Because the data were self-reported and cross-sectional, the study cannot establish that singing or learning songs causes greater resilience, nor determine whether resilient people are more likely to participate in these traditions. The central construct in the survey was “cultural realization,” defined as a person’s subjective, evaluative and affective recognition of a folk-song tradition as personally meaningful, valued and continuous with ancestral practice. The researchers distinguished this appraisal from simply knowing about a song, taking part in performances, identifying with an ethnic group, feeling attached to a community or participating in preservation efforts.

A newly developed 12-item Cultural Realization Scale measured the construct on a seven-point response format. Participants also completed an established Chinese version of the 10-item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, an ethnic identity measure, a 13-item sense-of-coherence scale used as a proxy for meaning-making, and a new 10-item scale assessing the frequency, reciprocity and quality of elder–youth song teaching. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the five-factor measurement model.

All 51 observed indicators loaded significantly on their intended constructs, with loadings from 0.721 to 0.817, while the overall fit was strong: the comparative fit index and Tucker–Lewis index were both 0.997 and the root mean square error of approximation was 0.009. The new and adapted measures had internal-consistency coefficients between 0.90 and 0.95, and each construct met the Fornell–Larcker discriminant-validity criterion. These findings indicate that the instruments performed well within this sample, but they were developed and evaluated in the same participants used to test the broader model, making independent replication and validation across communities and language versions necessary.

Structural equation modelling showed a direct positive association between cultural realization and psychological resilience, with a standardized coefficient of 0.186. Two indirect statistical pathways were also supported. Cultural realization was associated with cultural identity at β = 0.416, and cultural identity was associated with resilience at β = 0.282, producing an indirect effect of 0.117 with a 95% confidence interval of 0.081 to 0.157.

The pathway through meaning-making was also positive: cultural realization was linked to sense of coherence at β = 0.336, and sense of coherence was linked to resilience at β = 0.233, yielding an indirect effect of 0.078 with a 95% confidence interval of 0.049 to 0.113. The total association between cultural realization and resilience was β = 0.381. These are statistical pathways, not demonstrated causal effects.

Intergenerational engagement appeared to strengthen the route from cultural realization to resilience through cultural identity. Participants reporting more frequent, reciprocal and higher-quality elder–youth teaching showed a stronger relationship between their appraisal of the song tradition and their cultural identity. The conditional indirect effect rose from 0.065 at low transmission engagement to 0.104 at the mean and 0.142 at high engagement.

The index of moderated mediation was 0.039, with a 95% confidence interval of 0.016 to 0.065. This does not prove that teaching causes resilience, but it shows that the statistical relationship between cultural realization, identity and resilience varied with reported engagement in intergenerational transmission. The interviews offered four complementary themes: song as ancestral dialogue, collective singing as a coping practice, elder–youth transmission as living pedagogy, and festivals as restorative but fragile communal spaces.

Participants described singing as a way of temporarily inhabiting an ancestor’s voice and locating themselves within a longer lineage. They also described call-and-response singing as a mechanism for sharing grief or worry. A woman from the Hui/Hua’er community in Linxia said that when another group answered her line after her husband’s death, “I felt the weight move.” A Miao elder in Taijiang offered a related collective interpretation: “When the harvest was poor, we would sing instead of complain; it was not the person’s fault.”

Transmission was not presented as a one-way transfer of information. Elders taught through embodied demonstration, correcting a participant’s breath or tone while singing, rather than only stating rules. Younger people sometimes described teachers in kinship terms such as “song-father” or “second grandmother,” indicating that the teaching relationship itself carried emotional and cultural significance.

One Dong youth in Liping recalled: “She did not say that the words were incorrect; she only sang the line for me, softly, and I remembered my mouth.” A Zhuang elder in Napo connected transmission with responsibility across generations: “If I don’t teach the young people, then the song has end with me. I have not let that happen.” Community cultural vitality was positively associated with resilience, with a level-two coefficient of 0.158 and p = 0.019, but it did not significantly change the relationship between individual cultural realization and resilience; the cross-level interaction was 0.035 with p = 0.398.

That null result remains inconclusive because the analysis included only six communities. Community and musical tradition were partly confounded, little variance in resilience was observed between sites, and the vitality measure combined festival frequency, heritage-language use and transmission institutions into a coarse site-level index. The interviews nevertheless emphasized the fragility of collective practice, including fewer youth attending festivals, reduced weekly gatherings and fewer singers able to perform some verses.

The authors caution that the interviews’ suggestion that vitality may function as a precondition rather than a linear moderator is a post hoc interpretation that the study could not test. The research has important boundaries. All quantitative findings came from self-reports, so social desirability and common-method bias cannot be excluded, and the cross-sectional design does not establish temporal order.

The study did not compare folk-song participation with other social or community activities, meaning the observed associations cannot be shown to be specific to music rather than general participation, support or belonging. It also did not separate the contributions of melody, rhythm, lyrics, vocal style, language, social interaction and ritual setting, so the specific features responsible for the reported associations remain unresolved. With only six sites, the multilevel estimates are imprecise; notably, the resilience–vitality association should be treated as tentative rather than established.

Younger participants’ reinterpretation and transformation of songs also remained outside the main analysis, and the findings should not be generalized automatically to other ethnic groups or traditions. The study’s term “indigenous” was used as an analytical description of long-established minority communities with distinctive languages, ancestral oral traditions and transmission institutions, not as an official legal category in China. Taken together, the findings identify culturally embedded correlates of resilience rather than proof that folk-song participation produces it.

The results nevertheless support a technically precise model in which cultural identity and meaning-making account for part of the association between meaningful engagement with folk-song heritage and psychological resilience, while active elder–youth transmission appears to condition the identity pathway.

Subject of Research: Associations between traditional folk-song engagement, cultural identity, intergenerational transmission and psychological resilience in Chinese ethnic minority communities

Article Title: From cultural realization to psychological resilience: traditional Chinese folk songs, well-being, and intergenerational knowledge transmission in indigenous ethnic minority communities

Article References: Tang, H. (2026). From cultural realization to psychological resilience: traditional Chinese folk songs, well-being, and intergenerational knowledge transmission in indigenous ethnic minority communities. Frontiers in Psychology, 17, Article 1977815. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1977815

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1977815

Keywords: folk songs, psychological resilience, cultural identity, meaning-making, intergenerational transmission, Chinese minority communities, collective singing, mixed-methods research, intangible cultural heritage, cultural, realization, psychological