Does music experience and its link to depression differ across ethnic groups?

Does the experience of music—and its relationship to depression—differ across ethnic groups?

That question has implications for how we understand music’s role in daily life, how music therapy is practiced, and how depression is studied. The present investigation explores these questions using a U.S. sample.

Ethnicity and the musical experience

Anyone who wants to grasp how music functions in people’s lives—and what correlates with it—would benefit from considering cultural factors. Differences among cultures in musical tastes, the kinds of music performed, the instruments used, and the social and personal roles of music are often striking. Music both reflects cultural diversity and serves as a vehicle for intercultural exchange. In pluralistic societies, despite the homogenizing effects of mass media and universal education, variations rooted in tradition, custom, and accumulated experience continue to appear in musical behavior, the social construction of music, and personal reactions to it, as well as in the ways group members respond to cultural blending.

Within ethnomusicology, a recurring theme is the tie between music and cultural identity—especially the experience of multiple identities that musical activities reveal or shape.

In psychological research, attention has turned systematically toward culture, with ethnicity receiving particular focus. A growing literature compares ethnic groups on personality, affect, and clinical problems such as depression. Researchers have also examined how these factors interrelate, and ethnicity is now considered a variable that deserves attention in clinical treatment.

Some work has been done on cultural differences in the perceptual and cognitive processing of musical information. Far less research, however, has investigated similarities and differences across ethnic groups in the broader experience of music and in psychological reactions to it. One relevant study compared "Western" and Indian students in England and concluded that the two groups differed in their affective responses to music excerpts. While suggestive, that study calls for extension: more ethnic groups need to be compared, in different national settings. Furthermore, reactions to brief excerpts may not accurately represent the everyday musical contexts that form the backdrop for therapeutic use of music. An assessment of general musical experience is therefore needed.

Similarly, little has been written about ethnic factors relevant to music therapy itself. Forrest (2000) discussed applying a cultural perspective to music therapy, particularly with terminally ill patients, citing the case of a Russian-born woman living in Australia for whom music therapy helped explore and strengthen her identity. Henderson and Gladding (1998) covered multicultural aspects of integrating creative arts into counseling, showing how aesthetically oriented methods can be embedded in a client’s ethnic context. Notably, however, most of the multicultural clinical work they cited employed creative arts other than music.

Other writers have emphasized that music therapists need to learn about how ethnicity shapes music experience and how cultural factors can be harnessed in therapy. Moreno (1988) described the challenges therapists face given the diversity of musical genres and traditions across cultural groups, pointing out that knowledge of a client’s musical background can strengthen therapeutic outcomes. He noted that therapists increasingly have access to a wide range of music—a trend that has accelerated since his article with the rise of online music sources. Therapists who explore these diverse traditions can improve their cultural competence in music therapy. Sloss (1996) surveyed Canadian music therapists about the role of cultural factors in their work. While the therapists described procedures and techniques they used, they voiced concern about the lack of a robust research base to support cross-cultural clinical work. The present study takes a step toward addressing that concern.

Ethnicity and depression

To bridge music experience and therapeutic practice from a multi-ethnic perspective, this report examines how music experience relates to depression across ethnic groups. Dinges, Atlis, and Ragan (2000) noted that evidence supports the presence of depression or depressive-like disorders across diverse human populations. Nonetheless, reviews (such as Tsai et al., 2001) suggest there are at least some differences among ethnic groups both in the prevalence of depression and in average depression scores. One aim of the present research is to supply additional evidence on these differences.

The relationship among depressive symptoms may also differ across groups. The meaning or clinical presentation of depression can vary by ethnicity. However, overall depression scores reflecting a higher-order factor continue to be useful for representing the accumulation of symptoms.

When links between ethnicity and depressive symptoms have been found, researchers have tried to identify explanatory factors in hopes of developing more effective interventions and prevention strategies. Counseling issues related to depression have been addressed from multicultural perspectives and in relation to specific groups. Ethnicity has also been shown to moderate the relationship between situational stressors and depressive outcomes. It therefore makes sense to examine similarities and differences across groups in how music experience relates to depression. Findings on this topic could inform—and thus help improve—music-based treatments for depression with diverse populations.

The present study

With this background, the first goal of the study was to provide further evidence about similarities and differences across ethnic groups in both music experience and self-reported depression. The second goal was to compare, across ethnic groups, the correlations between music experience scores and depression scores. A good deal of prior research on music experience has relied on laboratory procedures that gauge reactions to music. The present study, however, uses a self-report measure designed to broadly capture the role of music in daily life.

