Association Between Musical Mode/Tempo Preferences and Subthreshold Depressive Tendencies: Preliminary Evidence from a Sister-piece Paradigm

We investigated whether brief music-preference probes index variation in subthreshold depressive tendencies using a controlled “sister-piece” paradigm. Twenty-nine university students rated liking for 16 classical excerpts in which melody, harmony, and texture were held constant while mode (major/minor) and tempo (fast/slow) were orthogonally manipulated. From these ratings, we derived Mode and Tempo Preference Indices (MPI and TPI) and examined associations with depressive score (log-QIDS-J) as a continuous, non-diagnostic measure. When aggregated across pieces, neither MPI nor TPI showed a statistically reliable association with depressive score, although correlations were consistently negative. However, the TPI-depressive score association for Swan Lake strengthened and reached significance after a prespecified influence-restricted analysis. Supplementary dichotomized group comparisons showed higher depressive scores in minor- and slow-preference groups within a subthreshold range. Together, these findings indicate that controlled mode and tempo preferences may capture meaningful variation in subthreshold depressive tendencies, although derived from a small, nonclinical sample.