Suvi Saarikallio

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University of Jyväskylä

Healthcare is often dependent on evidence derived from quantitative measurement. Music-based psychometric inventories are thus necessary to quantify health-related constructs. Despite an increase in the number of inventories, there is no systematic overview of the existing inventories, which may hinder dialogue across music disciplines (e.g., music...

Why do we teach music? Here we briefly present various theories about the potential individual and societal benefits of music education.

Previous work by Hille and Schupp (Citation2015) examined the associations between learning a musical instrument (ML) in childhood and cognitive functioning, academic achievement, personality measures and perceived control using a longitudinal data set, the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP). In this article we replicate major parts of this s...

Individual traits and habits have shown to be associated with health and health behaviour. One such habit is how individuals use music. This study aimed to examine if using music as a mood regulator is related to risk factors of lifestyle diseases. Participants who joined the present Motivation Makes the Move! lifestyle intervention were overweight...

Music psychology has concentrated on how music listening is exploited for mood regulation. The Music in Mood Regulation Brief scale (B-MMR; Saarikallio, 2008) is a well-established measure to assess the types of strategies individuals adopt to regulate mood through music. The current study seeks to verify the psychometric dimensionality and reliabi...

Cognitive control, defined as the allocation of mental resources required for goal-directed behaviour, is crucial for exercise participation as it is involved in regulating negative cognitive and affective responses caused by the demands of exercise. Research on both music and acute exercise separately show engagement of cognitive control processes...

Several studies have investigated crossmodal associations involving audiovisual stimuli. To date, however, far fewer studies have explored the relationship between musical timbre and visual features (e.g., soft/harsh timbres with blue/red colours). To fill this gap in the literature, 249 participants were invited to judge the match between differen...

Contextual information can shape the aesthetic judgements of music compositions. Recently, a study proposed the existence of an AI composer bias; namely, listeners tend to like music less when they think (or are told) that it was composed by an AI. In this online study (N = 120), we used a cross-over experimental design to verify whether such bias...

Objective The focus of this study is on rhythm-elicited movement and its impacts on executive function. The main aim of this review was to identify previous, controlled intervention research on this topic, and to study the effectiveness of the included research interventions. We hypothesized we would find research supporting the alleged positive im...

Background Music is known to be a powerful tool for social bonding, but its role in romantic relationships remains poorly understood. The present study investigated the relevance of music to three core aspects of love (intimacy, passion and commitment) across relationship stages: attraction, building, and maintenance. Methods Using a mixed-methods...

Personalised Interactive Music Systems (PIMS) are emerging as promising devices for enhancing physical activity and exercise outcomes. By leveraging real-time data and adaptive technologies, PIMS align musical features, such as tempo and genre with users’ physical activity patterns, including frequency and intensity, enhancing their overall experie...

We present a novel framework for music and emotion research that addresses emotional experiences with music as functional episodes. This framework, called the Episode Model, places the situation and the function of the music for the individual at the centre of the experience and integrates acts of affective self-regulation to our understanding of m...

Music has been actively studied from the perspectives of emotional expression and body movement, but not during adolescence. The current study addressed music as a forum for adolescent embodied emotion expression. Based on prior research, we hypothesised that adolescents would be able to differentiate between emotions in their music-related express...

Contextual information can shape the aesthetic judgements of music compositions. Recently, a study proposed the existence of an AI composer bias (Shank et al., 2023); namely, listeners tend to like music less when they think (or are told) that it was composed by an AI. In this online study (N = 120), we used a cross-over experimental design to veri...

People engage with music largely to seek positive emotions and manage negative ones. Yet, we do not know how prevalent the simultaneous experience of positive and negative emotions (i.e. emotional complexity; EC) is nor how it relates to cultural and individual factors. We tackled this gap by asking participants (N = 2137) from 84 countries to prov...

Anxiety is among the most commonly experienced affective states—prominent in both everyday emotions, and a range of mood disorders. Music seems to be an effective tool for managing negative mood states, but recent research indicates that anxiety may be a particularly challenging state to self-regulate, even for those without diagnosed anxiety disor...

