The Emotional Complexity of Musical Experiences: Cultural and Individual Factors

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 provide one personally meaningful musical piece, rate the emotions induced by it, and report how often it served a certain function of music. Participants provided background information and filled out surveys measuring cultural orientation and personality. EC was positively predicted by vertical individualism and by the musical functions of diversion, identity, memories, and feeling the music’s emotions, whereas it was negatively predicted by horizontal individualism, age, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and the musical function of self-regulation. Additionally, mediation analyses revealed that the relationship between individualism and EC was fully explained by musical functions, whereas partial mediations were found for the case of age and emotional stability. These findings contribute to our understanding of how EC is experienced while listening to music, how it is shaped by cultural and individual factors, and how it might serve different psychological needs.