The Social Origins of Music

In all human cultures and throughout human history, music is an important socially interactive medium. At the same time, music plays a positive role in directing social-emotional behaviors of infants and children toward musical partners. Social-emotional development from early infancy also allows us to experience musical interactions with others as socially meaningful events. A growing body of research highlights specific underlying mechanisms of music, such as synchrony, as factors driving music-induced social effects. As a consequence, recent research explores whether musical interventions with infants and children enhance social bonding and general social capacities. This chapter examines the different phylogenetic and ontogenetic theories regarding the development of music as a socially interactive medium, and reviews and synthesizes studies investigating the role of music and musical interventions in influencing social capacities in infants and children. Finally, big open questions in the field and new directions for future research will be discussed.