Individual differences and emotion regulation through music

Many individuals manipulate and change emotions using music. People may use different strategies to regulate emotions; some strategies may be adaptive in nature by producing positive emotions, or maladaptive, producing negative affect. Researchers have identified how different populations are likely to use music to regulate emotions and which strategies are commonly utilised by different groups of people. This is an active area of research, but no consensus has been achieved regarding the results of this field; thus, this thesis combines the data collected in previous studies into three meta-analyses, focussing on personality, mental health, and other demographics. A discussion of previous literature contextualises these results, focussing on other uses of music, namely cognitive and background uses, and genre preferences. Of the five traits of the Five-Factor Model of personality, neuroticism correlated the most with the regulation of emotions with a positive and medium-to-large correlation, suggesting that individuals with unstable emotions are more likely to regulate mood through music. Individuals with depression or stress are also likely to use music to regulate emotions with a small-to-medium correlation, further portraying that individuals with negative emotions are more likely to need to use regulatory strategies. Age negatively correlates with emotion regulation use with music, suggesting that as individuals get older, they are less likely to need to regulate emotions. This thesis recommends that the adaptive strategies reappraisal, the process of interpreting stressful situations in positive ways, and problem solving, adapting thought processes about stressful events, can be used in therapeutic settings as these techniques may change negative mood states into positive emotions, improving long-term subjective wellbeing. Future research is needed to focus on the effectiveness of applied emotion regulation through music on wellbeing, and whether certain genres of music in particular may help produce positive affect via music regulatory techniques