Emotion modulation by means of music and coping behaviour

Abstract

A large number of previous studies provide support for the proposition that listening to music not only influences the listener's current subjective emotional state, but is also associated with peripheral physiological changes which are taken to be the indicators of a central emotional stimulus processing mechanism (McFarland and Kennison 1989, Sloboda 1991, Vaitl et al. 1993, Krumhansl 1997, Nyklicek et al. 1997, Schubert 2001, 2004). Whereas it was long held that subjectively experienced emotional states are the result of a cognitive evaluation of existing environmental stimuli (Schachter and Singer 1962, Schachter 1964, Lazarus and Folkman 1984, Lazarus 1991), we now know that a reaction to emotional stimuli can take place even without the primary participation of higher cortical structures (LeDoux 1992, 1994, 2000, Cardinal et al. 2002, Zald 2003). Furthermore, the development of new imaging techniques has enabled us to establish that listening to music not only affects neocortical structures which are responsible for analysis and synthesis (Tramo 2001, Griffiths 2003), but is also connected with the activation of subcortical centres which are closely associated with the processing of positive and negative stimuli (z.B. Blood et al. 1999, Blood and Zatorre 2001, Panksepp and Bernatzky 2002, Brown et al. 2004). This provides good grounds to suppose that music represents an important means of influencing mood and emotions, so that listening to music in daily life is of great significance for many people (Rentfrow and Gosling 2003, Altenmüller and Kopiez 2005). Thus both the qualitative studies performed by DeNora (1999, 2000, 2001) and Hays and Minichiello (2005) and a number of quantitatively orientated studies (North and Heargreaves 1996, Heargreaves and North 1999, Sloboda et al. 2001, Sloboda and O'Neill 2001, Pickles 2003, North et al. 2004, Juslin and Laukka 2004, Vorderer and Schramm 2004, Hays and Minichiello 2005) reveal that music is actively implemented in order (a) to modulate emotions and moods, (b) to promote the ability to concentrate and focus attention and (c) to generate or maintain social relationships. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Vienna.