Relazioni tra preferenze di generi musicali e vissuti soggettivi di tensione (Relations between musical genres preferences and subjective experience of psycho physiological tensions)
Creators: name: D'Andreta, Mario
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2021

description: The study in this master thesis concerns the relations between musical genres preferences and subjective body experience, with the aim of contributing to a better understanding of correlations between aesthetic musical experience and processes of construction of the Personality. The research is subdivided in two parts: the first part consists of the analysis of the literature relating to musical tastes; the second consists of the analysis of the results of a survey on relations between musical genres preferences and self-perception of muscle tensions, carried out on a sample of students of the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. The work thus proposes a psychophysiological interpretation of individual musical preferences, in order to integrate the findings of the studies in the psycho-sociological field on this issue with the analysis of individual body experiences, according to the Psychophysiological Model of Ruggieri (1987, 1988, 1997). On the basis of the assumptions of this theoretical approach, a hypothesis was formulated about the relation between musical genres preferences and self-perceived postural tensions, the body’s equivalent of the concept of the Integration of the Self (Kohut 1976). Furthermore, an attempt was made to analyse the structure of musical tastes and of self-perceived muscle tensions, with the aim of identifying possible stable patterns of the latent factors that could be used as models in future researches of this kind. The thesis work starts with an overview of the most important studies concerning the musical preferences, classified by discipline: personality psychology, social psychology and sociology; they all put a focus on the characteristics of the personality and on the social aspects associated to the musical preferences. The second part of the thesis is dedicated to the description of the assumptions of this research, i.e. to the contributions made by different disciplines to the elaboration of the research hypothesis: from body-oriented psychology; to physiological and neurophysiological studies of musical listening; to psycho physiological approaches focused on the self-perception of muscle tensions in response to the music; to the psychophysiologial model of Ruggieri focused on the analysis of narcissism and of the aesthetic experience associated to the music (Ruggieri, 1997). The last part of the research work analyses the results of the survey conducted to explore the correlations between musical preferences and self-perception of the muscle tensions. The analysis of data outlined a factorial structure of six factors for the musical tastes (Jazz-Blues, Rock-Metal, Electronic-Dance, Ethnic, Classical-Electronic listening music, Pop-commercial) and a factorial structure of four factors for the subjective experience of postural tension (Head, Limbs, Thorax-Pelvis, Back of the Body). Potential relationship between these two series of factors have been analysed using the Method of Correlations by Pearson. For the scores values that showed of statistical significance of 0.05, two correlations have been identified, between the preferences for music genre corresponding to the factor Jazz-Blues and the perception of tension in the area of body corresponding to the factor Limbs and between the preferences for music genre corresponding to the factor Ethnic and the perception of tension in the area of body corresponding to the factor Thorax-Pelvis.