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A group of people holding music and singing together at PODIUM 2024. Photo: Julie St-Georges
Guest post by Dr. Arla Good, adjunct faculty at Toronto Metropolitan University and co-director and chief researcher of The SingWell Project.
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Singing brings people together. Across cultures, age groups, and different walks of life, group singing is a regular feature of diverse settings, from cultural celebrations, religious gatherings and the classroom to concerts, karaoke or the campfire.
You don’t need to be a scientist to know that singing with others feels good. But research teams around the world are uncovering the multitude of ways that singing matters to our psychological, physical, spiritual, and emotional health.
The SingWell Project brings together world-leading researchers examining these benefits, alongside partners across Canada with a role to play in activating them. Here are nine scientifically backed reasons we’ve explored in our research on why singing with others matters for our wellbeing:
1. Singing improves mood
Many of us seek out music to alter our mood. But research has found that singing –– rather than just listening –– to music can be an especially powerful tool for managing emotions and putting us in a better mood. And that effect is even stronger when singing in a group. For example, one study found that actively singing in a group increased positive mood and decreased negative mood more than just listening to choral music.
2. Singing reduces stress and anxiety
One of several reasons singing can help improve mood is due to its effectiveness as a stress-reliever –– and that applies whether you’re singing in a community choir or belting it out solo in the shower. Not only do people report feeling more relaxed after a singing session, but studies have shown that singing can actually decrease levels of salivary cortisol, a hormone best known as the stress hormone.
3. Singing promotes psychological wellbeing
In addition to boosting mood and reducing stress, singing has been shown to contribute more generally to psychological wellbeing and personal development. For example, two studies following Indigenous youth and youth from socioeconomically disadvantaged school settings found that youth reported increased feelings of competence, self-esteem, and confidence after participating in singing programs.
4. Singing can stimulate the brain
Participating in any musical activity is a powerful way to stimulate your brain. Although the jury is still out on whether music can make you smarter, music has been shown to activate and connect different regions of the brain, including those involved in memory, thinking, movement, attention, language, and emotion.
5. Singing helps us remember information
Singing is an engaging way to learn and remember items of information. It’s easy to remember 26 letters of the alphabet, 7 numbers in a phone number, or passages of a foreign language when they are in a song! For example, one study demonstrated that children were better able to recall, pronounce, and translate words from a foreign language passage when presented as a song as compared to a poem.
6. Singing promotes social connectedness and reduces loneliness
Moving together in song rapidly builds social connections and increases pro-sociality (behaviours intended to benefit others). For example, this study found that children who sang a song together were more likely to cooperate and share resources than those who did a group art project. In fact, some theorists claim that one evolutionary purpose of singing is to foster group cohesion and cooperation.
7. Singing increases pain threshold
Studies have shown that people can tolerate more pain after singing with others. While researchers think this may have to do with the social bonding that happens during group singing (power in numbers?), the impact of singing on pain threshold exists whether the group is large or small.
8. Singing fosters a healthy body
Singing offers numerous positive effects on the body. For example, research has found that singing regulates blood pressure, increases oxygenation in the blood, triggers the immune system, and promotes healthy lung function. In fact, given how effectively singing can improve lung function, researchers advocate for singing as a therapy for individuals with breathing difficulties.
9. Singing supports communication function
Singing can improve aspects of productive (e.g. speech) and receptive (e.g. listening and comprehension) communication in people living with communication challenges such aphasia, stuttering, Parkinson’s Disease, lung disease, and hearing loss. SingWell’s research includes a special emphasis on the power of group singing for people with communication challenges –– but we know, for the reasons above and more, that group singing offers major benefits for everyone.
So next time you find yourself singing solo or with others, know that you’re tapping into a network of complex biological, emotional, social and physiological processes that are boosting your mood, health and wellbeing.
And if you want to learn more about those processes and how they can benefit people with communication challenges, people experiencing social isolation and others, join us for The Art and Science of Singing Together starting in Fall 2024.
Want to learn more?
Tune into The Art and Science of Singing Together, an upcoming SingWell x Choral Canada speaker series where researchers, choir practitioners and participants will offer deep dives on the benefits of group singing for specific populations.
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Dr. Arla Good is adjunct faculty at Toronto Metropolitan University. She is the co-director and chief researcher of The SingWell Project, an international research project exploring group singing as one potential strategy to address psychosocial well-being, communication, and health issues in older adulthood. She holds a Ph. D. in Psychological Sciences from Toronto Metropolitan University. Much of her work over the last decade has sought to identify and optimise singing-based interventions that can contribute to psychological and social wellbeing in a variety of different populations.
