Emotion regulation through listening to music in everyday situations

Music is a stimulus capable of triggering an array of basic and complex emotions. We investigated whether and how individuals employ music to induce specific emotional states in everyday situations for the purpose of emotion regulation. Furthermore, we wanted to examine whether specific emotion-regu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cognition and emotion 2012-04, Vol.26 (3), p.550-560
Main Authors: Thoma, Myriam V., Ryf, Stefan, Mohiyeddini, Changiz, Ehlert, Ulrike, Nater, Urs M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic Stimulation - methods
Acoustic Stimulation - psychology
Adult
Affectivity. Emotion
Auditory Perception
Biological and medical sciences
Choice Behavior
Cognition
Emotion regulation
Emotional regulation
Emotional situations
Emotional states
Emotions
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Listening
Male
Multidimensional scaling
Music
Music - psychology
Personality. Affectivity
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Scaling
Stimulus
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Summary:Music is a stimulus capable of triggering an array of basic and complex emotions. We investigated whether and how individuals employ music to induce specific emotional states in everyday situations for the purpose of emotion regulation. Furthermore, we wanted to examine whether specific emotion-regulation styles influence music selection in specific situations. Participants indicated how likely it would be that they would want to listen to various pieces of music (which are known to elicit specific emotions) in various emotional situations. Data analyses by means of non-metric multidimensional scaling revealed a clear preference for pieces of music that were emotionally congruent with an emotional situation. In addition, we found that specific emotion-regulation styles might influence the selection of pieces of music characterised by specific emotions. Our findings demonstrate emotion-congruent music selection and highlight the important role of specific emotion-regulation styles in the selection of music in everyday situations.
ISSN:0269-9931
1464-0600
DOI:10.1080/02699931.2011.595390