Music/Psychology

Music and psychology is a pairing that explores both what music is and what it does to us, bringing the technical, cultural and historical study of music into dialogue with the scientific investigation of perception, cognition, emotion and behaviour. Music as an academic discipline covers analysis, composition, performance, music history and the theoretical frameworks through which we understand musical structure and meaning. Psychology provides the empirical and theoretical tools to investigate human experience and behaviour, including how we process and respond to music, how musical ability develops and how music functions in social and therapeutic contexts.

At the University of Glasgow you will study across four years full-time, including a year abroad that broadens your intellectual and cultural horizons. You will encounter the technical and philosophical questions music raises, including its cultural and historical dimensions, alongside the full range of psychological enquiry from cognitive and developmental psychology to social and applied fields. In each year you will have a range of options in both music and other subjects, allowing you to design a pathway through the degree that reflects your particular interests and strengths.

This flexibility means you can develop genuine depth in the areas of the combination that matter most to you.

Graduates from music and psychology programmes work in music therapy, music education, the creative industries, arts administration, arts health, research and clinical psychology. The scientific grounding from psychology opens routes into clinical training, health research, user experience research and data analysis, while the music component is valuable in broadcasting, arts management, cultural organisations, performance and teaching. Many graduates pursue postgraduate study in music psychology, music therapy, clinical psychology, musicology or education, taking the interdisciplinary perspective the undergraduate degree develops into more specialist professional and research careers.