, and interpersonal characteristics that is not wholly shared with any other person and (b) a range of affiliations (e.g., ethnicity) and social roles” (American Psychological Association, n.d.). Additionally, identity, also referred to as personal identity or self-identity, is often seen to involve the dimensions of sameness and continuity that are constantly evolving (e.g., Bosma & Gerlsma, 2005) and the need for being identifiable for others and for self (e.g., Lichtwarck-Aschoff et al., 2008). Literature on self-identity focuses on how individuals can form their identity by making important decisions in different life domains, providing a feeling of purpose and direction and preventing identity confusion (Erikson, 1968; see also Albarello et al., 2018).

In the field of music psychology, a concept of musical identities has been developed by MacDonald and colleagues (2002) to address identities in a musical context. A differentiation between “Identities in Music” and “Music in Identities” has been made, where the former refers to process of developing musical roles that an individual may have and the latter to the role that music has in constructing other parts of identity (McDonald et al., 2002). More recently, individuals are seen to have multiple musical identities, which are seen as active, dynamic, embodied, situational, and evolving entities that are constructed and performed in complex everyday experiences (e.g., Hargreaves et al., 2017; MacDonald & Saarikallio, 2022). These musical identities take different forms while people are moving through different situations, social settings, environments, and affordances of the environment (DeNora, 2017).

Self-regulation is a crucial part of identity construction. Identity is seen to function as a “self-regulatory system, which functions to direct attention, filter or process information, manage impressions, and select appropriate behaviours” (Adams & Marshall, 1996, p. 433). Identity processes related to commitment and in-depth exploration can provide individuals opportunities to understand themselves. By understanding self-related information individuals can gain a sense of direction and create continuity between their past, present, and future, resulting in an increased sense of agency or self-control and enabling self-regulation in achieving their goals in various domains (e.g., Crocetti et al., 2022). Furthermore, the ability for effective self-regulation has shown to be positively correlated with individuals’ mental health and well-being (e.g., Berzonsky & Kinney, 2019), highlighting the important connection between identity construction and well-being.

The importance of self-regulation is evident for musical identities. According to DeNora (2000, p. 62), music is used as a resource to help listeners self-regulate their emotions, cognitions, and actions. However, for a person to engage with the self-regulatory functions provided by music, they first need to be aware of the regulatory needs that are emerging in their day-to-day situations. This type of self-reflexive action can be seen to be related to construction of self-identity (DeNora, 2000, p. 62). Furthermore, music has been defined as a personal space where individuals can organize their identity by exercising their self-awareness through emotional and bodily self-regulation (Ruud, 1997). Schäfer and colleagues (2013) identified self-awareness as one of the main psychological functions for music listening, where music helped listeners understand personal emotions, indicating emotions to have an important role in processes related to self-awareness, such as identity construction. In relation to emotions, Saarikallio (2017) proposes that emotions are a key constituent for one's musical identity, where music itself is a useful resource for promoting emotion recognition, emotional self-regulation, and positive emotion induction. Engaging with music self-reflectively as well as gaining agency and self-control regarding emotional responses to music are seen as beneficial attitudes that foster emotional health, and thus, healthy identities (Saarikallio, 2017). These notions further highlight the crucial connection between self-awareness, self-regulation, emotions, and identity construction in musical contexts.

Aims and Research Methodology

The aim of this study is to empirically explore and identify relevant features of the situated nature of identity construction processes through everyday music listening. Our research question is: How does everyday music listening afford self-construction in young people's daily life situations?

Participants

Finnish young people (15–25-year-olds ¹ ; M = 19.66; SD = 3.45) were recruited to participate through channels in social media, contacts established with youth centers and schools, and posters placed on notice boards in various large cities in Finland. The final sample consisted of 64 participants, with a mix of female (65.6%), male (26.6%) and non-binary/do not want to say (7.8%). Approximately half of the participants currently had or had at some point in their childhood or adolescence music-related hobbies but were non-professionals (57.8%). Participants were given a 50-euro gift card for a Finnish retail market for their contribution.

