Music use under academic stress: university students’ experiences of emotion regulation and learning re-engagement

Academic stress can disrupt emotion, attention and persistence, yet little is known about how students use music at the moment between becoming stuck and returning to a task. This study explored when and why university students intentionally used self-selected music, how they understood its helpful or disruptive processes, and which conditions shaped perceived learning re-engagement. Fifteen undergraduates from two universities in eastern China completed Mandarin semi-structured critical-incident interviews about helpful and counterproductive episodes. Reflexive thematic analysis, sensitised by the extended process model of emotion regulation and task-level self-regulated learning, generated four themes. Students gave music jobs at moments of friction; described bodily or attentional shifts that preceded renewed academic action; judged usefulness through the fit among music, task, person and setting; and developed rules for monitoring, stopping or choosing silence. Music was experienced as a conditional bridge towards action, but could also accompany distraction, avoidance or overload. These retrospective accounts generate propositions about goals, task fit and self-monitoring among existing music users; they establish neither objective learning benefits nor the effectiveness of music-use guidance.