The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of families in the United States and across the world, impacting parent mental health and stress, and in turn, the parent-child relationship. Music is a common parent-child activity and has been found to positively impact relationships, but little is known about music’s role in parent-child interactions during a pandemic. The current study utilized an online questionnaire to assess the use of music in the home of young children and their parents (...) in the United States and Canada during Covid-19 and its relationship with parents’ affective attachment with their child. Musical activity was high for both parents and children. Parents reported using music for both emotion regulation and to socially connect with their children. Parent-child musical engagement was associated with parent-child attachment, controlling for relevant parent variables including parent distress, efficacy, education, and parent-child engagement in non-musical activities. These results indicate that music may be an effective tool for building and maintaining parent-child relationships during a period of uncertainty and change. (shrink)

Sense of agency refers to the ability to influence one’s functioning and environment, relating to self-efficacy and wellbeing. In youth, agency may be challenged by external demands or redefinition of self-image. Music, having heightened relevance for the young, has been argued to provide feelings of self-agency for them. Yet, there is little empirical research on how music impacts adolescents’ daily sense of agency. The current study investigated whether music listening influences adolescents’ perceived agency in everyday life and which individual and (...) contextual determinants would explain such an influence. Participants were 44 adolescents (48% female, 36% with training in music, mean age 14), recruited through local schools. The mobile Experience Sampling app MuPsych was used to collect brief self-reports of personal music listening experiences during daily life. This method assessed the change in the listener’s perceived control over both their emotional states (Internal Agency), and their external environment (External Agency), over five minutes of music listening. Also measured were changes in mood states, and contextual variables (social situation, concurrent activity, and reason for listening). The impact of music on the sense of agency was analyzed using multilevel structural equation modelling. There was no general increase of agency across all music episodes, but agency fluctuations were determined by specific individual and contextual factors. Music training predicted increases in both internal and external agency during music listening, and external agency increased more for male participants. Certain context features such as listening alone, paying attention to music, and listening for enjoyment were related to greater increases in agency. Increases in agency significantly correlated with increases in mood valence. Our findings confirmed the plasticity and situational embeddedness of the sense of agency. Music indeed can support agency, but the impact is dependent on specific individual and contextual factors. Sense of agency can be seen as a health resource and significant part of youth development, and current findings provide new insight into when and by whom such affordance is likely to be employed. (shrink)

Day-to-day life is inundated with attempts to control emotions and a wealth of research has examined what strategies people use and how effective these strategies are. However, until more recently, research has often neglected more basic questions such as whether and how people choose to regulate their emotions (i.e. emotion regulation choice). In an effort to identify what we know and what we need to know, we systematically reviewed studies that examined potential determinants of whether and how people choose to (...) regulate their emotions. Eighteen determinants were identified across 219 studies and were categorised as being affective, cognitive, motivational, individual or social-cultural in nature. Where there were sufficient primary studies, meta-analysis was used to quantify the size of the associations between potential determinants and measures of whether and how people choose to regulate their emotions. Based on the findings, we propose that people’s decisions about whether and how to regulate their emotions are determined by factors relating to the individual doing the regulating, the emotion that is being regulated, and both the immediate situation and the broader social context in which the regulation is taking place. (shrink)

The situational context within which an activity takes place, as well as the personality characteristics of individuals shape the types of strategies people choose in order to regulate their emotions, especially when confronted with challenging or undesirable situations. Taking self-regulation as the framework to study emotions in relation to learning and performing chamber music canon repertoire, this quasi-experimental and intra-individual study focused on the self-rated emotional states of a professional classical cellist during long-term sustained practice across 100-weeks. This helped to (...) develop greater awareness of different emotions and how they vary over artistic events. Data analysis included traditional psychometric measurements to test the internal consistency of the time series data as well as the relationship between variables. The study mapped the cellist’s flexible regulation of 17 different positive and negative emotions empirically linked to learning and achievement while practicing within the social context of performing music publicly at a high level. Findings arising from the study help with understandings of how to support musicians to maximize their artistic potential by reducing emotion dysregulation and strengthening the types of adaptive methods that enable them to manage their own emotions. (shrink)

Music has strong emotional powers. How are we to understand affective responses to music? What does music teach us about emotions? Why are musical emotions important? Despite the rich literature in philosophy and the empirical sciences, particularly psychology and neuroscience, little attention has been paid to integrating these approaches. This extensive review aims to redress this imbalance and establish a mutual dialogue between philosophy and the empirical sciences by presenting the main philosophical puzzles from an affective science perspective. The chief (...) problem is contagion. Sometimes, listeners perceive music as expressing some emotion and this elicits the same emotion in them. Contagion is perplexing because it collides with the leading theory of emotions as experiences of values. This article mostly revolves around the critical presentation of the philosophical solutions to this problem in light of recent developments in emotion theory and affective science. It also highlights practical issues, particularly the role of musical emotions in well-being and health, by tackling the paradox of sad music, i.e., the question of why people enjoy sad music. It thus bridges an important gap between theoretical and real-life issues as well as between philosophical and empirical investigations on affective responses to music. (shrink)