My Thesis on Affect regulation in everyday life

I have now printed my thesis in a little book according to Dutch tradition. If you would like a copy, you can contact me (I will ask you to contribute to the costs of the book).

Abstract

The ability to regulate affect has widely been recognized as being crucial for a healthy psychological life. Although existing literature provided a focus on affect regulation strategies such as reappraisal, more specific tactics such as listening to music had also previously been defined. However, the difference between the levels on which affect regulation can occur had not been clearly recognized in the literature. Nevertheless, it had been suggested that music listening was a potentially widely used and effective tactic.

The aim of this thesis was to demonstrate how affect regulation can be studied in everyday life, including four levels of analysis of a newly proposed framework: goals, strategies, tactics, and underlying mechanisms (the GSTM framework). To demonstrate the use of this framework music listening in everyday life for affect regulation was investigated. A mixed method design was used including a literature study, two survey studies, a diary study with follow-up semi-structured interviews, and finally a diary-based intervention study. All participants were recruited at a university in the Midlands, UK, with the majority being young adults. Participants had no specific musical background and were not known to have experienced psychological problems.

The thesis generated a list of reliably judged strategies which were found to be used in everyday life (relaxation, distraction, active coping, rational thinking, venting, and introspection), and demonstrated that music listening is used more often than, and for a wider range of strategies than any other tactic. Different underlying mechanisms of music were discovered showing not only musical features but also factors such as memories and music-unrelated activities as being responsible for the ways in which music helped to regulate affect. The results illustrated how participants regulated strong affects by using a stepwise approach, whereas participants reporting unsuccessful regulation attempts often attempted to regulate their affect all at once. Participants were able to include more music listening in their affect regulation habits when requested. In addition, other widely used tactics were established, opening up avenues for further research. This thesis has established the important role of music listening for affect regulation purposes, and demonstrated that it is possible to investigate the operation of affect regulation in everyday life including every level of analysis through an everyday life design.

Psychologie magazine

In het februari nummer van psychologie magazine staat een artikel over zielige muziek en waarom mensen deze muziek graag luisteren (Om te huilen zo mooi- door Manon Sikkel). Ik heb meegewerkt aan dat artikel, en via deze link kun je mijn top drie van zielige muziek beluisteren en lezen waarom dat mijn top drie is. De link van Gerard van Maasakkers is trouwens niet Gerard van Maasakkers zelf. En via deze link kun je ook andere top drie lijstjes van muziek, boeken en films bekijken. Kleine kanttekening bij het stuk is dat uiteraard ook de muziek zelf emoties opwekt (en zelfs belangrijk is), maar dat daarnaast ook de persoonlijke associaties belangrijk zijn (het zijn dus zeker niet alleen de persoonlijke associaties die een rol spelen).

In the February edition of the Dutch "psychology magazine" an article was written about sad music and why people listen to sad music (written by Manon Sikkel). I was interviewed for this article. Through this link you can listen to my top three of sad music pieces. The explanation of why this music appears in my top three is in Dutch, so if you have any questions about that, please ask. Through this link you can find other top three lists of books, movies and music.

Handbook of Music and Emotion

I would like to point out the forthcoming publication of the book : Handbook of Music and Emotion by Juslin and Sloboda.

My supervisor John Sloboda and his colleague Patrik Juslin made an up-to-date version of their book Music and Emotion, which does not only elaborate in the already existing chapters, but also has some new chapters in it. Especially Chapter 4 about the psychological perspectives and the newly added Chapter 18 on Music in Everyday Life are very interesting in respect to my work. And for those who like to know, reference is made to my research in these chapters.

This book will become available around the 17th of December.

Music's ability to express and arouse emotions is a mystery that has fascinated both experts and laymen at least since ancient Greece. The predecessor to this book, Music and Emotion (OUP, 2001) was critically and commercially successful and stimulated much further work in this area. In the years since the publication of that book, empirical research in this area has blossomed, and the successor to Music and Emotion reflects the considerable activity in this area.
The Handbook of Music and Emotion offers an 'up-to-date' account of this vibrant domain. It provides comprehensive coverage of the many approaches that may be said to define the field of music and emotion, in all its breadth and depth.

Everyone is musically skilled

I would like to point out this book written by my former teacher and now colleague in the world of music psychology: Henkjan Honing.
The book is in Dutch and translates as: Everyone is musically skilled: What we know about listening to music. The English version will not be available for another year, but for Dutch people it is certainly worth looking into now. The book is available here.

The Muppets

I love the Muppets, and since it is music, I think it is allright to include a fun video for once.

Sad in a nice way- update where to find

The contribution I made to Hear here from Classic FM is not as easy to find anymore. Please click here to go to the page where the contributions of our research group can be found. Then just click on the story: sad in a nice way. Of course the other contributions are worth checking out as well!

ISRE

From the 6-8Th of August 2009 I attended the bi-annual meeting of ISRE. Besides the many wonderful talks, I will mostly remember all the nice people I met, and the interesting conversations I had.

I presented a poster at this conference and will include the abstract below. If you are interested in a handout, please do not hesitate to ask me.

This paper will articulate an undertheorised distinction between general affect regulation strategies and the tactics people adopt in everyday life to effect these strategies (Parkinson and Totterdell, 1999). Although some research hints at this distinction (Parkinson and Totterdell, 1999; Carver, Scheier and Weintraub, 1989), there is insufficient conceptual clarity, with different levels of activity often all being described as strategies. The present research takes the view that concrete tactics like taking a shower, and listening to music are at a different level to more abstract strategies like distraction and reappraisal. The former are the specific means to achieve the latter. It is suggested that location, situation and personal preference define which tactic is used for which strategy. To give substance to this proposal an empirical study was conducted, for which the most extensive list of strategies so far proposed was combined with a similar number of tactics derived from Parkinson and Totterdell’s 1999 study. Participants were asked to discriminate the items and, on basis of their judgment, a set of reliably judged strategies and tactics were identified. Participants demonstrated that they understand the difference between strategies and tactics. 24 of the 100 items were agreed by most participants to be strategies, and 23 were agreed to be tactics. This data provides confirmation of a robust and generally applicable distinction between these two levels of description. Thus, the same activity can be described both at strategic level (e.g. distraction) and at tactical level (listening to music as a means to distraction).