The Longing Lab
Do you ever find yourself so fixated on longing that you can’t enjoy the present? Longing for a lover, an exotic destination, a lost loved one, or a past time in your life? The Longing Lab takes a deeper look at the science of longing and the culture that drives us to long for what we don’t have. You can expect insightful conversations with individuals uniquely qualified to talk about longing. Host, Amanda McCracken, has written or spoken about her own addiction to longing in national publications like the New York Times, Washington Post, & the BBC. The goal of the Longing Lab is to inspire individuals to make positive changes in their lives. Look for her book, When Longing Becomes Your Lover (Hachette), in fall of 2025!
The Longing Lab
Dr. Ravin Alaei shares the connections between our favorite songs and our attachment styles
Episode 33 Dr. Ravin Alaei explores the relationship between music lyrics and attachment styles. In a study of 500 participants, lyrics of ~4,700 songs were analyzed to quantify avoidance, security, and anxiety. Results showed that people with avoidant attachment styles preferred songs with more avoidant lyrics, while those with secure attachment styles preferred more secure lyrics. Another study analyzed Billboard charts from 1949 to 2015, finding modern songs are more avoidant and less secure than older ones. The conversation also touches on the potential therapeutic value of music and songwriting, and the influence of music on attachment styles, particularly during formative years.
Dr. Ravin Alaei is family physician at Western University in Ontario, Canada. He received his doctorate in psychology from the University of Toronto. He was also the lead author on a study published in the Journal of Personal Relationships in September 2022 titled, “Individuals’ favorite songs’ lyrics reflect their attachment style.”
In this episode, (in order) we talked about:
*The different attachment styles
*The study he did that looked if individuals select songs based on their attachment styles
*The study that examined if recent Western popular music reflects the increasing individualism/avoidance Western culture has been experiencing
*How his research assistants coded song lyrics to be anxious, avoidant, or secure
*How both attachment styles and music preferences are developed in teen years
*Whether our attachment styles influence the songs we are drawn to or vice versa
*Certain music artists who have lyrics that are anxious, avoidant, or secure
*The impact of self-made breakup albums
*The tipping point between music being cathartic and being detrimental
Quotes
“What we found was that modern day songs are far more avoidant than older songs. They're far less secure than older songs, whereas anxiety has actually remained pretty steady across the years in terms of the West's most popular songs.”
“Instead of it being about the survey respondent, we just said, ‘How much do you think the protagonist in this song is expressing the need for self-reliance versus the need for the partner or longing for the partner or receiving the partner’s attention. So, it was the exact same scale you would use to find out an individual's attachment style.”
“So many songs from the past 20-30 years often will have some sort of insecure elements in them even if it is expressing security, at some points. It's tough to find a purely secure song from modern day music.”
“I would love to see the impacts that listening to songs from of a certain attachment style have on your ‘in the moment’ emotions and thoughts and expectations of relationships.”
“There is some research that songwriting is therapeutic. So, if there's a listener right now who is longing, consider songwriting or writing, writing it down into lyrics, seeing if you can express it in that way, because lyrics provide that space for you to do that and then that might be therapeutic for you. The second thing is to take a step back and really analyze the music that you're listening to and the message it's sending to you. See if you think that's helping you or being detrimental.”