Introduction: Anxiety is a commonly diagnosed mental health disorder, but it remains underrepresented in music therapy research. Music listening (ML) seems to be an effective tool for anxiety self-management, but there is evidence that high anxiety level may complicate the self-regulation process. The links between ML in music therapy and everyday...

The primary focus of the present systematic review is to examine the cognitive control processes while listening to music during exercise. These processes can be, for instance, measurable changes in cognitive control task performance associated with music listening during exercise routines. Our primary research question is: 1. What cognitive cont...

Research in the field of crossmodal correspondences has documented the widespread existence of consistent crossmodal associations between simple auditory and visual stimuli or dimensions (e.g., pitch-lightness) [see 1, for a review]. Far fewer studies have investigated the association between complex auditory stimuli and visually presented concepts...

This paper presents a new conceptualisation of musicality via a framework called New Musical Virtuosities for Healthy Musical Identities. The development of healthy musical identities is proposed as a key aim for music education. Musicking for healthy musical identities is approached as holistic and inclusive, highlighting the integration of social...

In this study, we aim to shed light on the impact of attachment style on music emotion regulation and the dynamics of healthy/unhealthy music consumption. Using questionnaire data from 224 individuals, we show that both anxious and avoidant attachment styles are associated with unhealthy music use, mediated by general emotion regulation tendencies...

The use of Personalised Interactive Music Systems (PIMS) may provide benefits in promoting physical activity levels. This systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted to assess the overall impact of PIMS in physical activity and exercise domains. Separate random effects meta-analyses were conducted for outcomes in physical activity levels, phy...

We present a novel framework for music and emotion research that addresses emotional experiences with music as functional episodes. This framework, called the Episode Model, places the situation and the function of the music for the individual at the centre of the experience and integrates acts of affective self-regulation to our understanding of m...

This study investigated whether enhanced rhythm training improves literacy development and working memory performance in pupils in the first and second year of school. According to recent literature, we hypothesized that rhythm-focused training could be effective for children with reading difficulties. Pupils aged 6 to 8 years participated in the s...

Music videos are a popular method of consuming music; however, the characteristics of these experiences and their effects on music perception are poorly understood. An online survey ( N = 155) was designed using theoretical insight from Dasovich-Wilson et al.’s (2022) Intention Attention Reaction and Retention (IARR) framework. The survey consisted...

In this theoretical review, we examine how the roles of music in mate choice and social bonding are expressed in romantic relationships. Darwin's Descent of Man originally proposed the idea that musicality might have evolved as a sexually selected trait. This proposition, coupled with the portrayal of popular musicians as sex symbols and the preval...

Supplementary material for 'Love songs and serenades: a theoretical review of music and romantic relationships'.

Throughout human evolution, music has not only been a form of entertainment but an intricate dance of “play” central to our social fabric. Drawing on Darwin’s insights, musicality can be seen as a tool for both social and romantic attraction – promoting social bonding and in sexual selection. In our talk, we’ll present a model that attempts to brin...

This study was conducted to investigate the previously indicated causal relationship between reading impairment and difficulties in rhythm perception in an adult sample. In our study the comparison was made between the family risk for dyslexia and the no-risk for dyslexia groups to assess the possibility of shared risk factors. We hypothesized that...

Listening to music has been shown to have positive impacts on mood and task performance, but there is little knowledge on such effects in school environments. This mixed-method study aimed to investigate the effects of self-selected music on students’ mood, motivation, concentration, and learning success in a real-life school context. Forty-eight s...

This study investigated whether enhanced rhythm training improves literacy development and working memory performance in pupils in the first and second year of school. According to recent literature, we hypothesized that rhythm-focused training could be effective for children with reading difficulties. Pupils aged 6 to 8 years participated in the s...

