People tend to assume that sad music makes us feel sad and happy music makes us feel happy, even though listeners often report their emotions to be more complex than that. Yet many survey-based studies require people to select only one experienced emotion. This left researchers Margarida Baltazar , Iballa Burunat and Suvi Saarikallio, from the Centre of Excellence in Music, Mind, Body and Brain, wondering: how common it is to experience both positive emotions (such as love, happiness and relaxation) and negative emotions (such as sadness, pain and loneliness) while listening to music?
“We wanted to obtain a more complete picture of people’s experiences with music,” Baltazar explains. “For that, we had to take into account that meaningful songs can evoke both positive and negative emotions. It was also important to include participants from diverse cultural backgrounds and to consider personality, uses of music, and cultural orientation so that we could better understand when mixed emotions are more likely to occur.”
The new study is now available online in the journal of Research in Personality. The researchers collected a large dataset from 2,137 participants from 84 countries. Each participant named a song that was personally meaningful to them and rated how strongly they felt each emotion while listening to it. The participants also reported how often they used music in their lives for different purposes, such as reminiscing about the past, shaping their identity, and regulating their emotions (for example, managing a bad mood or coping with stress).
The results showed that the ways people use music affected whether they experienced mixed emotions. Songs used to evoke emotions, experience the emotions conveyed by the music, and express one’s own identity tended to elicit more mixed emotions, whereas songs used to regulate emotions and distract tended to elicit fewer mixed emotions.
Mixed emotions were also more common among younger people, individuals who tend to experience strong and changing emotions, and individuals who prefer spontaneity and flexibility. They were also more frequent among people who value independence, goals, and achievements while accepting differences in status and success. This result could be explained by a person’s cultural orientation:
“These individuals were more likely to use music to express their identity, bring back personal memories, and fully experience the music’s emotions, which in turn can lead to richer and more complex emotional experiences”, comments Baltazar.
Overall, the study highlights how individual differences, such as age, personality, and cultural orientation shape musical emotions, and songs that matter to us tend to evoke more complex emotions, revealing how nuanced our relationship with music can be.
“Future studies,” Baltazar suggests, “could examine how different musical features, such as lyrics, personal memories, mode, timbre, and other acoustic features are linked to different emotions that result in a person feeling both happy and nostalgic, for example.”
The research team is now conducting a new study on music and emotions in daily life. To take part, fill out the survey, register for the second phase of the study, and win a movie ticket.
https://link.webropolsurveys.com/S/23F30ED930E02805
For further information:
Margarida Macedo Baltazar, Postdoctoral Researcher
Journal of Research in Personality
Survey
People
The emotional complexity of musical experiences: Cultural and individual factors
31-Dec-2025