Research Design: Interviews and Digital Ethnography

Data were collected using semi-structured interviews utilizing photo elicitation methods (Harper, 2002), as well as digi-ethnographic data collection (Pink et al., 2016), which participants collected using their own mobile phones. Each participant was interviewed twice. During the first interview, participants were provided with a research notification, privacy notice, and consent form, and they were instructed on how to collect and download the digi-ethnographical data with their mobile phone. Participants were given the opportunity to ask questions or clear any doubts before signing the consent form. The first interview focused on the participants’ musical history and everyday experiences with music on a general level. The second interview was conducted after the one-week period of participants recording their uses and experiences of music in their daily lives. Videos, photos, and audio-recordings provided by the participants were used as elicitors of their own experiences of their daily musical use. During the second interview, the participant was given the opportunity to elaborate on their self-collected digi-ethnographical material, how music was present in that situation, and the meaning of music for them. The data collection and analysis were conducted in Finnish and translated into English only at the final stage of the writing process. In this article, the focus of the analysis will be on the second interviews, since they represent the participants’ own experiences of their everyday music listening.

Data Analysis: Reflexive Thematic Analysis

The interview material was thematically analyzed using Braun and Clarke's (2006, 2022) reflexive approach to thematic analysis (TA). Reflexive TA was selected for analysis since it offered the possibility to analyze our large dataset from an inductive and experiential viewpoint where the purpose was not to fit the data into any pre-existing theory but rather to approach the data in a bottom-up manner while giving value to young people's subjective experiences. The ontological framework of the analysis leans on contextualism, where participants’ experiences are understood to lie within larger social contexts (Terry et al., 2017). The analysis followed Braun and Clarke's (2006, 2022) six steps of reflexive TA.

Familiarization started with transcribing all interviews manually. After this, all interviews were carefully read while simultaneously writing initial analytical observations. Next, the first author coded all data inductively, followed by initial theme generation. These themes addressed relations between music listening and building connections to self, young people's social relationships, the listening environment, and changes in youth music listening culture. Since the data were rich, the focus of the present study was then narrowed to themes addressing self and identity. Since participants made clear differentiations between listening to music alone, in pairs, or in group settings, and that listening to music alone seemed to be a situation when they would most likely attend to music and use it for self-construction purposes, this study was further narrowed down to situations where participants were listening to music alone. Out of 784 pictures, videos, and audio-recordings, 408 of them (52%) described a situation of listening to music alone. The first author conducted the initial coding and analysis. She oversaw careful theme review and development to ensure that the themes accurately represented the whole data set. During the whole analysis process, all authors had regular meetings to negotiate the final theme development together.

Results

Based on our analysis, we identified one overarching theme and four main themes. The overarching theme of cinematic musical episodes provided us opportunities to highlight how self-construction processes with music were perceived to be multimodal experiences in all four themes. The participants described how music was often chosen “depending on the situation and the mood” (F23), and one participant described how choosing music felt like a “cycle, because if I’m feeling a certain way, music reflects that, but then the environment can influence my mood, and that way it can also influence on what I want to listen to” (F22). Often young people themselves described music listening experiences as being cinematic in nature, where they would picture themselves “in a movie scene” (F24) where “this scene has a certain feeling, and music works as a soundtrack to boost that feeling; […] it's part of the whole situation; it's connected to how I’m feeling physically, how I’m feeling mentally, and it's like a piece of a puzzle to my psychophysiological entity” (M24). One of the participants described how she always carefully chose music to match the outer environment when she was taking a walk outside, changing the music as the environment around her shifted:

My walks are my movies. Actually, with music my whole life is a movie. I create that world. I connect what I see – that visual aspect – to what I hear. The best moments are if there's also rain or wind or some tactile sense. Then there is that whole combination. (Female, 24)

Thus, this overarching theme encapsulates how self-construction processes entailed aspects of the listener’s emotions, embodied states, and environment. It emphasizes how music listening was a lived, experiential process that was situated within participants’ personal, temporal, and environmental aspects of their everyday lives. Because of the multimodal, vivid qualities of participants’ accounts and the fact that the participants themselves often referred to their music listening experiences as cinematic in nature, we named the overarching theme as cinematic musical episodes. This type of music listening, emphasizing visual imagery and imagination, has previously been conceptualized as “cinematic music listening,” where listeners use music for situating self within the current time and space and seeing self as a spectator of their own lives (Bull, 2000). However, in our participants’ responses these cinematic experiences were not only about listening to music but contained emotional, embodied, and contextual aspects of the experience as well. To highlight this situated nature of music listening experiences that was present in all four themes, we refer to them as cinematic musical episodes.