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN PUBLISHED IN MUSIC PERCEPTION: https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2025.2326557. Over the last fifteen years, music psychology has concentrated on how music listening is exploited for mood regulation. The Music in Mood Regulation scale (MMR: Saarikallio, 2008) was conceived as a psychometric tool to assess the extent to which individua...

These are the items of the Brief Music in Mood Regulation scale (B-MMR; Saarikallio, 2012) translated into Italian in this paper: Ansani, A., Mallia, L., & Saarikallio, S. (2025). Music in Mood Regulation Brief scale (B-MMR): Italian validation and insights on musical preferences, expertise, and reward experiences. Music Perception, 42(4). https://...

The page for this paper was mistakenly created by ResearchGate and cannot be removed. We apologise for this inconvenience. To access the published version of this article on Music Perception, please use the following DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2025.2326557. Music psychology has concentrated on how music listening is exploited for mood regulat...

Background In the Descent of Man, Darwin (1871) first articulates the hypothesis that musicality may have been selected for sexually. In addition, popular musicians are frequently portrayed as sex icons, seemingly supporting the notion that musicality may be attractive (Marin & Rathgeber, 2022), and love songs feature in most human cultures (Mehr...

Introduction: Evaluating the validity of the content is an essential step in developing an assessment tool, including an analysis of the quality of the items within the tool. This study describes the content validation of items in the early adolescents' emotional skills assessment tool in a music therapy context. Methods: Content validity was evalu...

Individuals choose varying music listening strategies to fulfill particular mood-regulation goals. However, ineffective musical choices and a lack of cognizance of the effects thereof can be detrimental to their well-being and may lead to adverse outcomes like anxiety or depression. In our study, we use the social media platform Reddit to perform a...

While music listening on mobile phones can serve many affect-regulatory goals, success in reaching these goals is yet to be empirically assessed. This study aimed to determine how frequently listeners successfully reach their affect-regulatory goals, and the predictors of this success. Data were collected using the experience sampling app MuPsych,...

Introduction Music therapy is actively used with early adolescents in relation to their emotional skill development. Yet, the conceptualization of emotional skills is typically not systematically addressed in therapeutic practice. This study examined music therapists’ views on the progress of emotional skills when working with early adolescents wit...

This article provides a critical overview of musical identities as a research topic. A broad distinction between identities in music (IIM) and music in identities (MII) highlights how musical engagement is central to identity construction. These concepts are integrated with recent advances in psychological theory derived from enactive cognition (4E...

This qualitative interview-based study draws on the reported experiences of students and teachers to explore how agency and entrainment resource and constrain each other in joint music-making. The participants were 23 students of Grades 6 and 11 music teachers from different primary schools. The qualitative content analysis of the 11 student pair i...

The agency of primary school students has been studied increasingly in recent years; yet, we know relatively little about student agency in music educational settings or how students experience their participation in joint musical action. This study explores sixth-grade students’ experiences of their agency in whole-class playing. Qualitative conte...

Liking and pleasantness are common concepts in psychological emotion theories and in everyday language related to emotions. Despite obvious similarities between the terms, several empirical and theoretical notions support the idea that pleasantness and liking are cognitively different phenomena, becoming most evident in the context of emotion regul...

Streaming music videos on the internet is an increasingly popular music listening activity that has remained virtually unexplored within music psychology. Studies of the role of music in film, as well as empirical research investigating the influence of audio-visual media and memory, have shown that visual information can have a profound effect on...

This study explores music teachers’ beliefs of student agency in whole-class playing and investigates what characterises student agency through teachers’ values, actions and observations within this unique multimodal and -dimensional learning environment. Our abductive analysis of 11 interviews reveals that the role of teacher support is significan...

This chapter addresses musical care in adolescence from the perspective of how music can support adolescents’ critical developmental needs, including emotional self-regulation and identity development. The chapter approaches music as a multifaceted resource that is available in the lives of adolescents and often naturally functions as a healthy par...

