Four Sources of Pleasure Associated with the Experience of Groove

Human behaviour is largely driven by the desire to maximize pleasure. Music, in both perception and production, is a uniquely powerful source of pleasure, engaging cognitive, bodily, psychological, and social processes. This paper focuses on groove, an everyday, effortless form of sensorimotor musical experience. While previous studies have solely examined groove as pleasurable urge to move, this paper develops a theoretical framework for understanding groove as a multidimensional source of musical pleasure. Extending beyond prior two-dimensional accounts, the framework incorporates immersive and social aspects of the experience. Gathering research findings across disciplines, four sources of pleasure are identified, operating at the cognitive, psychological, behavioural, and social levels: (1) pleasure arising from processing of the music, especially linked to the balance of prediction and surprise in musical structure; (2) immersive pleasure associated with a flow-like, altered attentional experience; (3) movement pleasure generated through (desire for) bodily synchronization and sensorimotor reward; and (4) pleasure rooted in social connection, synchrony, bonding, and collective participation. These interconnected levels are supported by neurochemical mechanisms that modulate attention, arousal, timing, and reward, anchoring the pleasures of groove in embodied brain–body dynamics and reflecting its biopsychosocial nature. This framework offers a more nuanced account of why groove is such a powerful, rewarding and everyday human experience. Beyond its theoretical contribution, the current work informs applied domains by highlighting various sources of pleasure that provide internal motivation, offering insights for designing music-based interventions in therapy, education, and well-being, and suggesting directions for future empirical testing.