Predictors of musical identities and their relationship with self-concept clarity

In Western cultures, "musician" is narrowly defined. This narrowness extends to music listening research, which often focuses on music genre preferences. However, musical identity involves more than talent or preferences and may relate to the ways people understand themselves more broadly. Dys et al. (2017) hypothesised that music identity may relate to self-concept clarity, or "the extent to which self-beliefs are clearly and confidently defined, internally consistent, and stable" (Campbell et al., 1996). Thus, this exploratory research asks, "What factors contribute to defining a person's musical identity, and how does the expression of musical identity relate to self-concept clarity?" Australian residents were invited to complete an online, mixed-methods survey, which included measures of personality (Langford, 2003), self-concept clarity (Campbell et al., 1996), musical self-image (Krause & Hargreaves, 2013), musicianship and musical experience (Boer & Fischer, 2011; Krause et al., 2019; Kreutz et al., 2008), and the GOLD-MSI (Mullensiefen et al., 2014), OM-EIS (Dys et al., 2017) and Warrener et al.'s (2019) amended STOMP. Data collection is on-going. Preliminary path analysis (n = 183, Mage = 27.65, 69.95% female) shows that formal training predicts practitioner identities while engagement and access to music in childhood predicts music consumer identities. Self-concept clarity correlates weakly with both types of identities (r \~ .14). The present study extends research into musical identity to further explore the role of socio-cultural factors on the development and perception of musical identity, and the potential relationship between musical identity and self-concept clarity. Since musical identity influences how people engage in music throughout life, the findings have implications for how individuals shape their understanding of themselves in relation to music.

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SMPC 2026 Conference

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