Method

Participants

The data analyzed here come from two subsamples: (a) community college students from the San Francisco Bay Area, whose data were treated without regard to ethnicity in an earlier study (Werner, Swope, & Heide, 2006), and (b) students from a four-year college in the Midwest. Participants were recruited from undergraduate psychology classes and received extra credit for taking part. From a combined total of 506 participants, the analytic sample of 494 (97.6%) included those who reported their ethnicity. Of these, 351 (71.1%) were women and 143 (28.9%) were men. Mean age was 23.0 years (standard deviation = 6.9). The ethnic breakdown was: 78 (15.8%) African American, 111 (22.5%) Asian American, 218 (44.1%) White, and 87 (17.6%) from "other" ethnic groups (those who checked Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islander, Mixed, or Other on the background questionnaire). None of the groups within "other" had a sample large enough to be analyzed separately.

Measures

Music Experience Questionnaire. The Music Experience Questionnaire (MEQ; Werner et al., 2006) consists of 141 items, each rated on a 5-point scale (1 = very untrue; 5 = very true). The items cover a wide array of topics related to the role music plays in a person’s life, regardless of the form of music encountered, and are suitable for both musicians and non-musicians. The MEQ is scored for six scales, which together encompass 53 items. These scales were derived rationally and theoretically, and were refined through statistical item analyses in the derivation sample to improve internal consistency and reduce overlap among scales. The six scales, with sample items, are as follows (Werner et al., p. 331):

• 1. Commitment to Music: the centrality of pursuing musical experiences in a person’s life. (Sample: "It is important for me to see music being performed and not just hear it.")
• 2. Innovative Musical Aptitude: self-reported musical performance ability as well as the capacity to generate musical themes and works. (Sample: "People have applauded my performance of music.")
• 3. Social Uplift: the experience of being stirred and uplifted in a group-oriented manner by music. (Sample: "I wish my family had sung together more when I was growing up." [Reverse-scored])
• 4. Affective Reactions: affective and spiritual reactions to music. (Sample: "I love some kinds of music.")
• 5. Positive Psychotropic Effects: calming, energizing, and integrating reactions to music. (Sample: "Music unites my mind and my body.")
• 6. Reactive Musical Behavior: motor responses such as humming and swaying along with music. (Sample: "Certain music draws me strongly to dance.")

Alpha reliability coefficients for the scales, broken down by ethnic group, appear in Table 1. Mean alphas across scales were similar for all groups. The Positive Psychotropic Effects scale had the highest reliabilities, while Social Uplift showed the weakest. With one exception, all other scales had reliability coefficients of at least .70 across all groups. In a mixed-ethnicity subsample from the earlier research (Werner et al., 2006), test-retest reliability for the six scales ranged from .60 to .74.

The MEQ also includes two higher-order factors, identified through factor analysis in two separate samples (Werner et al., 2006):

• (a) Subjective/Physical Reactions, defined by the Affective Reactions, Positive Psychotropic Effects, and Reactive Musical Behavior scales (all loading positively).
• (b) Active Involvement, defined by the Commitment to Music, Innovative Musical Aptitude, Positive Psychotropic Effects, and Social Uplift scales (all loading positively).

Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale. The CES-D (Radloff, 1977) is a 20-item measure that asks respondents to rate how often they have experienced symptoms of depression during the past week, using a 4-point scale (0 = rarely or none of the time [less than 1 day]; 3 = most or all of the time [5–7 days]). Total scores range from 0 to 60, with higher scores indicating more depressive symptoms. Prior research reports high internal consistency, with alpha coefficients above .85 (Radloff, 1977; Skorikov & Vandervoort, 2003; Stansbury, Ried, & Velozo, 2006), and acceptable retest reliability. The measure also demonstrates satisfactory concurrent validity with various depression criteria, including clinician ratings and other depression questionnaires. Although its factor structure may differ somewhat across ethnic groups (Tsai & Chentsova-Dutton, 2002), evidence supports its use as a unidimensional measure of overall depression (Mui et al., 2001; Paniagua, 2001). The present study therefore works with the global CES-D score, while acknowledging open questions about how symptom clusters vary across ethnic groups. As shown in Table 1, the CES-D had acceptable and similar alpha reliability coefficients across all groups in this sample.

