89. The role of pop songs in sadness regulation among patients with borderline personality disorder
Year: 2026
Type: article
Study design: Clinical Trial
Abstract: Background One of the core characteristics of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is emotional imbalance. Patients often experience intense and uncontrollable feelings of sadness. Listening to music is a common emotion regulation strategy in daily life, but its effectiveness in regulating specific negative emotions of BPD patients in structured situations remains to be further explored. Previous studies have mostly focused on classical or soothing music, while neglecting the potential role of commercial pop music, an easily accessible form. The research explored whether popular songs could effectively alleviate the sadness induced by BPD patients in an experimental environment. Methods The study recruited 80 participants (40 with BPD and 40 matched healthy controls). All participants first watched a five-minute sad film for induction. Following induction, participants were randomly assigned to one of two 10-minute intervention conditions: (1) Music group: Listening to a pre-selected, neutral-to-positive pop song via headphones. (2) Silence group: Sitting quietly in a silent room without auditory stimulation. The primary outcome measure was change in subjective sadness, assessed using a visual analogue scale (VAS) ranging from 0 (no sadness) to 100 (extreme sadness). VAS scores were collected at three time points: baseline (T1), post-sadness induction (T2), and post-intervention (T3). Statistical analysis employed a mixed-effects ANOVA with group and condition as between-subjects factors and time (T1, T2, T3) as within-subjects factors. Results The experiment demonstrated successful induction of sadness, with a significant main effect of time: sadness scores increased significantly for all participants from T1 to T2. BPD participants in the music group exhibited a mean reduction in sadness of 28.5 points, significantly greater than that observed in the silent control group (mean reduction of 12.1 points). The healthy control group in the music condition exhibited an average decrease of 25.3 points, also exceeding the healthy control group in the silent condition (average decrease of 20.8 points), though the effect size was considerably smaller than that observed in the BPD group. At T3, sadness levels in the BPD music group no longer differed significantly from baseline (T1) (p=.124), whereas sadness levels in the BPD silent group remained significantly higher than baseline (p<.01). Key findings are summarized in Table 1. Discussion The research results show that a brief intervention of listening to self-selected popular songs can effectively alleviate the sadness induced by the experiment, and the effect is particularly significant for BPD patients. Pop music may become an effective immediate emotional regulation tool through mechanisms such as distraction, cognitive reevaluation or positive emotional contagion. Future research should explore the long-term effects of personalized music intervention, identify the specific musical features that produce such effects, and use neuroimaging techniques to investigate its neural association mechanisms.
Source: Schizophrenia Bulletin
Authors: Haicheng Wang, Feifei Li
Institution: Shandong Agricultural University
Language: English
Topic: Music Therapy and Health
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7128805177
FWCI:
Cites:
Cited by:
Related to: