Exp. 1 - Renaming sub-constructs

In Experiment 1, our empirical process has indicated suitable candidate items for each of the constructs (see preprocessing that contains exploratory EFA), the reduction of content has influenced the existing conceptualisation for some of the sub-constructs taken from Kirts et al. (2026).

The retention of the 3 best items emphasised narrower aspects of the sub-constructs than what the original, full item list represents.

• Energy Control, as a sub-construct of Focus–Motivation, was originally operationally defined as “Music used to control levels of intensity or drive, pumping up, motivation, stimulation” (Kirts et al., 2026) but the resulting best items, here, primarily refer to Motivation. Hence we label the sub-construct hereafter as Motivation.

• Being Moved / Spirituality, a sub-constructs of Aesthetics–Interest–Awe was also relabelled. Originally Being Moved / Spirituality referred to “Music used to connect to a higher ideal or abstract feeling of non-social connection, religious activity, feeling or seeking strong emotions” (Kirts et al., 2026) but the resulting items only contain spirituality related items, hence we relabel the sub-construct as Spirituality.

• Aesthetics, a sub-construct of Aesthetics–Interest–Awe, was relabelled. Originally this referred to “Music used to achieve or create a desired ambience, fit to the ‘mood’” but the best items refer primarily to a narrower concept of beauty. We therefore labelled the sub-construct as Beauty.

• Reflection / Coping sub-construct of Personal–Emotional–Processing which originally refers to when “Music [is] used to remember or to associate to other objects, provide a sense of comfort, processing experiences”. The resulting best items from the empirical evaluations refer to comfort rather than to coping or reflection, so we call the sub-construct Comforting.

• Group cohesion/socialisation was simplified to Group bonding to avoid confusing labels.

The purpose of the relabelling of the sub-constructs is to acknowledge that the empirical data and the analysis procedure has influenced, mainly trimmed and focussed the emerging latent constructs. To retain the clarity, we updated the labels of these specific sub-constructs.