Listening to a popular upbeat song can lead to more adaptive cognitive inferences for stressful events in non-clinical adult populations.

Objective: We tested the effect of music on idiographic cognitive inferences about stressful events.

Method: In Study 1 (n = 336), adult participants from the United States were randomly assigned to non-familiar songs that differed by lyrical content and tempo. In Studies 2 (n = 302) and 3 (n = 323), adult participants from the United States were randomly assigned to either a positive, neutral or no-song condition.