Staff profile

Tuomas Eerola is a Professor in Music Cognition at Durham University. He obtained his MA degree in musicology at the University of Jyväskylä (Finland) in 1997. His predoctoral work involved periods of study at Leicester University (UK) and Cornell University (USA). In 2003, he finished his PhD at the University of Jyväskylä in musicology (music cognition). In 2003-2006, he worked as postdoctoral researcher at the same institution, followed by a postdoctoral position at an EU project (Tuning the Brain for Music). Between 2007 and 2013, he held a professorship at the University of Jyväskylä (Finland), first associated with Music, Mind & Technology MA programme and later as a Chair of Musicology. Eerola was affiliated with the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Music Research. At Music Department at Durham University, he has served as the Director of Research (2013-2015, 2021-) and the Head of Department (2018-2020). Eerola has been the President of Finnish Musicological Society and serves on several editorial boards including the journals Psychology of Music and Music Perception. 

Research themes

Eerola's research combines empirical music research, music psychology, and music and science. The topics of interest are music and emotions, and how we perceive music, especially the central elements such as melody, timbre, rhythm, metre, and dissonance. He approaches these topics with empirical experiments and often uses computational models to articulate the theories. He champions open science in his work. 

Professor Eerola has led several major research projects, Sweet Sorrow funded by the Academy of Finland (2013-2017). He has been the co-investigator in Interpersonal Entrainment in Music Performance, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC, 2016-18), led by Martin Clayton and the other co-investigators being Antonio Camurri (Genoa) and Peter Keller (Sydney). He has also been involved in two funded research projects (EnTimeMent, funded by EU FET programme led by Antonio Camurri, and Social cohesion and resilience through intercultural music engagement, which is funded by Australian Research Council and led by Jane Davidson and Bill Thompson). 

To read more about music psychology at Durham, see Music & Science Lab and MA in Music Psychology at Durham. 

• Music and emotions
• Music and movement
• Music perception

Authored book

• Eerola, T. (in press). Music and Science: A Guide to Empirical Music Research. Routledge

Chapter in book

• Eerola, T. (2022). Future Perspectives and Challenges. In M. B. Küssner, L. Taruffi, & G. A. Floridou (Eds.), Music and Mental Imagery (281-288). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429330070-30
• Eerola, T., & Vuoskoski, J. K. (2021). Personality and Listeners. In W. F. Thompson, & K. Olsen (Eds.), The Science and Psychology of Music: From Beethoven at the Office to Beyoncé at the Gym (141-145). Bloomsbury Publishing
• Eerola, T. (2018). Music and Emotion. In R. Bader (Ed.), Springer handbook of systematic musicology (539-554). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-55004-5_29