Procedure

Students in the community college sample received the questionnaires in class and were instructed to complete them at home, while students in the four-year college sample completed the questionnaires in class.

Results

Comparison of ethnic groups on typical scores

Group means on the study variables are displayed in Table 2. Comparisons among groups were conducted using Kruskal-Wallis tests followed by Conover’s (1980) pairwise comparison procedure. Statistically significant differences emerged on four MEQ scales: Commitment to Music (p < .05), Affective Reactions (p < .001), Positive Psychotropic Effects (p < .01), and Reactive Musical Behavior (p < .001).

Groups also differed significantly on the CES-D depression measure. Follow-up tests indicated that White participants had significantly lower depression scores than participants in the other three groups. African American, Asian American, and Other participants did not differ significantly from each other on depression.

Significant group differences also appeared on the Subjective/Physical Reactions factor score. African American participants scored significantly lower on this factor than Asian American, White, and Other participants. Additionally, White participants scored lower than Asian American participants on this factor, while Other participants did not differ significantly from Asian American or White participants. On the Active Involvement factor, no significant differences were found among the groups.

Post-hoc comparisons revealed that the Asian American group scored lower than all others on the Subjective/Physical Reactions factor, including two of its scales—Affective Reactions and Reactive Musical Behaviors. This group also scored lower than White and Other participants on Positive Psychotropic Effects, while scoring higher than African Americans on Commitment to Music. African Americans reported lower scores than Whites on both the Subjective/Physical Reactions factor and its Affective Reactions and Positive Psychotropic Effects scales.

A significant difference also emerged on the CES Depression scale (p < .01). The White group reported a lower typical score than the African American, Asian American, and Other groups.

Table 3 displays correlations between MEQ variables and CES Depression scores for the whole sample and for each ethnic group. Across the full sample, Subjective/Physical Reactions and its Affective Reactions scale were weakly negatively associated with depression, while the Active Involvement factor and its Commitment to Music and Social Uplift scales showed weak positive correlations with depression.

Because of greatly unequal sample sizes and heterogeneous variances on some scales, nonparametric tests were used instead of traditional ANOVA. ANOVAs followed by both Games-Howell and REGWF tests produced essentially the same outcomes presented here.

On Positive Psychotropic Effects, the mean for the Other group was nearly identical to that of the White group. However, whereas the White group’s mean differed significantly from African Americans, the Other group’s did not. This seeming inconsistency arises from lower statistical power in the African American versus Other comparison, stemming from the much smaller number of participants in the Other group.

As shown in Table 3, the correlations between each MEQ scale and depression varied across groups relative to the full-sample results. Pairwise differences among group correlations, examined with Z-tests, also appear in the table. The Asian American and Other groups showed the most distinctive patterns. Among Asian Americans, negative correlations between depression and Subjective/Physical Reactions and Affective Reactions differed significantly from those in the White and Other groups. In the Other group, depression was significantly and positively correlated with Positive Psychotropic Effects (higher than in the African American and Asian American groups), and with Commitment to Music and the Active Involvement factor.

Between the African American and other groups, no correlation differences were found across scales.

Discussion

The results revealed ethnic group differences in multiple facets of music experience and in the relationship between these variables and depression. This contributes to the growing recognition of ethnicity as a relevant factor in understanding human behavior and experience, and demonstrates that ethnicity can moderate the association between clinically relevant variables (such as depression) and other psychological constructs. These findings broaden Moreno’s recommendation that music therapists develop cultural awareness of diverse musical traditions, suggesting that music’s connection to psychopathology—and therefore its therapeutic potential—may differ across ethnic groups. By providing evidence useful in increasing music therapists’ cultural competence, the work responds to the call expressed by practitioners in Sloss’s survey.

Group differences tended to concentrate on the Subjective/Physical Reactions factor, echoing Gross and John’s findings on ethnic variation in emotional expressivity. Conversely, fewer differences appeared for the Active Involvement factor, consistent with Goldberg and colleagues’ discovery that ethnicity was only weakly tied to Big Five traits of Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Intellect, as well as to Assertiveness, Sociability, and Conscious Restraint on the Activity Vector Analysis. However, because those researchers provided no comparisons among four non-Caucasian groups, the implications of that work remain limited here. Nonetheless, these results suggest that ethnic differences in music experience may relate more to affective and experiential reactions to music than to active performance or engagement, and may echo both personality contrasts and commonalities across groups.