Under the overarching theme, we identified four distinct yet complementary main themes: (a) Self-exploration captures how music listening afforded exploration of emotions, identity, values, memories, and future; b) Self-enhancement reports how music helped young people to see self and own life in a better light by affording the improvement of self-esteem, self-acceptance, and life-acceptance; (c) Self-efficacy and agency captures how music facilitated sense of agency by affording self-directedness, self-capability, and self-initiative; and (d) Self-regulation reports how music listening afforded emotion regulation, mood and arousal regulation, and regulation of both bodily and cognitive functions.

Furthermore, we recognized that themes a and b emphasized how music listening afforded participants platforms where they could safely explore self-related information as well as construct and re-construct their self-conceptions. Processes related to self-exploration and self-enhancement were often described as being linked to self-awareness, as music listening allowed individuals to direct their attention toward self-related aspects, widening their understanding of themselves. Accordingly, we conceptualized these themes as contributing to the increase of self-awareness. Themes c and d emphasized how young people used music listening to regulate their states of agency as well as their affective, embodied, and cognitive functions. These themes reflected the process of enactment, as music often afforded listeners the means to regulate their daily actions, emotions, and states of agency. Therefore, we conceptualized these themes as contributing to the exercise of listeners’ self-enactment.

Figure 1 illustrates the themes that emerged from the participant interviews, highlighting different aspects of self-identity construction processes through cinematic musical episodes. The overarching theme, cinematic musical episodes, reflects how self-construction processes with music were perceived to be multimodal experiences in all four themes. The main themes, located in the middle of the figure, reflect different self-construction processes afforded by music listening. Themes located in the bottom of the figure illustrate our conceptual interpretation of the main themes and how they contribute to self-construction through increasing self-awareness or exercising self-enactment. The lines between different themes indicate the conceptual associations between the elements presented in the figure.

Figure 1.

Self-identity construction processes through cinematic musical episodes.

Self-Exploration

Music listening was used to explore emotions, identity, values, memories, and future. For many of our participants music afforded emotion exploration, which consisted of emotional granularity, exploring difficult emotions, and deep emotional experiences. Consider our next participant's example, where he described how music afforded him recognition and verbalization of emotions:

If I have been struggling with an emotion and I haven’t been able to put it into words, for example when I’ve had a crush on someone, then I have been able to find the right words from music, and I’ve realized that this is actually how I feel. (Male, 24)

This illustrates how music listening increased the listener's emotional self-awareness: By stating that with music the participant had “realized” how he was feeling in the moment, he reveals how music afforded understanding over his emotions, increasing his emotional self-awareness. Additionally, various everyday situations in youth, like in our participant's experience – having feelings for someone – can create a heightened need for emotional self-exploration. Thus, everyday life experiences can stimulate young people to engage with self-exploration processes, highlighting the situatedness of identity work in everyday life.

Music also afforded opportunities for young people to explore and express different domains of their identity, such as personal traits, gender identity, and national identity. For many of our participants, creating personal playlists was a way for them to actively construct their self-identity. A participant who had over 80 personal playlists elaborated the meaning of personalized playlists for identity exploration:

I’ve noticed that when it comes to identity and how I would describe myself, this [playlist] is for that. It's supposed to have everything funny and odd. […] The name of this playlist means kids who didn’t fit in. They might’ve liked some show or have some different interests than the rest of the kids; I was that other kid. […] The name of this playlist is a way of representing that. […] It makes me feel like “yes, I’m different” […]. When I’m listening to this playlist, I feel like I’m listening to music that represents who I am. (Non-binary, 21)

This example indicates how music listening worked as a reflective surface through which the participant could engage with identity exploration. Importantly, the participant also states how listening to a self-curated playlist made them feel like they were “different.” Their account reveals how music was not only used to reflect self but how these self-conceptions could be reflected back to how they viewed themselves. This is in line with previous literature, which suggests that music works as a “magic mirror” through which individuals can view themselves, and that how they view themselves is also shaping the picture seen in the mirror (DeNora, 2000, p. 70). Furthermore, it demonstrates how self-construction processes are also situated within various technological platforms (see e.g., MacDonald & Saarikallio, 2022).

