Approaches to Music, Well-Being and Emotion from Psychology

Emotion in music is easy to talk about but difficult to theorize and explain. In this chapter I focus on general approaches to music, emotion and well-being from 0psychology, including cognitive, social, critical and positive forms of psychology, drawing on perspectives and models that can help do this. I focus on applying Seligman’s PERMA model of routes to well-being to the research on music listening and performance to explore the utility of an alternative to the cognitive approach to understanding music and emotion.