Young adults reminisce about music from before their time

I have not met any young people who can say they think the popular music of today will be played 30 or 50 years from now.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-09/afps-yar090613.php

Public release date: 9-Sep-2013
Contact: Anna Mikulak
Association for Psychological Science

Music has an uncanny way of bringing us back to a specific point in time, and each generation seems to have its own opinions about which tunes will live on as classics. New research suggests that young adults today are fond of and have an emotional connection to the music that was popular for their parents' generation.

"Music transmitted from generation to generation shapes autobiographical memories, preferences, and emotional responses, a phenomenon we call cascading 'reminiscence bumps,'" explains psychological scientist and lead researcher Carol Lynne Krumhansl of Cornell University. "These new findings point to the impact of music in childhood and likely reflect the prevalence of music in the home environment."

The study, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reveals that while songs that were popular in our early 20s seem to have the greatest lasting emotional impact, music that was popular during our parents' younger days also evokes vivid memories.

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But the more surprising finding — one which the researchers didn't expect to see — was a drastic bump in memories, recognition, perceived quality, liking, and emotional connection with the music that was popular in the early 1980s, when the participants' parents were about 20-25 years old. That is, participants seemed to demonstrate a particular affinity for the songs their parents were listening to as young adults.

Previous research has shown that the music we encounter during late adolescence and early adulthood has the greatest impact on our lives. But these findings suggest that the music played throughout childhood can also leave a lasting impact.

And there was another, albeit smaller, 'reminiscence bump' for the music of the 1960s – more than two decades before the participants were born. Krumhansl and Zupnick speculate that reminiscence for this music could have been transmitted from the participants' grandparents, who would have been in their 20s or 30s in the 1960s.

Another possibility — one that might be favored by those of the Baby Boomer generation — is that the music of the 1960s is truly of higher quality.