Moreover, music listening afforded a space for exploring one's values, such as personal values, worldviews, and attitudes. According to our participants’ accounts, their values needed to match with a performer’s or a genre's values. If one's own values and values promoted in certain music were not aligned, participants would not want to support that type of music by engaging with it. One of our participants, who had previously identified as a “fan of K-pop,” did not consider themselves as a fan anymore. When asked why the relationship between them and K-pop had changed, she answered:

I feel like I begun to need more variation. I had listened to other type of music as well, but I still thought that I should really stick to K-pop and only listen to it. […] And at some point, I just didn’t like the fan culture anymore, the fact that it made me feel like I need to buy their posters or albums. That didn’t make me feel so good anymore. (Female, 16)

The commitment that the participant had intentionally created with K-pop started to shift after the participant identified a conflict in her values. After becoming aware of the misalignment in values, the participant started to intentionally non-commit to K-pop by allowing herself to explore other musical genres as well. This illustrates the dynamic and active nature of identity construction processes – not only did the participant use music, in this example K-pop, to identify changes in their values, but they also used music, other than K-pop, to re-construct their identity differently. By choosing the right type of music to construct tenable self-images, listeners are demonstrating their active agency (DeNora, 2000, p. 73).

Listening to music afforded a platform for engaging with memories. These memories were usually about other people, past life experiences, or passed loved ones, and sometimes memories elicited by music could also be unwanted. One of our participants described their nightly walk home, which was a time for him to engage in self-construction processes through engaging with memories:

I had put on some background music to the silence of the night, and I was really taking in the atmosphere of walking alone in the empty streets, but in addition to that, a memory or a place from the past came to my mind […] With music […] I could think back to that moment and it worked as a key to the past […] and I wanted to just ponder it while I was walking home alone. […] At night-time memories come easily to the surface, because during the day there's so much to do […], and at night there's room for deep thoughts or memories to come. (Male, 24)

The account describes self-construction processes that are situated within a listener's environmental and temporal dimensions of everyday life. First, the participant states how he was “taking in the atmosphere of walking alone in the empty streets,” which illustrates how music was used to situate self within the physical environment, shaping their interaction therewith. Second, the participant describes how various demands that required their attention especially in daytime could narrow down their possibilities to thoughtfully engage with self-related information. This suggests how self-construction processes are situated within the temporal dimensions of everyday life.

Finally, music listening afforded the young people a platform to think about their future. As they pondered their dreams and goals for life, music afforded them rich worlds where they could explore their future dreams and goals.

I was thinking about my future, and in these moments, I usually have some EDM-music in the background. It's that kind of music that makes me feel good. […] Whenever I listen to EDM my mind starts to wander, and I start to daydream about everything. (Female, 23)

This captures the intentional use of music in dreaming of the future – the participant was aware what type of music enabled her to create vivid environments that facilitated dreaming and deliberately used that to ponder her own future. It also captures how self-construction processes were situated not only within current life experiences but within future dreams and goals as well.

Self-Enhancement

Music listening enhanced the conceptions young people had of themselves and their lives. This theme consists of three subthemes: self-esteem, self-acceptance, and life-acceptance. Music had the potential to elicit feelings of self-esteem, especially feelings of confidence. Music listening enabled listeners to create fictional narratives of themselves and their lives. As one of our participants described, one's own life could be perceived as a movie scene, where one would actively construct a narrative of self which afforded feelings of confidence:

Sometimes a song can make me feel super confident. When I’m walking outside to the rhythm of music it makes me feel like I’m a king of this world and it gives a confidence boost of some sort. […] If I’m having a good day and with the right music it creates a feeling that it is the soundtrack for my life. […] It gives a good feeling, like here I come. (Male, 23)

This example illustrates how music momentarily afforded self-enhancement by providing feelings of confidence. By stating how music created a feeling of being “the soundtrack for my life,” the participant described a situation where music enabled them to create these cinematic scenes of their everyday situations. By perceiving life as a cinematic scene, he could create a narrative of his life, which was experienced to afford feelings of confidence. Thus, music listening was not affording feelings of confidence only through listening to music, but through enabling creation of narratives and cinematic musical episodes.

