“Music is my drug”: Alexithymia, empathy, and emotional responding to music

Abstract

Like alcohol or other drugs, music is often enjoyed by humans for its mood-altering effects. However, there is substantial individual variation in emotional responding to music (ERM). The present study investigated potential roles of trait variables in ERM. Recruitment and testing of 205 adult regular music listeners was accomplished online. They were asked to complete the Geneva Emotional Music Scale (GEMS) retrospectively by rating the felt intensity of 45 music-related emotions based on what they typically experienced when listening to their favorite music. They also completed instruments assessing traits of alexithymia, affect intensity, and empathy, as well as the Big Five factors. Alexithymia, affect intensity, and empathy, but not the Big Five, were moderately positively correlated with ERM as measured by GEMS. In a hierarchical regression, alexithymia and empathy were significant positive predictors of ERM after controlling for the other variables; extraversion was also significant in the final model. The role of empathy as a predictor of ERM was consistent with the emotional contagion interpretation of ERM. The unexpected positive relationship of alexithymia with ERM suggests that alexithymic listeners may rely on music to help them experience emotions more fully. Limitations and potential implications of the findings are discussed.

Differences Between Autistic and Non-Autistic Adults in the Recognition of Anger from Facial Motion Remain after Controlling for Alexithymia

“…Perhaps of most interest for the field of alexithymia research is our finding that alexithymic traits are predictive of increased magnitude of both correct and incorrect emotion ratings. Such results are reminiscent of a literature which concerns increased emotional reactivity in alexithymic individuals (Lyvers et al, 2018). However, whilst it is tempting to speculate that our results are indicative of over-attribution of emotion in highly alexithymic individuals, it should be noted that there is no objective ground-truth with respect to the magnitude of ratings of our PLF stimuli.…”

Personalized behavior management as a replacement for medications for pain control and mood regulation

“…Some examples of habitual EOT-related distraction strategy could be suggested for psychotherapeutic interventions. They include regular practices of praying as operational or formal rituals or religious meditations without a real attachment to God (i.e., taking out of reality) as presented in some adepts of Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and Shamanic worships, other simple spiritual activities and rituals, performance of simple arousing sounds, music, and songs with dominant rhythmic and reduced melodic components as presented in Muslim and African art traditions and in some Western musical art practices (e.g., in jazz) 43 , 53 – 56 . Among other examples is a practice of transcendental or mantra meditations, i.e., cognitive activities with creating, writing, and focusing on abstract objects, words, visual images, or concepts, simple arts and crafts, with focusing on endless rhythmic processes such as breathing, repetition of simple sounds or phrases, and general words for a long period of time for replacing thinking and inhibiting memory and sensations associated with actual life events and interests, and directed against a real-life emotional experience and empathy, against own daydreaming and fantasying 45 , 57 – 62 .…”

Regulating sadness: Response-independent and response-dependent benefits of listening to music

“…Thus, it may not only be music listening that helps with understanding one's emotions, but the pre-listening decision of which music to listen to may help with clarifying emotions. Research supports a positive association between alexithymia (i.e., difficulty recognizing and verbalizing emotions) and listening to music to regulate emotions (Lonsdale, 2019;Lyvers et al, 2020). Given this, music listening can be a supplemental method of helping some people to identify and express their emotions.…”