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).

Mood regulation and music

On the 7th of November 2008, I gave a presentation at the RNCM in Manchester at the conference Music Health and Happiness. Due to the positive reactions and many emails being send to request more information I decided to provide the abstract on this blog. If you have any further questions do not hesitate to contact me.

Music is not simply a source of enjoyment or recreation; it can also affect health and psychological well-being. In particular, music can regulate emotions and moods, and there is evidence that people deliberately and regularly use it for this purpose. Mood regulation is generally considered as one of the most important skills one needs to possess in order to function in a healthy adaptive way (Larsen 2000). It has been demonstrated that people who do not know how to regulate their affect are more likely to suffer from psychological and social problems than people who do. It has also been shown in several studies that music is one of the most widely used ways to regulate mood in everyday life (e.g. Thayer, Newman and McClain, 1994). However, it has yet to be precisely established how music contributes to this regulation, and which moods are in fact regulated. In previous studies of this project it was indicated that music as a tactic might serve mood regulation strategies. For example, it can help a person to become distracted from a prevailing emotion or a difficult situation, to relax, to think rationally, or to vent emotions. It was therefore expected that participants would report to use music for a wide variety of strategies, situations as well as moods. Due to the explorative character of the study, no hypotheses were made. To discover the exact way in which music helps people to regulate their mood, a diary study followed by interviews was conducted. A total of 44 participants wrote down details about their daily music listening episodes during a period of one week, and then took part in an in-depth semi structured interview to explain more about the effect of the music on their mood, and the exact working of the music to help the different strategies. Key results will be presented in this paper. Preliminary analysis has shown that people indeed use music to regulate a large variety of moods in a large variety of situations. It was found that music is used in an often complex way, involving a wide variety of strategies. In many occasions people use several strategies simultaneously or in a sequential order. The data help explain how even sad music and sadness can contribute to happiness, and they also show that individuals can learn from mood regulation attempts that did not have the desired effect. The findings of the study will be evaluated for their potential to inform interventions which could help people to further develop their mood regulation skills through the use of music.

Larsen, R.J. (2000), Toward a Science of Mood Regulation. Psychological Inquiry, 11 [3], 129-141. Thayer, R.E., Newman, J.R., and McClain, T.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.