In addition, music afforded young people self-acceptance. One of our participants described a process of self-acceptance by revealing their thoughts about something being “wrong” with herself. She further explained that through engaging with a specific musical piece, her thoughts about herself had become more accepting:

Sometimes I might feel like I’m a difficult person or I think about if there is something wrong with me, but when I listen to this song, it makes me feel like I’m not the only person in the world who has these kinds of feelings, and someone else has put my feelings and the way I see myself into words. (Female, 24)

It is important to notice that by saying “I’m not the only person in the world who has these kinds of feelings,” she indicates that the way she saw herself did not necessarily change, but she could better accept herself and her own feelings. Through engaging with a particular musical piece, the participant could feel connected with the music, which afforded self-acceptance.

Finally, music listening afforded listeners life-acceptance by helping to accept past life situations and providing support during difficult life situations. Music listening helped the participants reflect and reminiscence about better times when they were going through something difficult in their lives, which gave them hope about their future, too.

I had some feelings of depression, and music helped me to remember something beautiful. Like hey, I’ve been in this better mindset too; what I’m going through now is not all there is. There is something much better than this, and music helped to remember that when going through difficult times. (Male, 23)

According to DeNora (2000, p. 66), the way music enables individuals to think about their past experiences is part of how self is being re-constructed. By reliving past life experiences individuals can construct a coherent sense of self over time, and this type of retrospective thinking can manifest itself into a resource for attuning self toward future. Thus, music affords listeners a sense of how to move forward directing their thoughts to previous life experiences. (DeNora, 2000, p. 66). This is evident in our participant's response: By stating that “what I’m going through now is not all there is,” the participant describes how revisiting past experiences was attuning them toward the future, affording feelings of hope as well. This highlights how our self-construction processes are not only situated within our current situations but in our past life experiences as well.

Self-Efficacy and Agency

The theme of self-efficacy and agency consists of three sub-themes: self-directedness, self-capability, and self-initiative. The first sub-theme of self-directedness consists of being able to choose the music, noticing how music affects self, and knowing what one needs. Being able to “decide what you’re listening to” was described to be one of the most important aspects of listening to music alone. This indicates that while listening to music alone, participants got to be active agents in choosing the music. Additionally, almost every one of our participants was extremely aware of how music affected them and deliberately used music to achieve various regulatory, cognitive, embodied, and other self-related goals. They also knew well what type of music they wanted or needed to listen in different situations and had carefully curated playlists for different life situations, activities, or emotional states:

P: I also have playlists on YouTube. I have playlists for home, for workouts, for times when I’m driving a car. […] Then I have this playlist that was made for my birthday party.

R: Okay. How have you created these playlists? What songs are on your playlist for home or for workout?

P: In my workout playlists there's much heavier music. And in my home playlists there's everything. There are some children's songs, Disney songs, and all the songs I like to listen to. […] And in my birthday playlist there's more disco songs. A bit of Finnish pop also. And I also have a [playlist] where there's calm melodies and songs that make you just disappear into the music.

R: Okay. When do you listen to that playlist?

P: Usually when it's night-time and it gets dark and I’m just lying in my bed […]. That playlist is just right for those moments. (Male, 24)

The sub-theme of self-directedness highlights how having the agency over their musical choices, listeners could use music to guide their actions into desired directions, thus using music as an effective tool for self-enactment. DeNora (2000, p. 53) calls this activity “self-conscious articulation work,” where listeners are actively evaluating what music might suit their needs best for particular situations. This evaluation of what music to choose is again shaped by how listeners are perceiving the affordances of music – for example, what are the previous experiences listeners have with a particular music, or what are the associations listeners have with certain music or musical material (DeNora, 2000, p. 53). In the previous quote, the participant describes how he had different playlists for different situations. By stating that “this playlist is just right for those moments,” he reveals how he was aware of what type of music was best suited for his current needs. This highlights how music was intentionally used to direct listeners’ behavior and actions, further emphasizing how music afforded them tools for agency.

The next sub-theme, self-capability, consists of feelings of strength and empowerment. This sub-theme emphasizes young people's own abilities and how music listening created a sense that one can achieve anything and go through any situations, providing feelings of “not giving up,” whether it was a situation of dealing with a loss of a loved one or having to get through a workday. Our participants often used music deliberately to achieve feelings of self-capability:

I was listening a song called Try from Pink. […] This song is for me, well, it's one of my favorites, it never gets old. It's on my playlists and I play it on repeat. It's somehow an empowering song for me. It makes me think that today is going to be a good day. (Female, 23)

