ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Performance Science
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1642561
Exploring differences between groove and catchiness
Provisionally accepted
- 1Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Lucerne, Switzerland
- 2University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom
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Groove and catchiness play a significant role in popular music, and a series of studies has shown that they are positively related. In this study, we explored the limits of this relationship: when are groove and catchiness not related, and which musical factors promote one but not the other? To address the first question, we focused on duration: groove (an urge to move along to music) is thought to require representation of meter and repetition, and thus a certain duration, while catchiness is thought to act within fractions of a second. In a listening experiment with 92 participants rating AI-generated music across different styles, tempos, and durations (1s and 10s), even 1-second excerpts elicited some urge to move – though less than for 10-second excerpts, while catchiness ratings were on average similar across durations. Catchiness and urge to move ratings were correlated even in the 1s condition. These findings suggest a complex, reciprocal relationship between catchiness and the urge to move in listeners, which we partly explain through a distinction between ‘transient’ and ‘sustained’ catchiness. We identified some music-related factors that affected only one of the two ratings: rhythmic information and tempo affected urge to move only. In contrast, recognizability substantially increased catchiness but had little effect on the urge to move. Four out of 13 popular music styles (as perceived by participants) affected catchiness but not the urge to move, while three out of 18 audio features affected one but not the other. In summary, while we found further support for a positive relationship between groove and catchiness, this relationship is constrained by duration and certain musical characteristics, which can affect the two responses to music differently.
Keywords: groove, Catchiness, Urge to move, music psychology, AI Music
Received: 06 Jun 2025; Accepted: 21 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Bechtold, Curry and Witek. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Toni Amadeus Bechtold, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Lucerne, Switzerland
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