The Role of Music in Everyday Life During the First Wave of the Coronavirus Pandemic : A Mixed-Methods Exploratory Study
Although music is known to be a part of everyday life and a resource for mood and emotion management, everyday life has changed significantly for many due to the global coronavirus pandemic, making the role of music in everyday life less certain. An online survey in which participants responded to Likert scale questions as well as providing free text responses was used to explore how participants were engaging with music during the first wave of the pandemic, whether and how they were using music for mood regulation, and how their engagement with music related to their experiences of worry and anxiety resulting from the pandemic. Results indicated that, for the majority of participants, whi…
Emotions experienced in relation to nominally sad music
“I hate this part right here”: Embodied, subjective experiences of listening to aversive music
Although the majority of previous research on music-induced responses has focused on pleasurable experiences and preferences, it is undeniable that music is capable of eliciting strong dislike and aversion as well. To date, only limited research has been carried out to understand the subjective experience of listening to aversive music. This qualitative study explored people’s negative experiences associated with music listening, with the aim to understand what kinds of emotions, affective states, and physical responses are associated with listening to aversive music. One hundred and two participants provided free descriptions of (1) musical features of aversive music; (2) subjective physi…
An integrative review of the enjoyment of sadness associated with music
The recent surge of interest towards the paradoxical pleasure produced by sad music has generated a handful of theories and an array of empirical explorations on the topic. However, none of these have attempted to weigh the existing evidence in a systematic fashion. The present work puts forward an integrative framework laid out over three levels of explanation – biological, psycho-social, and cultural – to compare and integrate the existing findings in a meaningful way. First, we review the evidence pertinent to experiences of pleasure associated with sad music from the fields of neuroscience, psychophysiology, and endocrinology. Then, the psychological and interpersonal mechanisms underly…
A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2021, corrected publication 2022
Towards a more explicit account of the transformation: Reply to comments on "An integrative review of the enjoyment of sadness associated with music"
Our integrative framework for explaining the enjoyment of sadness associated with music sparked a delightful number (13) of commentaries which challenge, stimulate, strengthen and shape the ideas we initially put forward. Here we organize our response around five central themes brought up by several commentators. These relate to questions about (a) the nature of sad music, (b) whether music can induce genuine sadness, (c) details of the transformation, (d) music as a technology for emotion regulation, and (e) broader implications and extensions. nonPeerReviewed
Attitudes toward sad music are related to both preferential and contextual strategies.
Music-related sadness and its paradoxical pleasurable aspects have puzzled researchers for decades. Previous studies have highlighted the positive effects of listening to sad music and the listening strategies that focus on mood-regulation. The present study explored people’s attitudes toward sad music by focusing on a representative sample of the Finnish population. Three hundred and fifty-eight participants rated their agreement with 30 statements concerning attitudes toward sad music. The ratings were subjected to factor analysis, resulting in 6 factors explaining 51% of the variance (RMSEA = 0.049). The factors were labeled Avoidance, Autobiographical, Revival, Appreciation, Intersubjec…
Sharing experienced sadness : Negotiating meanings of self-defined sad music within a group interview session
Sadness induced by music listening has been a popular research focus in music and emotion research. Despite the wide consensus in affective sciences that emotional experiences are social processes, previous studies have only concentrated on individuals. Thus, the intersubjective dimension of musical experience – how music and music-related emotions are experienced between individuals – has not been investigated. In order to tap into shared emotional experiences, group discussions about experiences evoked by sad music were facilitated. Interpretative phenomenological analysis revealed four levels of discourses in the sharing of experiences evoked by joint music listening: (1) describing the…
”Lauluja surullisin sävelin elämästä luopumisesta” : musiikki kuoleman ja surun merkityksellistäjänä suomalaisten suremisessa ja siihen liittyvissä rituaaleissa