Her account illustrates the intentionality between listening to music and gaining a sense of empowerment. The participant clearly states how she used that musical piece in situations where she needed to feel more empowered by saying how she “played it on repeat.” This captures the nature of musical affordances being dependent on previous engagement with music (e.g., Rietveld & Kiverstein, 2014). The same type of intentionality was evident in the final subtheme, self-initiative, which illustrates how music listening was used to accomplish daily tasks and responsibilities both at home and in urban environments. When listening to music at home, many of our participants described how music helped them to initiate tasks, such as cooking or cleaning, that would otherwise feel dull. Additionally, our participants used music to help them to initiate action in urban environments. One participant described how picturing herself as a main character of her own life helped her to see herself from a third-person perspective, which further afforded motivation to get going:

Timings are important. When I open my front door, I need to have a banger song playing at that moment, so I can see myself as the main character of my life and start my walk toward my workplace. And somehow it helps to get through the workday too. (Female, 24)

Since agency refers to the ability to experience self as an actor of their own life (Jeannerod, 2003), we suggest that cinematic musical episodes afforded listeners concrete ways to see themselves as active agents. Additionally, our participants’ enactment was highly deliberate – they were clearly aware of the different means music could provide for guiding and initiating their actions. Thus, through engaging with music our participants had learned how music could be used to help them enact in their everyday situations, which further supports previous literature on musical affordances (e.g., Rietveld & Kiverstein, 2014). Furthermore, all of these three subthemes, self-directedness, self-capability, and self-initiative, emphasize the connection between musical affordances and identity construction processes. For a listener to be able to get a sense that they can achieve their goals (self-capability) or that they can physically get going (self-initiative), they first need to have some kind of knowledge of how they can achieve these self-related goals, in other words, awareness of what will work for them (self-directedness). This emphasizes how identity construction processes are situated within listeners’ previous experiences, associations, and perceptions of music.

Self-Regulation

Music listening afforded listeners a means for regulating their emotions, mood and arousal, bodily functions, and cognitive functions. The first subtheme of emotional self-regulation consists of eliciting, overcoming, alleviating, controlling, intensifying, and maintaining emotions. Listening to music was often used to “produce a certain emotional state that one wants in that particular moment” (Male, 17), indicating that listeners were quite aware of how music affected their emotions. Additionally, music was used to overcome emotions such as anxiety, stress, or sadness. One of the most evident strategies to overcome emotions was to match the music with the emotional state they were in. For example, melancholic music was used when feeling down, which made the listener “feel better after listening to that and being sad with it [music]” (Female, 21). Furthermore, music was used to intensify or support individuals’ emotional states. One of our participants described how music listening was used to create cinematic episodes of everyday life, affording a means for self-regulation:

The first thing that I do when I wake up is that I put on some music. […] Music provides me the feeling and the energy of how I want to start my day. Here I had a relaxed morning, and I just wanted to enjoy the feeling. Music was intensifying or supporting the feelings that I had in that moment. […] It's almost like background music or a soundtrack that you can hear in movies; it's the same idea. In this scene, there's a specific atmosphere, and a certain soundtrack can boost that feeling. (Male, 24)

This example illustrates how the participant perceived the function of music in the everyday contexts to be similar to the functions music has in cinematic settings. Music set the mood for him, guiding or boosting his emotional states into desired directions. Putting on music was also “the first thing” the participant normally did when he woke up, which brings forth the important role music listening had in self-regulation. This example also captures the importance of self-regulation as an identity construction process. By stating how “music provides me the feeling and the energy of how I want to start my day,” the participant reveals how he was engaging in self-reflexive action as he used music to fulfil the regulatory needs he had in that specific situation. Since self-reflexive action is related to identity construction (DeNora, 2000, p. 62), this further emphasizes the important connection between self-regulation and identity construction.

Additionally, music listening also afforded listeners’ means for mood and arousal regulation, which consists of comfort and enjoyment, boredom, passing time, maintaining energy levels, boosting energy levels, relaxation, and sleeping. Many of our participants stated that music was used to “keep energy levels up” especially in situations where they needed to prepare themselves to go to school or to work. Additionally, for many of our participants music helped to lower their arousal levels, helping them to relax. Regulating arousal with music was often associated with time of day, as many of our participants were more likely to listen to different kinds of music in the mornings and evenings.

