Date of Defense

12-5-2018

Date of Graduation

6-2019

Department

Music

First Advisor

Edward Roth

Second Advisor

Meghan Feeman

Abstract

This paper examines a subsection of data from a larger study conducted by Alycia Sterenberg titled, “The determinants of affect, emotional arousal, and autobiographical memories on music-evoked nostalgia”. The question being examined was: when examining musicians and non-musicians, what difference is there in the intensity of nostalgic memories between the two groups; what elements of a memory are either group more likely to be nostalgic about when listening to music they have labeled as nostalgic for themselves? The data was acquired from questionnaires participants filled out after listening to music generated to be similar to that which they had labeled as nostalgic for themselves. Analysis showed no significant difference in the levels of music-evoked nostalgia between musicians and non-musicians. The content of nostalgic memories displayed trends in line with current research such as a “reminiscence bump” around the ages of 15-25 years old (Janssen et al., 2005), and in the highest reported content of nostalgic memories: “people” was the most frequent category, and in the “place” category, the highest response was a particular “event” for both musicians and non-musicians (Wildschut et al., 2006).

Access Setting

Honors Thesis-Open Access

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