Our music psychology research examines how people experience music, why their responses and abilities differ, and how engagement with music relates to well-being. Our work focuses on three interconnected areas: music and emotion, musical ability and training, and music and well-being.

Music and emotion

A central focus of our research is understanding the emotions that people experience when listening to music. We developed the Geneva Emotional Music Scale (GEMS), a taxonomy that allows to accurately classify and measure music-evoked emotions. The GEMS is available in several forms, including a concise 9-item version for settings in which brief assessment is important. The GEMS has been validated using statistical, behavioral, and neuroimaging evidence. The GEMS has several applications, such as enriching metadata of audio files (tags), organizing digital music libraries by emotion, or creating emotion-sensitive algorithms for music recommendations.

Beyond measuring music-evoked emotions, our research investigates factors that influence musical emotion induction, focusing particularly on listener characteristics and musical performance features.

Musical ability and training

Our research explores individual differences in musical ability, as well as the broader effects of musical training and expertise. 

Regarding musical ability, we investigate the basic building blocks of musical aptitude and developed the Profile of Music Perception Skills (PROMS) – a test battery for the assessment of musical strengths and areas for improvement. We also study music-specific cognitive abilities, such as the accuracy and stability of musical tempo memory, as well as the factors that influence the accuracy of tempo reproduction. By means of the PROMS, we explore associations between musical skills and non-musical skills, such as memory, empathy, and ability to recognize emotions.

Another line of research compares musicians and non-musicians across cognitive and personality characteristics to examine musical training and expertise. This work investigates whether differences associated with musicianship provide evidence for cognitive transfer and experience-dependent plasticity, and in which areas such claims may need to be reconsidered. A recent large-scale, multi-laboratory study examined musicianship, cognition, personality, and short-term memory in musicians and non-musicians, as well as differences between professional and amateur musicians.

Music and well-being

Our third area of research examines the relationship between music and well-being. Specifically, we are interested in how people use and experience music in everyday life, the circumstances in which musical engagement is associated with positive outcomes, and the individual and situational factors that shape these effects. For example, we have investigated how music listening can enhance experiences (learning, motivation, mood) in school settings, the ways in which music can support executive functions and emotional experiences during physical exercise, and the relationship between individual differences, such as attachment style, and potentially unhealthy music use. Additionally, we examine music emotion-regulation strategies and unhealthy music use in clinical and non-clinical populations.