Does Listening to Music Actually Help Regulate Mood?
A meta-analysis pooling dozens of studies looked at how personality shapes whether music listening helps people manage their emotions — and found the link is real, if modest.
Study title: Does Listening to Music Actually Help Regulate Mood? — Miranda, D., & Blais-Rochette, C., Psychology of Music, 2020
- Study type
- Meta-analysis
- Population
- Pooled data from multiple independent samples across published studies on personality and music-based emotion regulation (predominantly adult and young-adult participants)
- Published
- 2020
- Evidence confidence
- Emerging evidence
The short version
A meta-analysis found personality traits like neuroticism are modestly linked to how people use music to manage emotions, for better or worse.
Why it matters
People's emotional temperament appears to shape how they use music, and the way music is used matters — using it to actively process or discharge a difficult feeling looks different, evidence-wise, from using it to ruminate or avoid.
01
The question
02
How it was studied
03
What they found
04
Limitations
05
What it may mean
In real life
If a particular playlist habit leaves you feeling more stuck afterwards rather than better, that's worth noticing — the same activity, music listening, isn't uniformly helpful for everyone or every mood.
Try this
Next time you reach for music during a low moment, notice afterwards whether you feel more settled or more churned up — and let that inform which playlists you return to.
Evidence confidence
Emerging evidence
The meta-analytic approach strengthens confidence in the direction of the association, but effect sizes are small and the underlying studies are mostly correlational.
Source
Miranda, D., & Blais-Rochette, C. (2020). Does Listening to Music Actually Help Regulate Mood?. Psychology of Music.
Peer-reviewed · Full text may be paywalled · Last reviewed 2026-08-14
Read the original research →One study isn't the whole storyOne study gives us a piece of the picture. Selfey looks for patterns across the broader evidence rather than treating a single finding as a rule.
Read this in everyday terms
Why You Reach for the Same Song When You're UpsetSelfey research briefs are educational summaries, not medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Research describes patterns across groups; it cannot tell you what is right for your situation.
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