This book provides insight informed by interdisciplinary thinking on musical care throughout the life course. Musical care refers to the role of music—music listening as well as music-making—in supporting any aspect of people’s developmental or health needs: for example, physical and mental health, cognitive and behavioural development, and interpe...

Successful emotional processing is pivotal for the therapeutic change, and music can support emotional processing. However, we know little on how music-based emotional processing actually predicts clinical outcomes. This study investigated music therapeutic emotional processing (MEP) as a predictor of therapeutic outcome in treatment for depression...

Music therapy is efficacious for the treatment of depression. Compared to other psychotherapeutic forms, it allows for the emergence of various modes of mutual interaction, thus enabling multiple channels for emotional expression and fostering therapeutic alliance. Although musical interaction patterns between client and therapist have been regarde...

Music listening is a great resource for mental well-being, pleasure, and self-regulation, but it may also be maladaptive. Depression, for instance, has been shown to relate to music use that is characterized by rumination, avoidance, and mood worsening. However, we know little of the role of individual differences in such maladaptive music use. Hen...

Although music is known to be a part of everyday life and a resource for mood and emotion management, everyday life has changed significantly for many due to the global coronavirus pandemic, making the role of music in everyday life less certain. An online survey in which participants responded to Likert scale questions as well as providing free te...

Introduction: There is evidence from earlier trials for the efficacy of music therapy in the treatment of depression among working-age people. Starting therapy sessions with relaxation and revisiting therapeutic themes outside therapy have been deemed promising for outcome enhancement. However, previous music therapy trials have not investigated th...

Listening to music often triggers strong memories of events from our past, which influence how we affectively experience music listening and can therefore contribute to music’s therapeutic capacity. The aim of this study was to examine the valence and content of spontaneous music-evoked autobiographical memories (MEAMs) in listeners with self-repor...

Intelligence is a key psychological feature associated to emotion and perception. Listening to music is often linked to emotional experience and sensation seeking (SS), traits that have been shown overall negatively correlated with intelligence. In a sample of 53 musicians and 54 non-musicians, we assessed the use of music for experiencing strong e...

Musical preferences have been considered a mirror of the self. In this age of Big Data, online music streaming services allow us to capture ecologically valid music listening behavior and provide a rich source of information to identify several user-specific aspects. Studies have shown musical engagement to be an indirect representation of internal...

Purpose: Interest in the health relevance of music has been growing rapidly, yet few studies have addressed the protective role of music for music professionals themselves. In the current study, we investigated music professionals’ (music teachers, music therapists, musicians and academics) health, particularly their uses of music as a resource for...

After losing a close other, individuals usually confide in an empathic friend to receive comfort and they seem to have a heightened desire for mood-congruent, consoling music. Hence, it has been proposed that affect-congruent music acts as a social surrogate for an empathic friend. Thus, we hypothesized that listening to comforting music, as a resp...

Music is appreciated for emotional reasons across cultures, but knowledge on the cross-cultural similarities and differences of music-evoked emotions is still sparse. The current study compared music-evoked emotions in Finland and in India, contextualizing them within the perceived psychological functionality of music in an individualistic versus c...

Music is young people's own playground for social–emotional development. Music listening is a medium that is easily available for the whole age group, and music psychology research has identified a range of developmentally relevant needs and functions that music serves in the lives of the young. Music serves as a means for identity construction, so...

Sense of agency refers to the ability to influence one’s functioning and environment, relating to self-efficacy, and wellbeing. In youth, agency may be challenged by external demands or redefinition of self-image. Music, having heightened relevance for the young, has been argued to provide feelings of self-agency for them. Yet, there is little empi...

While the use of musical parameters for emotional expression has been extensively studied, little is known about which specific musical parameters children at different ages are able to use for expressing specific emotions. We used a novel interface called Music Box that allows modification of musical parameters while music is being played in real...

Paper presented at the International Conference of CIPEM/INET-md 2019: Challenges in Music Education. Abstract can be found in the full-text file.

