The sound of stress recovery: an exploratory study of self-selected music listening after stress

Little is known about which songs are selected by individuals for the purpose of stress recovery, and whether audio feature commonalities exist between these self-selected songs. Thus, we investigated audio feature commonalities between self-selected songs for the purpose of stress recovery, along with the relationship between audio features and participants’ desired emotions during and after listening to self-selected music. Participants (N = 470) completed an online survey. A split sample-procedure was used to analyze participants’ responses. Cluster analyses revealed that self-selected songs for the purpose of stress recovery can be grouped into two distinct categories, which are distinguished by songs’ danceability, dynamics, instrumentalness, and musical valence. Of these audio features, dynamics was significantly related to participants’ emotional arousal while listening to music, such that calmer and softer songs resulted in less arousal during music listening. Although the relationship between audio features and stress recovery still merits further research, the present study provides a starting point for future enquiries into the nuanced effects of musical audio features on stress recovery.