Personal music listening: modelling emotional outcomes through mobile experience sampling

Personal music listening is a private and flexible means of musical engagement, which is rapidly growing as a central component of everyday music use. This unique style of listening has unprecedented potential for the deliberate manipulation of emotional states, and the impact it has on emotional health and well-being is largely unknown. The current thesis therefore aimed to determine the emotional outcomes of personal music listening. To achieve this, a new methodology was developed, designed for the ecologically valid and real-time assessment of personal music listening (Chapter 2). This methodology enabled empirical investigation of key areas identified from the literature, including the links between music-based regulation and non-music regulation strategies (Chapter 3), and the emotional outcomes of different reasons for listening (Chapter 4). Finally, collected data were combined to form a comprehensive model of personal music listening, which incorporated a broad range of relevant variables, to predict emotional outcomes both within contexts and between listeners (Chapter 5). Four overall conclusions were drawn from the current thesis, the first being that initial mood is a crucial variable in personal music listening. Secondly, it was found that music is deliberately used as a flexible and independent regulatory resource, to meet specific emotional needs. The third conclusion was that there are certain conditions under which personal music listening can lead to emotional harm. Finally, it was concluded that consideration of contextual variables is essential for understanding the emotional responses to music listening. This thesis has contributed a new methodology and a comprehensive model of personal music listening, which together will advance the understanding of this form of musical engagement, and how it influences emotional states, emotional health, and well-being.