Emotion equalization app: A first study and results

Abstract

In recent years, there is an increasing trend of mental health issues in society. It is important to identify mental first aid strategies that can be applied at an early age, whether emotional issues have been diagnosed or have yet to be found. Music has tremendous potential impact on changing emotional states since it can distract listeners from rumination on negative thoughts and engage them in a moment of musical enjoyment. This paper presents a new emotion equalization app that incorporates validated diagnosis tests (PHQ-9 and GAD-7) and an emotion measuring tool (SAM) for establishing a personalized therapy treatment using emotion rebalancing methods. By determining the emotional state of the user, songs are chosen and sequenced in a playlist using one of three proposed methods (consoling, relaxing, and uplifting) with a baseline method (random). With this systematic generation of playlists, the app can be used for personalized therapeutic treatment even for users without music background. In our experiment, the results showed positive changes in listeners’ valence levels while there was no significant change in arousal. Furthermore, the relaxing and uplifting methods showed a significant effect on moving listeners from negative to more positive emotional states.