Causal Rewrite – Who’s On First?

Our Evolutionary and Biological Response to New vs Familiar Music

While many people claim to be in the market for new music, the reality is that familiarity plays a significant role in how much we enjoy the music we listen to. This makes sense because everything in evolution and our biological behavior points to sticking with the familiar and avoiding anything new. Sticking with the familiar is rooted in our biology and evolutionary history, which prioritize safety and predictability over novelty.

This tendency to prefer familiar music can be traced back to our evolutionary instincts. Any creature you study shows relatively the same behavior, we are scared of the unknown. As biological beings that have evolved over many years it is in our nature to sort anything we classify as new or unfamiliar into the category of potentially being dangerous. This instinct has helped us avoid danger and injury. You can see this with animals all the time. Any time they are presented in a new environment or a new object is placed in their environment, (for example, a camera in a yard or even a new bird feeder) they are naturally wary of it. In other words, unfamiliar objects, animals, or environments are often perceived as threats until proven otherwise.This is good from an evolutionary perspective because it keeps us safe from potential unknown dangers over millennia. However, this is a hindrance to those in the market for new music because our natural instincts lead us away from anything unfamiliar. 

In relation to music, our natural instinct to avoid the unknown works against our willingness to explore new sounds or genres. People might say they’re looking for new music, but they’re often hesitant to embrace unfamiliar tunes or albums, especially those from genres they’ve never encountered before. This instinctual preference for familiarity can make it harder for us to enjoy music that feels foreign or dissonant. New music often requires more cognitive effort to process, and our brains are wired to seek out what we already know. This is why some people may find it unpleasant to simply listen to a new album, especially one that is of a new genre the listener is unfamiliar with. 

On the other hand we like things that are familiar to us. For example, a dog placed in a room with its current owner who may beat the dog and a stranger, the dog will choose to go to the aggressive owner, rather than the stranger. Even though the owner is not a good one, it’s all the dog knows and we prefer what we know over what we don’t know out of the fear that the new one could be even worse than what we know. On a more positive note, this is also shown through skin to skin contact. After a woman gives birth to a baby, doctors will place the newborn on the mothers chest. As stated by the Baby Friendly Initiative, this “regulates the baby’s heart rate and breathing, helping them to better adapt to life outside the womb.” Both the baby’s and the mothers stress goes down with skin to skin contact because both mother and baby are used to constant contact from when the baby was in the womb. They are familiar with the touch and even smell of each other so it calms both of them to be with what they know. The same thing happens when we listen to music that is familiar to us, we feel comforted by familiarity. It lights up a part of our brain and engages the neural pathways that are comforted by familiarity and causes us to enjoy music that is familiar to us far more than music that is new.

Now it may be said that this can’t be true because people and animals do and try new things all the time or else we’d all be stuck in some strange time loop, doing the same things over and over again for all eternity. However, this argument has a few holes. While yes, we may occasionally try something completely new, it is much more likely that we try something that may be new to us but we have seen other people do or try the same thing. This is smart from a biological perspective because if one neanderthal saw another eating something and dying because of it, we would rightly stay away from said food. Similarly, if a neanderthal saw another eat something and be fine or enjoy it, we would be much more likely to try it although it may be new to us. This applies to music choice because we may be more likely to listen to music that friends say they listen to, but this still exudes a sense of familiarity. For example, maybe the friend plays it in their car or occasionally hums the tune, either way, knowing someone that we know and like listens to a certain type of music makes us more likely to listen to it.

This is also seen in the way genres come and go over time. If people truly loved songs just for what they were then we would see much more diversity in song type. However, we see an almost generational shift of genre come and go over time. Popular songs are created by sounding like other songs of the same genre. You may hear an older person say that music nowadays all sounds the same, (and vice versa from a younger generation to an older) and that may have more truth than we realize. “We show that although consumers say they would prefer to listen to unfamiliar music, in actuality familiarity with music positively predicts preference for songs, play lists, and radio stations.” Songs that sound similar to other songs we normally listen to influences our music choice. And others are even able to predict what we will choose to listen to by what we already do listen to, which disproves the whole new music idea.

People may also say that they have listened to a new song or album and loved it immediately. However, this could be for a plethora of reasons. For example, it could be a popular song at the time so it has been played a lot on popular radio stations or in public places. Or, it could have similar characteristics to other songs like the same chord progression, (The way Memories by Maroon 5 has the same chord sequence as Canon in D) or is simply representative of the popular genre at the time.

In conclusion, our preference for familiar music is deeply rooted in our evolutionary biology. The tendency to avoid the unfamiliar and stick with what we know has been beneficial for survival, but it also influences our music preferences. While we may occasionally explore new genres or artists, we are more likely to embrace music that feels familiar, whether through personal experience, peer recommendation, or cultural trends. This preference for familiarity explains why people often gravitate toward songs and genres that resemble the music they already know and love. As a result, even in a world flooded with new music, we continue to return to the comfort and predictability of the familiar.

Links 

“Skin-to-skin contact – Baby Friendly Initiative” Skin-to-skin contact. 9 December 2024. 16 November 2024.

“Music and Emotions in the Brain: Familiarity Matters | PLOS ONE” Salimpoor, V. N., Benovoy, M., Longo, G. L., Cooperstock, J. R., & Zatorre, R. J. (2011). Music and emotions in the brain: Familiarity matters. PLOS ONE, 6(10), e25738.