Music is a common means for regulating affective states in everyday life, but little is known about the individual differences in this behaviour. We investigated affective reactions to musical stimuli as an explanatory factor. Forty-four young adults rated self-selected music regarding perceived and felt emotions, preference, pleasantness and beauty. The ratings were reduced into five factors representing affective response tendencies. The participants also filled in the Music in Mood Regulation (MMR) questionnaire assessing seven music-related mood regulation strategies in everyday life. High beauty and pleasantness ratings for liked music correlated with the use of music for inducing strong emotional experiences, while ratings reflecting high agreement with the emotional content of preferred musical stimuli correlated with using music as a means for dealing with personal negative emotions. Regarding musical background, informal engagement through listening, but not formal musical training, correlated with increased use of music for mood regulation. The results clarify the link between the affective reactivity to music and the individual ways of using music as a tool for emotional self-regulation in everyday life.
BehneK. (1997). The development of “Musicerleben” in adolescence: How and why young people listen to music. In DeliégeI.SlobodaJ. A. (Eds.), Perception and Cognition of Music (pp. 143–159). Hove, UK: Psychology Press.
2.
BigandE.Poulin-CharronnatB. (2006). Are we “experienced listeners”? A review of the musical capacities that do not depend on formal musical training. Cognition, 100, 100–130.
3.
BigandE.VieillardS.MadurellF.MarozeauJ.DacquetA. (2005). Multidimensional scaling of emotional responses to music: The effect of musical expertise and of the duration of the excerpts. Cognition and Emotion, 27, 1113–1139.
4.
BloodA. J.ZatorreR. J. (2001). Intensely pleasurable responses to music correlate with activity in brain regions implicated in reward and emotion. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 98, 11818–11823.
5.
BratticoE.PallesenK. J.VaryaginaO.BaileyC.AnourovaI.JarvenpaaM.. . .TervaniemiM. (2009). Neural discrimination of nonprototypical chords in music experts and laymen: An MEG study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 21, 2230–2244.
6.
Chamorro-PremuzicT.Gomà-i-FreixanetM.FurnhamA.MuroA. (2009). Personality, self-estimated intelligence, and uses of music: A Spanish replication and extension using structural equation modeling. Psychology of Aesthetics,Creativity and the Arts, 3(3), 149–155.
7.
ColeP. M.MartinS. E.DennisT. A. (2004). Emotion regulation as a scientific construct: Methodological challenges and directions for child development research. Child Development, 75, 317–333.
8.
EisenbergN.SpinradT. L. (2004). Emotion-related regulation: Sharpening the definition. Child Development, 75, 334–339.
9.
FilipicS.TillmannB.BigandE. (2010). Judging familiarity and emotion from very brief musical excerpts. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 17(3), 335–341.
10.
GabrielssonA. (2001–2002). Emotion perceived and emotion felt: Same or different?Musicae Scientiae, Special Issue, 123–147.
11.
GabrielssonA. (2010). Strong experiences with music. In JuslinP. N.SlobodaJ. A. (Eds.), Handbook of Music and Emotion - Theory, Research, Applications (pp. 547–574). Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press
12.
GreasleyA. E. (2008). Engagement with music in everyday life: An in-depth study of adults’ musical preferences and listening behaviours (Unpublished PhD thesis). University of Keele, UK.
13.
GreasleyA. E.LamontA. (2011). Exploring engagement with music in everyday life using experience sampling methodology. Musicae Scientiae, 15(1), 45–71.
14.
GrossJ. J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2, 271–299.
15.
IstokE.BratticoE.JacobsenT.KrohnK.MullerM.TervaniemiM. (2009) Aesthetic responses to music: A questionnaire study. Musicae Scientiae, 13(2) 183–206.
16.
JuslinP. N.LaukkaP. (2004). Expression, perception, and induction of musical emotions: A review and a questionnaire study of everyday listening. Journal of New Music Research, 33, 217–238.
17.
KreutzG.SchubertE.MitchellL. (2008). Cognitive styles of music listening. Music Perception, 26(1), 57–73.
18.
LehmannA. C. (1997). Affective response to everyday life events and music listening. Psychology of Music, 25(1), 84–90.
19.
MatudM. P. (2004). Gender differences in stress and coping styles. Personality and Individual Differences, 37(7), 1401–1415.
20.
MayerJ. D.SaloveyP. (1997). What is emotional intelligence? In SaloveyP.SluyterD. (Eds.), Emotional development and emotional intelligence: Implications for educators (pp. 3–31). New York, NY: Basic Books.
21.
MayerJ. D.SaloveyP.CarusoD. (2000). Models of emotional intelligence. In SternbergR. J. (Ed.), Handbook of intelligence (pp. 396–420). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
22.
McDonaldC.StewartL. (2008). Uses and functions of music in congenital amusia. Music Perception, 25, 345–355.
23.
MulderJ.Ter BogtT.RaaijmakersQ.VolleberghW. (2007). Music taste groups and problem behavior. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 36, 313–324.