Musiikkia on käytetty kuolemaan liittyvissä rituaaleissa läpi ihmiskunnan historian. Musiikin avulla eri yhteisöt eri aikoina ja eri puolilla maailmaa ovat ilmaisseet menetyksen aiheuttamaa surua ja tarjonneet terapeuttista tukea menetyksestä selviämiseen. Monet käyttävät musiikkia säännöllisesti itsesäätelytarkoituksissa ja tunnetyöskentelyn apuvälineenä. Huolimatta siitä, että ihmisten tiedetään hakevan musiikista lohtua erityisesti vaikeiden elämäntilanteiden aikoihin, ei kuolemaan ja suremiseen liittyvää systemaattista musiikkipsykologian tutkimusta ole juurikaan tehty. Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena oli tarkastella musiikin merkityksiä ja funktioita kuolemaan liittyvissä elämäntilante…
Populaarimusiikkitoiminnassa koettu sukupuolittunut epäasiallisuus
Vuonna 2016 alkunsa saanut #MeToo-liike kiinnitti huomiota sukupuolitettuun vallankäyttöön ja seksuaaliseen häirintään historiallisella tavalla. Kyselytutkimukseen perustuva artikkeli valottaa tilannetta populaarimusiikin toimijoiden osalta ja selvittää, millaisia kokemuksia kyselyyn vastanneilla oli sukupuolitetusta epäasiallisuudesta. Tutkimus toteutettiin vuonna 2020, ja siihen vastasi 150 populaarimusiikin parissa toimivaa henkilöä. This article discusses gendered inappropriateness in Finnish popular music, particularly the experiences of those who currently work professionally in the field. The survey was an anonymised online survey with provided scaled questions and open-answer option…
Towards a more explicit account of the transformation
Memorable Experiences with Sad Music : Reasons, Reactions and Mechanisms of Three Types of Experiences
Reactions to memorable experiences of sad music were studied by means of a survey administered to a convenience (N = 1577), representative (N = 445), and quota sample (N = 414). The survey explored the reasons, mechanisms, and emotions of such experiences. Memorable experiences linked with sad music typically occurred in relation to extremely familiar music, caused intense and pleasurable experiences, which were accompanied by physiological reactions and positive mood changes in about a third of the participants. A consistent structure of reasons and emotions for these experiences was identified through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses across the samples. Three types of sadness …
Spatial and bodily metaphors in narrating the experience of listening to sad music
Abstract. This study focuses on the a ffective experiences of listening to self - identified sad music. Previous studies have concentrated on the emotions induced by music by r ationalizing and labelling emotions. However, focusing on such categorization leaves the subjective experiences of the individual aside. The aim of this article is to broaden the methodology of studying music and emotion by analyzing the metaphorical langu age used in the narratives about the subjective experience of listening to music. A total of 373 participants answered to open - ended questions about the experiences of listening to sad music via an online - survey. The responses were then analyzed using syst emat…
Building Worlds Together with Sound and Music : Imagination as an Active Engagement between Ourselves
By conforming to the enactive approach to human cognition, and by adopting the Tia DeNora’s concept of human–music interaction as an “in-action” perspective, Kai Tuuri and Henna-Riikka Peltola explore socially extended imagining with sounds and music. This is done through a question of how “shared places” of imagining with sound are established and maintained. Defining the activity of imagining as an essentially dynamic and generative process that takes place in a social reality, the authors propose that the processes of imagining are not only individual but also become exhibited and jointly engaged in social dialogues as well. By first discussing the theoretical foundations of this shared …
Tears evoke the intention to offer social support: A systematic investigation of the interpersonal effects of emotional crying across 41 countries
Tearful crying is a ubiquitous and likely uniquely human phenomenon. Scholars have argued that emotional tears serve an attachment function: Tears are thought to act as a social glue by evoking social support intentions. Initial experimental studies supported this proposition across several methodologies, but these were conducted almost exclusively on participants from North America and Europe, resulting in limited generalizability. This project examined the tears-social support intentions effect and possible mediating and moderating variables in a fully pre-registered study across 7007 participants (24,886 ratings) and 41 countries spanning all populated continents. Participants were prese…
Memorable Experiences with Sad Music : Reasons, Reactions and Mechanisms of Three Types of Experiences
Reactions to memorable experiences of sad music were studied by means of a survey administered to a convenience (N = 1577), representative (N = 445), and quota sample (N = 414). The survey explored the reasons, mechanisms, and emotions of such experiences. Memorable experiences linked with sad music typically occurred in relation to extremely familiar music, caused intense and pleasurable experiences, which were accompanied by physiological reactions and positive mood changes in about a third of the participants. A consistent structure of reasons and emotions for these experiences was identified through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses across the samples. Three types of sadness …
Taiteesta hyvinvointia, hyvinvoinnista taidetta?
