Don’t let me down: The effect of age and chosen music on mood is moderated by focus on emotions

Scoping Review on the Use of Music for Emotion Regulation

With increasing interest in the emotional responses to music, some studies are specifically looking into music's regulatory function on emotion, known as "music emotion regulation (MER)". The purpose of this study was to examine the concepts on the regulatory impact of music on emotion using a scoping review procedure. Through an electronic database and manual searches based on the guidelines suggested by the JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis, a total of 47 studies were identified and included for analysis. The results showed that there were some definitional challenges in each component of music emotion regulation. Most studies treated music as a single variable without exploring the regulatory mechanism of the intra-musical elements that constitute music. When examining the regulatory impact of music on emotion, emotion was inclusive of other terms ranging from feeling to mood. Most of the MER studies employed the terms used in the emotion regulation strategies; however, there were some regulatory processes that pertained solely to music's cathartic effect. Overall, the results showed that music emotion regulation (MER) was not clearly distinguished from music emotion (ME) studies. Future research should allocate more attention to the theoretical mechanism behind music's intrinsic regulatory effect in emotion regulation (MER) studies.

Does music heal? Opera and the mood of people over 50 years of age

The authors of this work, noticing that opera is a combination of music and theater, examined the relationship between listening to opera music and mood changes in people over 50 years of age. The study took the form of a quasi-experiment. Recipients were invited to the previously prepared room, where the audiovisual material – a recording of the opera “La Traviata” – was presented for the first time. This was preceded by the respondents completing the SUPIN C30 and S30 questionnaires and a short survey by the authors. After the presentation of the stimulus, the subjects again filled in the SUPIN S30 questionnaire scale and the GEMS scale. The described procedure was carried out twice, using two different music materials. The procedure remained unchanged, while the audiovisual material changed. The second time, the participants were presented with a recording from the opera “The Barber of Seville”. The participants of the study were 30 people. In the studied group, there are no significant changes in emotional states in response to the opera “La Traviata”. In turn, the opera “The Barber of Seville” has no effect on a positive emotional state. Instead, it caused a statistically significant change in the level of negative emotional states. The results of this study are largely consistent with the results of other studies examining the relationship between music and mood, but there are also limitations – only two pieces of opera music were used and no control group was included. Research has shown that opera, as a specific musical genre, despite its peculiar form, affects mood and emotions.

Sound Healing: Mood, Emotional, and Spiritual Well-Being Interrelationships

Psychosocial stress, tension, and depression are quite common in many parts of the developed world. Integrative medicine techniques which may potentially increase spiritual and emotional well-being may be useful in combating chronic psychosocial stress, as well as challenges with depression and excessive tension. The present observational study examines the effect of singing-bowl sound healing on emotional and spiritual well-being and particularly examines interrelationships between changes in spiritual well-being with changes in tension and depressed mood post-sound healing. Participants experienced a sound healing environment of vibrational musical instruments such as singing bowls (bell-like instruments), gongs, and other vibrational instruments. Sixty-two participants were examined in an observational study using singing-bowl sound healing. Emotional and spiritual well-being were examined by utilizing standardized questionnaires. Results revealed significant correlations between improvements in scores of spiritual well-being and reductions in scores of tension and depression post-sound healing. Moreover, effects varied by age of the study participants. Specifically, the association between spiritual well-being improvement and depression improvement was strongest for ages 31–40, while spiritual well-being improvement and tension improvement associations were strongest for ages 51–60. Implications for applying sound healing meditations as a potential low-cost, low-technology therapeutic technique are discussed for emotional and spiritual well-being.

Music as a factor associated with emotional self-regulation: A study on its relationship to age during COVID-19 lockdown in Spain

The purpose of this research is to reveal the possible relational influence of age on frequency and form of music consumption, its use, and value as a factor associated with emotional self-regulation in pandemic contexts. With this objective, this study applied a transversal, descriptive and analytical design in a sample of 1377 Spaniards during the confinement of COVID-19 from March 14 to June 20, 2020. The results report that music has been an essential generalized support for living with isolation and a powerful instrument for emotional self-regulation and relief from loneliness. Although an increase of 56% in the daily use of music for self-regulation of emotions was detected, higher frequencies of consumption, mainly in solitude, and a better conception of this artistic expression are identified in the population over 51 years old. However, young people between 18 and 40 years old stood out in the use of music as a resource to alleviate loneliness. These results confirm that music seems to have arisen as one of the most used artistic expressions to cope with loneliness, to relate to the outside or as a tool to endure psychological and emotional states catalogued as negative such as anxiety, anguish and depression, among others. Likewise, they evidence its role in personal and social wellbeing in distant age ranges, and the relational influence of music and age in contexts of isolation and loneliness.