24.
MüllerM.HöfelL.BratticoE.JacobsenT. (2009a). Aesthetic judgments of music in experts and laypersons – An ERP study. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 76: 40–51.
25.
MüllerM.HöfelL.BratticoE.JacobsenT. (2009b). Electrophysiological correlates of aesthetic music processing: Comparing music experts with music laypersons. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1169, 355–358.
26.
NorthA. C.HargreavesD. J.O’NeillS. A. (2000). The importance of music to adolescents. British Journal of Education Psychology, 70, 255–272.
27.
OikawaM. (2002) Distraction as an intervention for depression: The distraction process. Japanese Journal of Education Psychology, 50(2), 185–192.
28.
PallesenK. J.BratticoE.BaileyC.KorvenojaA.KoivistoJ.GjeddeA.CarlsonS. (2005). Emotion processing of major, minor, and dissonant chords: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1060, 450–453.
29.
ParkinsonB.TotterdellP. (1999). Classifying affect-regulation strategies. Cognition and Emotion, 13, 277–303.
30.
PelletierC. L. (2004). The effect of music on decreasing arousal due to stress: A meta-analysis. Journal of Music Therapy, 16, 192–214.
31.
PereiraC.TeixeiraJ.FigueiredoP.XavierJ.CastroS. L.BratticoE. (2011). Music and emotions in the brain: Familiarity matters. PLoS ONE, 6, e27241.
32.
PeretzI.BratticoE.JärvenpääM.TervaniemiM. (2009). The amusic brain: In tune, out of key, and unaware. Brain, 132, 1277–1286.
33.
RoelofsJ.RoodL.MeestersC.TeDorsthorstV.BögelsS.AlloyL.B.Nolen-HoeksemaS. (2009). The influence of rumination and distraction on depressed and anxious mood: A prospective examination of the response styles theory in children and adolescents. European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 18(10), 635–642.
34.
RussellJ. A. (1980) A circumplex model of affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(6), 1161–1178.
35.
RustingC. L.DeHartT. (2000) Retrieving positive memories to regulate negative mood: Consequences for mood-congruent memory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(4), 737–752.
36.
SaloveyP.MayerJ. D.GoldmanS. L.TurveyC.PalfaiT. P. (1995). Emotional attention, clarity, and repair: Exploring emotional intelligence using the trait meta-mood scale. In PennebakerJ. W. (Ed), Emotion, disclosure, and health (pp. 125–154). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
37.
SaarikallioS. (2006). Differences in adolescents’ use of music in mood regulation. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, 22–26 August 2006, Bologna, Italy.
38.
SaarikallioS. (2008). Music in mood regulation: Initial scale development. Musicae Scientiae, 12, 291–309.
39.
SaarikallioS. (2011). Music-related emotional self-regulation across adulthood years. Psychology of Music, 39(3), 307–327.
40.
SaarikallioS.ErkkiläJ. (2007). The role of music in adolescents’ mood regulation. Psychology of Music, 35, 88–109.
41.
SaarikallioS.LöytynojaK. (2010). Connections between music-related emotional self-regulation and general emotionality. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (ICMPC) (pp. 449–453) 23–27 August 2010, Seattle, WA, USA.
42.
SchneiderP.SchergM.DoschH. G.SpechtH. J.GutschalkA.RuppA. (2002). Morphology of Heschl’s gyrus relflects enhanced activation in the auditory cortex of musicians. Nature Neuroscience, 5(7), 688–694.
43.
SchubertE. (2007). The influence of emotion, locus of emotion and familiarity upon preference in music. Psychology of Music, 35, 499–515.
44.
SlobodaJ. A. (1992). Empirical studies of emotional response to music. In JonesM. R.HolleranS. (Eds.), Cognitive bases of musical communication (pp. 33–46). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
45.
SlobodaJ. A.O’NeillS. A. (2001). Emotions in everyday listening to music. In JuslinP. N.SlobodaJ. A. (Eds): Music and Emotion: Theory and Research (pp. 415–429). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
46.
SlobodaJ. A.LamontA.GreasleyA. (2009). Choosing to hear music: Motivation, process and effect. In HallamS.CrossI.ThautM. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Music Psychology (pp. 431–440). New York, NY: OUP.
47.
ThayerR. E.NewmanJ. R.McClainT. M. (1994). Self-regulation of mood: Strategies for changing a bad mood, raising energy, and reducing tension. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 910–925.
48.
VanGoethemA.SlobodaJ. (2011). The functions of music for affect regulation. Musicae Scientiae, 15, 208–228.
49.
VuoskoskiJ. K.ThompsonW. F.McIlwainD.EerolaT. (in press). Who listens to sad music and why?Music Perception.
50.
ZentnerM.GrandjeanD.SchererK. R. (2008). Emotions evoked by the sound of music: Characterization, classification, and measurement. Emotion, 8, 494–521.