It [music] helps me to get my day going, and it helps me to wake up to the day. I feel like if I didn’t listen to music, I would feel more tired because there's quiet everywhere and at this time of year it’s still quite dark outside in the mornings. That would make me want to go to sleep again. But if I have music, it makes me feel like I can wake up. (Female, 16)

By being able to regulate one's mood and energy levels, young people can adapt themselves to various situations, responsibilities, and demands of their everyday lives. Achieving these mood- and arousal-related goals, the participants needed to be aware of the different musical affordances, again highlighting the connection between affordances and self-construction. Furthermore, listeners’ need for regulating their mood was highly connected to temporal dimensions, emphasizing the situated nature of identity construction processes.

Music listening afforded participants a means to regulate bodily functions, which consisted of physical power, endurance, and entrainment. Music was experienced to “bring power” or helping one to “get most out of myself” while doing strength training. Music was also perceived to make endurance training, such as running or cycling, feel easier. With music, listeners directed their attention to the music, instead of how they felt while training. Finally, music was something listeners could entrain to, which made them move faster especially while doing sports, but also while moving through urban environments. Consider this example where one of our participants describes why they usually always listen to music while in the grocery store:

I usually try to listen to something more up-beat so that I can get out of there as quicky as possible. I don’t want to stay there wondering around and thinking “what should I eat next week,” but I want to act fast and quickly grab all the things that I need and then get out of there. (Non-binary, 19)

Their account illustrates how music listening enables listeners to regulate their bodily actions. Up-beat music afforded this participant a resource they could entrain to, as a tool to modify their actions and behavior. Thus, music enabled them to regulate their levels of enactment.

Finally, music listening afforded means for regulating cognitive functions, which consisted of directing thoughts, distracting thoughts, and offloading cognitive functions. For many of our participants, music was used to direct thoughts, which enhanced their concentration. In situations where they were not at home, the role of music was emphasized as it was used to create an auditory bubble. Consider this participant's example, where she describes how she used music to direct her thoughts to the task at hand:

I was listening to music [in a library]. And that was a moment when I didn’t really focus on the music, but it worked as a distraction for me; it distracted me from my thoughts. So that I could write. I don’t always study with music, but there are certain moments when I really need it. And in that moment, it helped. (Female, 23)

Here, music afforded the listener an auditory bubble, directing her cognitive functions to the task at hand and distracting her from her own thoughts. Likewise, previous research suggests that music affords concentration by both providing focus and distraction from other thoughts (DeNora, 2000, p. 58–59). Music made it possible for listeners to shape their sonic environments, which helped them to regulate their cognitive functions, such as concentration or attention.

Discussion

The aim of this study was to investigate the situated nature of identity construction processes through everyday music listening. Our results are in line with previous research suggesting that music listening affords listeners emotional experiences and emotional granularity (e.g., Laiho, 2004; Saarikallio, 2011; Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007; Warrenburg, 2020), exploration of self-identity (e.g., DeNora, 2000; Lonsdale & North, 2011; Saarikallio, 2019b), values (Gardikiotis & Baltzis, 2012), memories (e.g., Juslin & Västjfjäll, 2008; van Goethem & Sloboda, 2011), and future dreams and goals (Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007). Moreover, music afforded self-enhancement, particularly a sense of self-esteem as well as acceptance of self and life situations, which is further in line with previous findings (e.g., Elvers, 2016; Elvers et al., 2018; Saarikallio et al., 2021). Music listening afforded listeners agency through self-directedness (DeNora, 2000), self-capability (Saarikallio et al., 2021), and self-initiative (DeNora, 2000). Finally, music listening afforded means for emotional self-regulation (e.g., Baltazar & Saarikallio, 2019; Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007), mood and arousal regulation (e.g., Baltazar & Saarikallio, 2019; Lonsdale & North 2011), and regulating bodily functions (Bishop et al., 2007; Fritz et al., 2013), as well as regulating cognitive functions by creating an auditory bubble (e.g., Dibben & Haake, 2013; Saarikallio et al., 2020).

