The Musical Mind: Rethinking Intelligence Through Our Relationship with Music
Survey Says We’re All Smart and Listening to Music Just the Right Amount
Picture this: You're at a party, and you are trying to make new intelligent friends. Who comes to mind?
The tired person who just finished a shift at the hospital? The hyper person who just got promoted to team lead at a hot tech startup? Or maybe that collected person who seems to have their life together with a perfect work-life balance and still finds time to read a book a week?
Perhaps it's a certain petite, curly-haired Substack writer enthusiastically discussing the connection between music and intelligence.
For sure! These are all very intelligent people!
But the intelligence lineup isn't complete without acknowledging this often-missed mastermind:
Consider adding to your list that friend with the ability to pick the perfect song for any moment. The one who can:
Shift the entire mood of a gathering with a well-timed playlist swap
Read the room to know exactly when to slow things down or amp them up
Always manage to play that one song everyone forgot they loved
That person probably listens to a whole lot of music! (Side eye at that annoying tweet).
Surely, that person is very intelligent. But what kind of intelligence would you say they have?
Certainly not the kind my friends usually talk about when we're discussing "intelligent people."
This type of music intelligence is not measured on IQ tests or showcased in academic achievements.
Yet, there's something undeniably skillful, even brilliant, about their ability to navigate and manipulate social atmospheres through music.
In fact, musical intelligence might be one of our oldest forms of smarts.
Dr. Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, discusses on his popular podcast how certain neural circuits involved in processing rhythm and pitch are deeply conserved in the brain, suggesting they may have evolved very early. While the exact timeline is still debated, there's growing evidence that musical abilities developed alongside or even before complex language. This aligns with what anthropologists have been saying – our ancestors were likely engaging in musical behaviors before they developed modern speech and definitely before written language.
Rhythm, melody, and movement were probably among our first tools for communication and social bonding.
This ability to "speak" through music—to understand and manipulate emotions and social dynamics with sound—seems to be hardwired into us. It's a form of intelligence that we've been carrying and refining for millennia.
Musical Intelligence according to Gardner
Howard Gardner, in his influential 1983 book "Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences," proposed that intelligence isn't a single, monolithic entity. Instead, he identified nine distinct types of intelligence, including linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, existential, and - crucially for our discussion - musical intelligence.
According to Gardner, musical intelligence involves the capacity to recognize pitch, rhythm, timbre, and tone. This form of intelligence not only allows individuals to create, communicate, and understand meanings made out of sound, but also to analyze and produce music.
By recognizing musical intelligence as one of these core intelligences, Gardner underscores its vital role in human cognition and expression.
But how does this primordial skill play out in our modern lives?
To explore this, I turned to you – our community of musicians, casual listeners, and everyone in between. I sent out a survey, hoping to learn how we all interact with music in our daily lives, what the purpose of music is in our lives, and what it might reveal about how we should use music to feel more intelligent and purposeful.
Community Music Survey
First off, a huge thank you to everyone who participated.
Your thoughtful responses have resonated with me, highlighting the connections between music, our daily lives, and our perceptions of intelligence. Also, you all have made me cackle over the tweet and this topic for weeks now!
Our survey employed a mixed-methods approach, combining Likert-scale questions with open-ended responses. This methodology allowed us to capture both broad trends and detailed individual experiences, providing a comprehensive view of how our community interacts with music in their daily lives.
The respondents ranged from daily music enthusiasts to more occasional listeners.
A majority self-identified as intelligent, with a notable portion expressing thoughtful uncertainty about their own intelligence - a reflection, perhaps, of the complex nature of intelligence itself.
Survey findings:
I loved reading the survey responses. After, I did a lot of research. I’m connecting our survey findings with some of the latest research on music and intelligence, offering a richer understanding for anyone who wants to nerd out with me!
1. Defining Smarts
Our survey brought out some really interesting and diverse takes on what intelligence actually means.
