Effects of Music on Emotion Regulation : A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Music and its use for emotion regulation processes, to this day remains an unresolved question. Multiple experimental layouts encompassing its daily life use and clinical applications across different cultures and continents have preserved music as a self-regulative tool. Therefore it is seen as a very individual but by some researchers cross-culturally, accepted therapeutic tool. Large amounts of recent studies demonstrate the effects of music on emotion and emotionally evoked processes. A thorough literature search was conducted across the data bases for the timeframe from January 2001 to July 2012; CINAHL, EMBASE, PubMED, PsychINFO, The Cochrane Library, Eric, Psychology and behavioral science collection, SpringerLink, google scholar, picarta, Web of Science, Science Direct, DARE,Worldcat, and handsearch. Inclusion criteria encompassed youth/adolescents from 10 to 29, including healthy as well- as clinical populations. Music intervention and emotion regulation measures were viewed and included only when at least forms of music participation (singing, playing, listening, engagement) were noted in the study and effects on emotion regulation were directly measured. The interrelations between the effects of music on emotion regulation and the use of it as a purposeful instrument, e.g. music interventions for specific educational or therapeutic functions, yielded limited results. Music has a ’self regulative capacity’, but is restricted as valuable instrument for specific emotion regulation interventions. This review presents the effects of music on emotion regulation for youth population, detecting 1) insufficient adequate (clinical) studies about the purposeful use of music for emotion regulation, and 2) insufficient actively used music interventions, like listening, singing, playing in academically studies.