What is the relationship between musical features (chords) and emotional states in adolescents? | RISE Research

This study investigates the relationship between musical chord structure and emotional states among adolescents aged 13 to 17, using a mixed-methods design that combines a quantitative survey (n = 70), a 90-minute semi-structured interview with a clinical music therapist, and a synthesis of existing literature on music perception, neuroscience, and adolescent development. The survey measured participants' current mood, emotional experiences over the past week, music listening habits, and emotional responses to four chord stimuli, with quantitative data analysed through descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation, and qualitative data analysed thematically. Participants consistently associated two of the tested chords with happiness and the other two with sadness, reinforcing existing literature that major chords are generally perceived as bright and minor chords as melancholic. Correlations between music liking and reduced negative emotion were weak and did not reach conventional statistical significance (p = .053 to .090), a pattern the expert interviewee helped explain by noting that adolescents often use music to reflect their existing emotional state rather than actively regulate it. Age-based differences also emerged: younger adolescents (13-15) reported higher anxiety, while older adolescents (16-17) reported higher happiness alongside greater burnout. The study concludes that music functions primarily as a tool for fostering positive emotion rather than eliminating negative emotion, and that structural features such as chord type meaningfully shape adolescents' emotional experience of music. It acknowledges limitations including purposive sampling, a modest sample size, reliance on self-report, single-region private-school recruitment, a cross-sectional design that precludes causal claims, and a narrow set of only four tested chords, and recommends future research explore larger, more diverse samples and the effects of tempo and other musical features over time.