Here are a few of the thought-provoking definitions that our community members shared:
"Intelligence is the degree of complexity with which one synthesizes observations, experiences, instruction, intuition, study and practice." - Musician & Voice Teacher Jessica
"Intelligence is more than just computational power, it's also about logic and reasoning and creativity, and an ability to apply and express thoughts and facts in and out of multiple contexts sometimes at once. There is a social, intellectual, and emotional component to intelligence as well." - Actor Alex
"Broadly speaking, an ability to creatively infer games or tasks that other people are involved in and to derive novel results from them. A lot of what we consider intelligence consists of mind-reading and various forms of abstract or mechanical reasoning to reach conclusions." - Digital Innovation Specialist James
"A combination of common sense, attention to detail, and good listening skills that lead to better understanding of the world and people around you" - Lady of All Trades Maren
"Sometimes it can mean your brain working fast, being able to solve problems and understand things. I grew up having a very fixed mindset about intelligence and am still unlearning that and learning to think more about multiple kinds of intelligence as well as the idea that anyone can become 'smarter'" - Musician Ms.Stephanie
These varied perspectives really highlight how complex and multifaceted the concept of intelligence is, which sets the perfect stage for exploring how it ties into our relationship with music.
2. Self-Perception of Intelligence and Music Engagement
Our survey revealed an intriguing relationship between self-perceived intelligence and music engagement. While a majority of respondents considered themselves intelligent, surprisingly there was a notable portion who expressed uncertainty about their own intelligence.
Both groups - those who confidently identified as intelligent and those who were uncertain - reported high levels of music engagement. This suggests that music appreciation and use transcend self-perceived intelligence levels, pointing to music's universal appeal and utility.
3. Intelligence and Music Listening Habits
Contrary to the provocative tweet that sparked this investigation, our data suggest a positive or neutral correlation between perceived intelligence and music engagement.
A significant majority of respondents believed that intelligent people listen to music either more frequently or at the same rate as others.
4. Perceptions of Music's Impact on Intelligence
Respondents' views on whether listening to or playing music affects intelligence were mixed:
Many believed that playing musical instruments could enhance intelligence.
Opinions were more divided on whether passive listening to music impacts intelligence.
This divergence in views reflects the ongoing debate in cognitive science about the extent and nature of music's impact on general intelligence, as discussed in a meta-analysis by Román-Caballero, R., et al. (2022).
5. Music's Impact on Cognitive Processes
A majority of participants reported feeling more creative when listening to music. This corroborates studies by Ritter and Ferguson (2017) on the impact of music on divergent thinking. However, the effects on cognitive clarity were more varied:
Many reported that the impact on thinking vividness depends on the music
A significant portion experienced more vivid thinking with music
Some reported less vivid or unchanged thinking
This variability reveals the complex, context-dependent relationship between music and cognition, as noted by Kämpfe et al. (2011) in their meta-analysis of background music effects.
6. Music as an Emotional Regulation Tool
Our findings strongly support the use of music for emotional regulation, a phenomenon well-documented in recent music psychology literature (Saarikallio et al., 2017). Respondents frequently reported using music for:
Relaxation
Energizing/motivation
Emotional expression
Mood enhancement
These results highlight music's multifaceted role in emotional management, aligning with contemporary frameworks of music as a mood regulation strategy (Baltazar & Saarikallio, 2019).
7. Music and Daily Activities
The integration of music into daily activities was nearly universal among our respondents. Top activities paired with music included:
Exercise
Cleaning
Cooking
Walking
This pervasive presence of music in daily life aligns with recent research on music-listening in everyday contexts (Krause et al., 2015), highlighting how individuals strategically use music to accompany and potentially enhance routine tasks.
Shamay has been exploring how music can be paired with other artforms to enhance the emotional resonance.
For example, music + art:
https://x.com/shamay___/status/1661577693836582913
or music + poetry:
https://x.com/shamay___/status/1690852947461054464
Shamay's approach resonates with me, so I've decided to include song recommendations for my upcoming articles. These tunes will complement the reading experience, enhancing the emotional connection between the words and music. Thanks Shamay!
8. Music's Role in Focused Listening vs. Background Activity
Our findings indicate a dichotomy in how individuals engage with music:
A significant portion reported listening to music solely for the purpose of listening, engaging in what might be termed "active" or "attentive" listening.
Nearly all respondents reported using music as a background for other activities.
This dual nature of music consumption aligns with recent research on the functions of music listening, which distinguishes between music as a primary activity and as accompaniment to other tasks (Greb et al., 2018).
9. Live Music Attendance and Personal Music-Making
The frequency of live music attendance and personal music-making (including singing) varied widely among respondents. This variability suggests a spectrum of musical engagement, from passive consumption to active participation. Recent research by Tymoszuk et al. (2021) has demonstrated that both receptive (e.g., concert attendance) and active (e.g., playing an instrument, singing) forms of musical engagement are associated with enhanced subjective wellbeing and reduced symptoms of depression, with effects persisting even during the COVID-19 pandemic.