Journal Article

• Armitage, J., Eerola, T., & Halpern, A. R. (online). Play it again, but more sadly: Influence of timbre, mode, and musical experience in melody processing. Memory and Cognition, https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-024-01614-8
• Fuentes-Sánchez, N., García-Fernández, M., Escrig, M. A., Eerola, T., & Pastor, M. C. (online). The role of gender in emotional reactions elicited by music: Autonomic reactivity, facial expression, and self-reports. Musicae Scientiae, https://doi.org/10.1177/10298649241286974
• Eerola, T., Kirts, C., & Saarikallio, S. (online). Episode model: The functional approach to emotional experiences of music. Psychology of Music, https://doi.org/10.1177/03057356241279763
• Schiller, D., Yu, A. N., Alia-Klein, N., Becker, S., Cromwell, H. C., Dolcos, F., Eslinger, P. J., Frewen, P., Kemp, A. H., Pace-Schott, E. F., Raber, J., Silton, R. L., Stefanova, E., Williams, J. H., Abe, N., Aghajani, M., Albrecht, F., Alexander, R., Anders, S., Aragón, O. R., …Lowe, L. (2024). The Human Affectome. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 158, Article 105450. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2023.105450
• Lahdelma, I., & Eerola, T. (2024). Valenced Priming with Acquired Affective Concepts in Music: Automatic Reactions to Common Tonal Chords. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 41(3), 161-175. https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2024.41.3.161
• Eerola, T., & Clayton, M. (2024). onsetsync: An R Package for Onset SynchronyAnalysis. The Journal of Open Source Software, 9(93), Article 5395. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.05395
• Armitage, J., Lahdelma, I., Eerola, T., & Ambrazevičius, R. (2023). Culture influences conscious appraisal of, but not automatic aversion to, acoustically rough musical intervals. PLoS ONE, 18(12), Article e0294645. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0294645
• Lahdelma, I., & Eerola, T. (2023). Data-driven theory formulation or theory-driven data interpretation?. Physics of Life Reviews, 45, 56-59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2023.04.005
• Fuentes-Sánchez, N., Pastor, M., Eerola, T., & Pastor, R. (2023). Individual differences in music reward sensitivity influence the perception of emotions represented by music. Musicae Scientiae, 27(2), 313–331. https://doi.org/10.1177/10298649211060028
• Herdson, O., Eerola, T., & Javadi, A.-H. (2023). Analysis and Classification of Music-Induced States of Sadness. Emotion Review, 15(2), 99-117. https://doi.org/10.1177/17540739221140472
• Bannister, S., & Eerola, T. (2023). Vigilance and social chills with music: Evidence for two types of musical chills. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 17(2), 242-258. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000421
• Fuentes-Sánchez, N., Pastor, R., Eerola, T., Escrig, M. A., & Pastor, M. C. (2022). Musical preference but not familiarity influences subjective ratings and psychophysiological correlates of music-induced emotions. Personality and Individual Differences, 198, Article 111828. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2022.111828
• Eerola, T., & Lahdelma, I. (2022). Register Impacts Perceptual Consonance through Roughness and Sharpness. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 29(3), 800-808. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-021-02033-5
• Lennie, T. M., & Eerola, T. (2022). The CODA Model: A Review and Skeptical Extension of the Constructionist Model of Emotional Episodes Induced by Music. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, Article 82264. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.822264
• Lahdelma, I., Armitage, J., & Eerola, T. (2022). Affective priming with musical chords is influenced by pitch numerosity. Musicae Scientiae, 26(1), 208-217. https://doi.org/10.1177/1029864920911127
• Micallef Grimaud, A., & Eerola, T. (2022). An interactive approach to emotional expression through musical cues. Music & Science, 5, 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1177/20592043211061745
• Lahdelma, I., Eerola, T., & Armitage, J. (2022). Is Harmonicity a Misnomer for Cultural Familiarity in Consonance Preferences?. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, Article 802385. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.802385
• Armitage, J., & Eerola, T. (2022). Cross-modal Transfer of Valence or Arousal from Music to Word Targets in Affective Priming?. Auditory Perception & Cognition, 5, 192-210. https://doi.org/10.1080/25742442.2022.2087451
• Micallef Grimaud, A., & Eerola, T. (2022). Emotional expression through musical cues: A comparison of production and perception approaches. PLoS ONE, 17(12), Article e0279605. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279605
• Jakubowski, K., & Eerola, T. (2022). Music evokes fewer but more positive autobiographical memories than emotionally matched sound and word cues. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 11(2), 272-288. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2021.09.002
• Street, S., Eerola, T., & Kendal, J. (2022). The role of population size in folk tune complexity. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 9, Article 152. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01139-y
• Gómez, J., Cano, C., Eerola, T., Gomez, E., Herrera, P., Yang, Y., & Hu, X. (2021). Music Emotion Recognition: Toward new, robust standards in personalized and context-sensitive applications. IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, 38(6), 106-114. https://doi.org/10.1109/msp.2021.3106232
• Lahdelma, I., Athanasopoulos, G., & Eerola, T. (2021). Sweetness is in the ear of the beholder: chord preference across United Kingdom and Pakistani listeners. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1502(1), 72-84. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.14655
• Eerola, T., Vuoskoski, J., Kautiainen, H., Peltola, H.-R., Putkinen, V., & Schäfer, K. (2021). Being moved by listening to unfamiliar sad music induces reward-related hormonal changes in empathic listeners. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1502(1), 121-131. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.14660
