The purpose of this study was to ascertain whether uses of music partially mediate the link between personality and music preference. Undergraduate students ( N = 122) completed the following scales: The Brief Big Five Inventory, The Uses of Music Inventory, The Short Test of Music Preference, The Life Orientation Test Revised, The Beck Depression Inventory, and the Perceived Stress Scale. Openness to experience positively predicted preferences for reflective-complex (RC; e.g., jazz/blues) and intense-rebellious (IR; e.g., rock/metal) music and was inversely related to upbeat-conventional (UC; e.g., country/pop) music, whereas extraversion was positively related to preferences for energetic-rhythmic (ER; e.g., rap/soul) and UC genres. A link between trait optimism and ER music preference was fully mediated by the more prominent extraversion trait. The relationship between openness to experience and RC music preference was partially mediated by cognitive uses of music, with a marginally significant analysis indicating partial mediation of emotional uses of music for openness to experience and IR music preference. Trait neuroticism, perceived stress, and depression scores all correlated positively with emotional uses of music. The current findings support studying personality contextually alongside uses of music when investigating music preference and shed light on how negative affect may inform emotional uses of music.

The current findings suggest that combat veterans with PTSD may benefit from participation in group-based outdoor recreation as a means to improve psychosocial well-being.

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Smoking cue reactivity studies have consistently demonstrated heightened self-report craving, as well as moderate autonomic reactivity, among smokers exposed to salient drug-related cues. However, significantly fewer studies have examined whether exposure to smoking cues affects smokers’ actual smoking, or examined the predictive relationship between cue-induced craving and smoking behavior. Using our well-tested pictorial cues in a cue-reactivity paradigm, we investigated the impact of smoking-related cues relative to neutral cues on subjective craving and smoking behavior (assessed via CReSS measures of latency to smoke, puff volume, and number of puffs). Further, we examined the predictive value of cue-induced craving on subsequent smoking behavior. Sixty non-deprived daily smokers completed two experimental sessions involving exposure to either smoking-related or neutral pictorial cues. Following initial exposure to cues, smokers rated their craving and were then allowed to smoke freely if they chose to during a subsequent 6-minute cue exposure period. Result showed that exposure to smoking cues relative to neutral predicted significantly greater craving and increases in smoking behavior. Likewise, the magnitude of the difference in cue-induced craving when exposed to smoking cues relative to neutral cues (i.e., the cue reactivity effect) was highly predictive of shorter latency to smoke, as well as increased number of puffs and puff volume.