Our results provide a novel, more nuanced, and in-depth way of categorizing the psychological processes related to the use of music as self-construction in everyday life contexts. In this data-based categorization, we divide self-construction into processes of 1) increasing self-awareness (self-exploration, self-enhancement) – experiences of safely exploring self-related statements and constructing and re-constructing self-conceptions – and into processes of 2) self-enactment (self-efficacy and agency, self-regulation) – actions of regulating one's levels of agency, behavior, action, and affective functions in everyday life situations. Such dual conceptualization of self-construction highlights the mutual importance of awareness and enactment – insight and action – as processes that are dialogically afforded by music engagement as an experiential, lived process. This type of categorization resonates with notions about emotional competence, according to which both the competent understanding and use of emotions are considered essential elements of emotionally competent behavior, in general (e.g., Tull & Aldao, 2015) and in the context of music engagement (Saarikallio, 2019a). Furthermore, while our novel categorization integrates several concepts that have previously been identified to be important for the psychological functionality of music, including identity, agency, emotions, self-awareness, and mood regulation (Laiho, 2004; North et al., 2000; Schäfer et al., 2013), the current conceptualization approaches these psychological processes from the particular perspective of youth self-construction. This demonstrates that self-identity is characteristically integrated with several key psychological functionalities, thus being embedded within the entire fabric of psychological experience.

Furthermore, it is important to note that these processes for self-construction were happening within young people's complex, constantly evolving everyday situations. Our concept of cinematic musical episodes illustrates these rich and multidimensional affordances that can be picked up for self-construction. To our participants, music listening experiences were not just auditive experiences but multidimensional episodes, which they themselves often described as “cinematic” in nature. Our results are in line with 4E cognition theory (Newen et al., 2018), as these cinematic musical episodes capture how identity construction processes were embodied experiences, embedded with listeners’ emotional, embodied, visual and tactile aspects, their self-conceptions, the external environment, and their previous experiences and perceptions of music. Identity construction processes were furthermore enactive processes extended to various technologies and digital platforms (e.g., phones, music streaming platforms, playlists). Our concept has similarities with Krueger's (2014) notions of musical affordances and the affective scaffolding they provide but broadens the view by illustrating the important role of environment in self-construction processes, as music shaped the ways young people both perceived their physical environment and interacted with it. Music listening enabled young people to build a continuum between their past, present, and future, highlighting the narrative and temporal dimension of self-construction processes. Additionally, due to rapid technological developments, young people can listen to music almost anytime and anywhere. This offered listeners the potential to contextualize their lives with music as they go, making it a particularly useful tool for self-construction. All in all, we propose that music works as unique, versatile material for identity work that can afford psychological mechanisms for self-construction processes. The processes music affords in different individuals and in different moments are, however, dependent on various dimensions of everyday life.

As regards the limitations of the current study as well as the prospective openings for future research, the cultural aspects of cinematic musical episodes require more investigation. It is possible that there are cross-cultural differences related to the phenomenon (see e.g., Saarikallio et al., 2021). Our study was conducted in Finland, which has a culture valuing people's self-efficacy and independence from a quite young age (e.g., Rautakivi et al., 2022), which could, at least partially, explain our results. Additionally, the current young people's generation in Finland have lived their whole lives with audio-visual platforms (see e.g., Merikivi et al., 2016). Since audio-visual realities are such an important part of young people's daily lives, it is not surprising that the roles of music in these platforms could be transferred into young people's everyday life situations as well. More research acknowledging the cultural contexts of this phenomenon is needed if we want to understand how young people may engage with music to support their need for constructing self-identity. Finally, it is important to note that our categorization presented here is a reduction of the reality where self-identities are being constructed. Even though we have divided our results into distinct themes, in real life these processes are intertwined and embedded within listeners’ individual, cultural, social, environmental, and situational aspects.

It is also important to note that though our participants engaged with cinematic musical episodes in ways that supported their positive sense of self, music listening can also be maladaptive. For example, individuals who are prone to depression often use musical immersion for escapism (Miranda & Claes, 2009; Alluri et al., 2022). We did not specifically ask about maladaptive experiences, which may be the reason why such experiences were not present in our data. We propose, however, that future research should better acknowledge the health-relevance of music-related self-construction, including the potential maladaptive functions of multimodal music listening.

In conclusion, this qualitative study provides new insight on the situated nature of self-construction processes with music listening in young people's everyday lives in Finland. Our results offer much-needed empirical evidence of how identity construction processes are situated into our complex and multidimensional everyday situations. Future research should focus on researching identity construction processes from an empirical point of view to better understand the potential music has in young people's psychological development and well-being in their everyday life contexts. In addition, more cross-cultural research acknowledging the individual and socio-cultural differences of the phenomenon is needed.