• Fuentes-Sánchez, N., Pastor, R., Eerola, T., & Pastor, M. (2021). Spanish adaptation of a film music stimulus set (FMSS): Cultural and gender differences in the perception of emotions prompted by music excerpts. Psychology of Music, 49(5), 1242-1260. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735620958464
• Micallef Grimaud, A., & Eerola, T. (2021). EmoteControl: An interactive system for real-time control of emotional expression in music. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 25(4), 677-689. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-020-01390-7
• Jakubowski, K., Belfi, A., & Eerola, T. (2021). Phenomenological Differences in Music- and Television-Evoked Autobiographical Memories. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 38(5), 435-455. https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2021.38.5.435
• Clayton, M., Tarsitani, S., Jankowsky, R., Jure, L., Leante, L., Polak, R., Poole, A., Rocamora, M., Alborno, P., Camurri, A., Eerola, T., Jacoby, N., & Jakubowski, K. (2021). The Interpersonal Entrainment in Music Performance Data Collection. Empirical Musicology Review, 16(1), 65-84. https://doi.org/10.18061/emr.v16i1.7555
• Armitage, J., Lahdelma, I., & Eerola, T. (2021). Automatic responses to musical intervals: Contrasts in acoustic roughness predict affective priming in Western listeners. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 150(1), Article 551. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0005623
• Eerola, T., Armitage, J., Lavan, N., & Knight, S. (2021). Online Data Collection in Auditory Perception and Cognition Research: Recruitment, Testing, Data Quality and Ethical Considerations. Auditory Perception & Cognition, 4(3-4), 251-280. https://doi.org/10.1080/25742442.2021.2007718
• Athanasopoulos, G., Eerola, T., Lahdelma, I., & Kaliakatsos-Papakostas, M. (2021). Harmonic organisation conveys both universal and culture-specific cues for emotional expression in music. PLoS ONE, 16(1), Article e0244964. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0244964
• Eerola, T., & Lahdelma, I. (2021). The Anatomy of Consonance/Dissonance: Evaluating Acoustic and Cultural Predictors Across Multiple Datasets with Chords. Music & Science, 4, https://doi.org/10.1177/20592043211030471
• Clayton, M., Jakubowski, K., Eerola, T., Keller, P., Camurri, A., Volpe, G., & Alborno, P. (2020). Interpersonal entrainment in music performance: Theory, method and model. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 38(2), 136-194. https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2020.38.2.136
• Fuentes-Sánchez, N., Pastor, R., Eerola, T., & Pastor, M. (2020). Spanish adaptation of a film music stimulus set (FMSS): Cultural and gender differences in the perception of emotions prompted by music excerpts. Psychology of Music, 49(5), 1242-1260. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735620958464
• Schäfer, K., Saarikallio, S., & Eerola, T. (2020). Music may reduce loneliness and act as social surrogate for a friend: Evidence from an experimental listening study. Music & Science, 3, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1177/2059204320935709
• Schäfer, K., & Eerola, T. (2020). How listening to music and engagement with other media provide a sense of belonging: an exploratory study of social surrogacy. Psychology of Music, 48(2), 232-251. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735618795036
• Armitage, J., & Eerola, T. (2020). Reaction Time Data in Music Cognition: Comparison of Pilot Data From Lab, Crowdsourced, and Convenience Web Samples. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, Article 2883. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02883
• Jakubowski, K., Eerola, T., Blackwood Ximenes, A., Ma, W., Clayton, M., & Keller, P. (2020). Multimodal perception of interpersonal synchrony: Evidence from global and continuous ratings of improvised musical duo performances. Psychomusicology: Music, Mind and Brain, 30(4), 159-177. https://doi.org/10.1037/pmu0000264
• Lahdelma, I., & Eerola, T. (2020). Cultural familiarity and musical expertise impact the pleasantness of consonance/dissonance but not its perceived tension. Scientific Reports, 10, Article 8693. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-65615-8
• Lameira, A., Eerola, T., & Ravignani, A. (2019). Coupled whole-body rhythmic entrainment between two chimpanzees. Scientific Reports, 9, Article 18914. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55360-y
• Clayton, M., Jakubowski, K., & Eerola, T. (2019). Interpersonal entrainment in Indian instrumental music performance: Synchronization and movement coordination relate to tempo, dynamics, metrical and cadential structure. Musicae Scientiae, 23(3), 304-331. https://doi.org/10.1177/1029864919844809
• Maksimainen, J. P., Eerola, T., & Saarikallio, S. H. (2019). Ambivalent Emotional Experiences of Everyday Visual and Musical Objects. SAGE Open, 9(3), 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244019876319
• Becker, S., Bräscher, A.-K., Bannister, S., Bensafi, M., Calma-Birling, D., Chan, R., Eerola, T., Ellingsen, D.-M., Ferdenzi, C., Hanson, J., Joffily, M., Lidhar, N., Lowe, L., Martin, L., Musser, E., Noll-Hussong, M., Olino, T. M., Pintos Lobo, R., & Wang, Y. (2019). The role of hedonics in the Human Affectome. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 102, 221-241. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.05.003
• Küssner, M., & Eerola, T. (2019). The Content and Functions of Vivid and Soothing Visual Imagery during Music Listening: Findings from a Survey Study. Psychomusicology: Music, Mind and Brain, 29(2-3), 90-99. https://doi.org/10.1037/pmu0000238
• Küssner, M., Eerola, T., & Fujioka, T. (2019). Music, Emotion, and Visual Imagery: Where Are We now?. Psychomusicology: Music, Mind and Brain, 29(2-3), 59-61. https://doi.org/10.1037/pmu0000245

Other (Print)

• Eerola, T., Clayton, M., & Emms, P. (2023). movementsync: Analysis and Visualisation of Musical Audio and Video Movement Synchrony Data