10. Music and Social Connection
Many respondents indicated using music as a means of connecting with others or expressing themselves socially. This finding aligns with recent research by Pearce et al. (2021), which demonstrates that music listening and making can foster social bonding through shared experiences, even in the absence of physical interaction.
11. The Joy in Music
When asked what makes a song joyful, responses varied widely, highlighting the personal nature of musical experience. Common themes included:
Upbeat rhythms
Ease of dancing to it
Positive lyrics
Clever lyrics
Emotional resonance
Memories associated with the music
Shamay summarized that joyful music “brings feelings of expansiveness + high energy + connection with the world”.
This is my favorite topic. I love studying joy! At the very end of this post, I link to the joyful playlist we created together!
Celebrating our universal musical intelligence
Nowadays, I listen to SO much music since I don't go to school. I work in tech and can wear headphones all day. This is a privilege for me.
According to the survey, almost everyone listens to music every day. However, my friends and I send each other less music every year. We listen to the same amount of music, but we take less time to pause and share it with each other.
Why is this?
Navigating Music in the Age of Algorithms
We can blame/thank social media for constantly pushing songs our way, and digital music services like Spotify for recommending endless songs based on their algorithms.
As actor Alex Cioffi wrote to me
What was once an individual process of discovery became a new way to compare your ‘coolness’ by comparing which music you listen to. This combination of music and social culture became permanent, where today the songs that people enjoy on social media become the charting hits, and algorithms and playlists curated exactly to what you like tell you what to listen to. I think art commodification has become an inescapable part of the way we enjoy music, TV, movies, literature, etc. Thoughts??? Can we enjoy music and art in late capitalism?
I think we can! I still enjoy music even if an algorithm recommends it to me. In fact, I probably enjoy some music more because hearing small bits of it repeatedly makes my brain like it more than if I heard it all the way through for the first time.
However, I feel more touched by music when someone I know recommends it. One of my best friends Debbie sent me an album, "Polaroid Lovers" by Sarah Jarosz, while I was walking in the Upper West Side. Now, I often listen to it when I'm strolling there and think of my bestie. It gives me a very warm feeling.
I believe we need to embrace technology while also celebrating our own musical intelligence more.
How to Celebrate and Cultivate Your Musical Intelligence?
We need to:
Listen to live music more together.
Play more music.
Cheer when our friends make music.
Tonight, my dear friend Kacie is playing with her band, and I’ll be rocking out to her music all night!
Send each other more music!
Talk about music intelligence more.
Recognize musical aptitude in others:
Compliment friends on their playlist-making skills or their ability to match music to moods.
Engage in active listening:
Take time to fully immerse yourself in music without distractions.
Use music intentionally:
Apply your musical intelligence to enhance focus, creativity, or emotional regulation in your daily life.
By valuing and developing musical intelligence, we're not just enriching our personal experiences; we're tapping into one of humanity's oldest and most powerful forms of expression and connection. This ensures we remain intelligent individually and become more musically aware as a community.
So, the next time you're at a party, looking to make intelligent friends, don't just look for the doctor or the engineer—listen for that friend who always knows the perfect song to play.
Or perhaps you could be that intelligent person yourself! And hey, if you're ever DJing, don't forget to send me an invite!
On that note :
Katya Cares Joyful Playlist: Music to Brighten Your Day
Confession time! 🙈 My music survey had a sneaky hidden agenda... It wasn't just about uncovering musical geniuses among us. I was also fishing for awesome song recommendations!
As a former refugee kid with zero knowledge of American pop culture, I've relied on others for musical guidance. Music became my trusty sidekick - drowning out my noisy baby sister during homework, keeping teen angst at bay, and basically being my emotional support... well, playlist!
To this day, if you consistently send me joyful tunes, you've got a fast-track to my friend zone. Music-savvy folks have brightened my life more times than I can count. (I am so grateful for my hearing!)
Now, it's my turn to spread the joy! I've created a public playlist filled with happiness-boosting tracks recommended by our awesome community.
Feeling blue or just need an extra dose of cheer? Give it a listen on Spotify or Apple Music.
Happy listening, you nerds!
🤓+🎧=Katya