A phenomenological study: Assessing the relative contributions of interpersonal relationship building (Papinczak et al., 2015) and emotional immersion (Seligman, 2002) with respect to music and well-being.

Bowdler, Mairi (2017) A phenomenological study: Assessing the relative contributions of interpersonal relationship building (Papinczak et al., 2015) and emotional immersion (Seligman, 2002) with respect to music and well-being. Manchester Metropolitan University. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

This study aimed to assess the established contributors; interpersonal relations (Papinczak et al., 2015) and emotional immersion (Seligman, 2002) on well-being from music listening.Existential phenomenology was used in coherence with the study, to understand how participants make sense of their lived everyday experience with music. In-depth semi structured interviews were used to gain a detailed insight in to the phenomenon on six participants aged between 18-25 years, all of whom engaged with music on an everyday basis.Results from Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) found support for both interpersonal relations and emotional immersion through assisting formations of social identities; communication/engagement medium; connecting/sharing experiences with others; release of emotions; mood stimulation and applying pleasure to everyday activities.Alongside these sub-themes the study identified a prominent theme, relating to both interpersonal relations and emotional immersion; the association of both positive memories and people.These results led to the creation of a conceptual metaphor (Figure 1) to represent a visualisation of the findings, revealing enhanced well-being from music listening.