Differences in music experience most frequently involved the Asian American group. Three prior findings help explain this. First, Gregory and Varney–studying Western and Indian students in England–determined that these groups differ in emotional responses to music excerpts. Second, evidence indicates that Asian Americans (or those from specific Asian backgrounds) may view emotional expression as less appropriate than other groups do and may restrain emotion in self-reports; the MEQ scales in which Asian Americans scored lower all tap emotional and physical reactions. Tsai’s review found that Asians and Asian Americans prefer calmer, slower, less exciting music compared to Americans and White Americans–forms less emotionally and physically stimulating. Third, personality comparisons between Asian and European American students by Benet‐Martínez and Karakitapoğlu‐Aygün suggested differences on Big Five variables potentially aligned with the Active Involvement factor (Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Openness), but two of three significant contrasts involved European Americans with first‑ but not second‑generation Asian Americans, indicating that generational status may matter in future studies of ethnicity and music experience.

Additional results showed differences between White and African American groups: Whites obtained higher scores on the Subjective/Physical Reactions factor and two scales. This runs counter to prior evidence that expressiveness and aggressive responses are higher among African American adolescents than among White adolescents. These findings might indicate that the college population selectively underrepresents more expressive African American youth and less expressive White youth, or that the MEQ taps a facet of emotional expressivity distinct from what earlier measures captured. Future research should explore these possibilities.

The finding of an association between depression and ethnicity adds to a literature that some describe as “striking” (Okazaki, 1997, p. 52) and others view as clinically and statistically insubstantial. Previous studies have found that Asian Americans score higher on depression measures, which aligns with our results. Combining these observations with the MEQ findings suggests that Asian Americans characterized themselves as having weaker affective and physiological reactions to music yet higher depression; Whites described the opposite pattern.

Research on African American–White differences in depression presents a complex picture. Study of family caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients found lower depression among African Americans. In contrast, reanalysis of epidemiological data from the 1980s yielded equivalent one‑year depression prevalence rates for both groups. Recent national survey results indicated lower lifetime prevalence but higher chronicity among Blacks than Whites, alongside similar depression severity. Our study found African Americans scoring higher than Whites on depression but lower on affective reactions to music.

Considering the mean results for Asian Americans, African Americans, and Whites together might suggest a negative association between affective/physiological reactions to music and depression, but correlations revealed that this link existed primarily among Asian Americans, not across all groups. This raises the possibility that, particularly for Asian Americans, treatments focused on altering such reactions to music could reduce depression, or conversely, that lowering depression might increase emotional and physiological reactivity to music. These inquiries could be tested in clinical settings.

Future work should explore whether the mean differences and variations in correlations reflect actual differences in latent music experience and its ties to depression, or differences in how groups interpret MEQ items, their thresholds for reporting, or construct nonequivalence. Cross‑cultural assessment issues have been covered in recent work, and larger samples would enable examination of these questions.

If replicable group differences in correlations between latent depression and music traits are found, one explanatory framework may be “biological diversity” (Lin, 2001, p. 17)– physiological differences across groups potentially underlying depression correlates. Alternatively, cultural difference analysis could frame understanding. Whatever frame is adopted, the observed differences could point toward tailored music interventions for preventing or treating depression in specific groups.

Several limitations suggest directions for future research. First, broad ethnic categories may mask important internal cultural variation. For instance, the Asian American group included participants whose familial origins spanned multiple Asian nations and cultural subgroups. The “Other” group, combining small numbers from varied groups, remained poorly defined, which could be remedied with larger samples allowing more concrete group comparisons.

Second, convenience samples limit generalizability. Participants were college psychology students; future efforts should aim for samples more representative of the general population. Additionally, most non‑White participants originated from a San Francisco community college and most Whites from a Wisconsin four‑year college. All recruited students participated, indicating this reflected actual ethnic distributions in those psychology classes. The impact presumably would affect White versus other ethnicity comparisons; however, our most striking findings involved Asian Americans versus other groups. Since ethnicity co‑varied with geographic region and college level, future work might sample at a highly diverse single college or employ a strategy that addresses both ethnic and geographical diversity.

A further limitation is use of the MEQ, designed to assess reactions to music independently of music type. Possible influences of between‑group differences in music preferences and choices were not considered. Previous findings on preference and affective reactions (Tsai, 2007) underline the need to explore this relationship in future work. Despite these limitations, the results underpin the value of continued research on ethnicity, the role of music in life, and the correlates of music experience.

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