Art brings rich, pleasurable experiences to our daily lives. However, many theories of art and aesthetics focus on specific strong experiences—in the contexts of museums, galleries, and concert halls and the aesthetic perception of canonized arts—disregarding the impact of daily experiences. Furthermore, pleasure is often treated as a simplistic co...

This study aimed at investigating the associations between regulation strategies and musical mechanisms involved in musical affect self-regulation. A sample of 571 participants was collected and the data regarding the reported strategies and mechanisms were analysed using correspondence analysis (CA). Three bipolar dimensions – cognition, feelings,...

Background Depression is among the leading causes of disability worldwide. Not all people with depression respond adequately to standard treatments. An innovative therapy that has shown promising results in controlled trials is music therapy. Based on a previous trial that suggested beneficial effects of integrative improvisational music therapy (...

Music is a common resource for the regulation of emotions, moods, and stress. This study aimed at determining the individual and relative impact on stress reduction of two of the main factors involved in musical affect regulation: regulation strategies and music itself. The current study took place in an experimental setting and followed a factoria...

Social–emotional competence (SEC) is a set of psychological resources, highly relevant for adaptive growth and wellbeing. Music has been argued to support social–emotional skills, yet there is little theoretical consensus about the underlying impact mechanisms and the special nature of music as a medium for SEC. This article presents a theoretical...

Music is known to evoke emotions through a range of mechanisms, but empirical investigation into the mechanisms underlying different emotions is sparse. This study investigated how affective experiences to music and pictures vary when induced by personal memories or mere stimulus features. Prior to the experiment, participants were asked to select...

Music is a source of daily pleasure, and positive emotional experiences and rewarding functions of music have been actively studied. Yet, knowledge about the interrelatedness of emotional and motivational constituents of musical pleasure is sparse. This study explored the characteristic emotional contents of music-induced pleasure, their relation t...

This chapter discusses social-emotional competence (SEC) as a psychological resource that can be supported by music engagement and that can explain music’s positive impact on mental health. Social-emotional competence is a set of psychological resources including social and emotional awareness, adaptive emotion regulation and coping, self-determina...

Depression is a disabling medical illness characterized by persistent and allencompassing feelings of sadness, loss of interest, or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities, as well as problems in emotion regulation. Medication, sometimes in combination with verbal psychotherapy or counselling, is the predominant method of treatment for depression...

The present literature review investigated how pleasure induced by music and visual-art has been conceptually understood in empirical research over the past 20 years. After an initial selection of abstracts from seven databases (keywords: pleasure, reward, enjoyment, and hedonic), twenty music and eleven visual-art papers were systematically compar...

Background Music forms an important part of the lives and identities of adolescents and may have positive or negative mental health implications. Music therapy can be effective for mental disorders such as depression, but its preventive potential is unknown. Objective The aim of this study was to examine whether group music therapy (GMT) is an eff...

Music listening promotes adolescents’ well-being and relaxation in daily life. Relaxation is linked to affective self-regulation, but little is known about the specific affective processes of musical relaxation. The current study aimed to elaborate the affective dimension of adolescents’ musical relaxation, through detailed exploration of the relat...

Research on the affective phenomena involved in music has grown exponentially over the last 20 years. One particular topic is the use of music for affect self-regulation (i.e., the process of creating, changing, or maintaining affective states). Being a recent field of research, knowledge remains scattered and heterogeneous. An integrative literatu...

The current study investigate whether the emotional nature of pleasure vs. displeasure, indexed by both self-reports and neural responses, would differ depending on whether the impact was be based on stimulus features vs. personal memories. A direct comparison of musical and visual material across mechanisms is carried out to contrast the results b...

his study is part of a research project exploring the emotional-motivational constitution of everyday pleasure in music and visual modalities. Here we aimed to identify the perceived object characteristics and features of emotional responsiveness constituting the experience of pleasure in music in comparison to visual objects. An online survey (N=4...

Appendix S1. Healthy-Unhealthy Uses of Music Scale (HUMS).