For the festival-loving ravers among us, this will come as little surprise, though it’s still always nice when academic research validates your recreational pursuits. A new study to emerge from a university in Australia has struck upon a link between the experience of going to a concert or festival and personal well-being. Essentially, going to festivals makes you happy.
The study—titled If You’re Happy and You Know It: Music Engagement and Subjective Wellbeing—is the result of a collaboration between the Arts and Psychology faculties of the Deakin University in Australia. The research examines the link between “habitual music engagement” and the measurement criteria known as subjective well-being ( SWB ), which is officially recognized around the world as an effective measurement of quality of life.
“Experiencing and engaging with music have been fundamental to all societies across the ages,” points out the study, which collected its data across 1,000 participants. “The findings revealed that engaging with music by dancing or attending musical events was associated with higher SWB than for those who did not engage with music in these forms.”
Beyond the pure joy associated with enjoying music in a live setting, the research specifically emphasizes the importance of the social aspect of it occurring among thousands of other like-minded ravers when it comes to boosting those all-important SWB levels.
“The social component of music engagement was illuminated in the results, with people who sang or danced in the company of others reporting higher scores on many domains of SWB than those who engaged with music alone,” the authors claim.
“The findings herein appear to advocate for the social and physical elements of music as being associated with higher wellbeing,” the study concludes.
Keen to take a deep dive into the results? The research paper is available to read in full over at the Psychology of Music .
