Music in Mood Regulation Brief Scale (B-MMR)

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 reliability of the B-MMR in an Italian sample (N = 465). Furthermore, relationships of B-MMR with musical expertise, musical preferences, and music reward experiences, as measured by the Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire (BMRQ), were investigated. Results showed that B-MMR maintained good internal reliability and identical dimensionality in the Italian sample. In addition, musical expertise was found to be associated with a stronger proclivity for the use of music for mood regulation. Furthermore, individuals with broader preferences and a tendency for harmonically and melodically complex music (e.g., classical, opera, and jazz) used music for regulatory purposes to a higher extent than those who favor recent genres (e.g., reggaeton and trap). Lastly, a Bayesian analysis of the psychometric network between B-MMR and BMRQ subcomponents revealed that many B-MMR strategies are linked with emotion evocation. Overall, this study developed an Italian version of the B-MMR and provided greater insights into the nuances related to the use of music for mood regulation.