Being moved by listening to unfamiliar sad music induces reward‐related hormonal changes in empathic listeners
Many people enjoy sad music, and the appeal for tragedy is widespread among the consumers of film and literature. The underlying mechanisms of such aesthetic experiences are not well understood. We tested whether pleasure induced by sad, unfamiliar instrumental music is explained with a homeostatic or a reward theory, each of which is associated with opposite patterns of changes in the key hormones. Sixty-two women listened to sad music (or nothing) while serum was collected for subsequent measurement of prolactin (PRL) and oxytocin (OT) and stress marker (cortisol and adrenocorticotropic hormone) concentrations. Two groups of participants were recruited on the basis of low and high trait e…
“The Kind of Music That Makes My Skin Crawl” : Disgust Associated with Musical Experiences
This chapter explores the affective aspects of aversive experiences relating to music listening. In music psychology research, there is a strong consensus that one of the most important reasons that people listen to music is to experience emotions, and that most music-evoked emotions are positively toned. Negative emotions, therefore, are often considered irrelevant in a musical context. However, although many people think music is fundamentally a positive and pleasurable phenomenon, it is also known to been purposely used for evoking unpleasant affective reactions, even for torture. Such accounts challenge the idea that music or music-induced experiences could be only positive or harmless …
Imagining between ourselves: a group interview approach in exploring listening experiences
In this paper listening experiences are explored through verbal interactions in a group interview situation. By focusing on (1) ordinary and (2) evocative modes of dealing with listening experiences, the present study investigated how imagination mediates between pre-reflective and reflective consciousness and how imagining is shared between persons. Analysis revealed that participants utilised both modes in their discussions for either music or everyday sound samples, although the ordinary mode was the dominant one. The evocative mode was utilised relatively more frequently with the music samples. Group dynamics had an effect on how the mental images and meanings were described and shared …
Toinen persoona musiikillisen kuuntelukokemuksen tutkimisessa
Fifty shades of blue : Classification of music-evoked sadness
It has been repeatedly shown that sad music induces mainly pleasant or mixed emotions, and is particularly relevant for self-regulation goals. However, this is not entirely compatible with the view that sadness is one of the basic emotions experienced in the face of an unpleasant event or a loss. Also, a distinction between grief and sadness is often drawn, which seemingly does not have relevance in relation to musical experiences. The discrepancy between the positive accounts of emotions associated with sad music and those present in ordinary sadness may be related to the previously unacknowledged spectrum of affects associated with music-related sadness. The present study aims to expose t…
Suomalaisten käyttämät tunnesanat musiikin esittämien ja herättämien emootioiden kuvaamisessa
Tutkittaessa niinkin abstraktia asiaa kuin tunteita ja ihmisten tunnekokemuksia tutkittavien äidinkieli on ratkaisevan tärkeässä roolissa. Kokemukset ylipäätään rakentuvat erilaisista merkitysverkoista, joiden välittäminen kuulijalle sellaisenaan ei onnistu ilman käytettävää kieltä, mikä taas puolestaan muokkaa väistämättä itse kokemusta. Suomalaisessa musiikin emootiotutkimuksessa ei ole erityisen hyvin vakiintunutta tunnesanastoa, ja kansainvälisen tutkimuksen termistö on luonnollisestikin englanninkielistä. Eri kielten tunteisiin viittaavat sanat eivät ole niin yhtenäisiä, että esimerkiksi englanti kävisi ongelmitta yhteismitalliseksi työvälineeksi sanastojen semantiikan erittelyssä, jot…