Three psychometric scales for groove research: Temporal regularity, time-related interest, and energetic arousal

The majority of music psychologists understands the groove experience as a pleasurable urge to move in response to music. Senn et al.’s (2019, 2022) psychological model of musical groove formulates hypotheses about the cognitive processes and other factors associated with the groove experience. Specifically, it hypothesises that listeners’ urge to move to music depends on their inner representation of temporal regularity, their time-related interest triggered by the music, their listening pleasure, and the energetic arousal they experience while listening. The empirical investigation into the validity of the groove model requires psychometric scales that measure the subjective intensity of these processes in the listener. Scales for the urge to move and for listening pleasure are available; the current study develops three additional scales that measure how strongly listeners experience a sense of temporal regularity, time-related interest and energetic arousal while listening to music. These scales will be useful for the empirical verification of the groove model, but they may also be useful in different research contexts within music psychology.