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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Quantitative Psychology and Measurement
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1480633

Validation of the Persian Involuntary Musical Imagery Scale (PIMIS) Alongside Multifaceted Investigation of Earworms Among Iranian College Students

Provisionally accepted
Aref Tabahori Aref Tabahori Imanollah Bigdeli Imanollah Bigdeli *Hossein Kareshki Hossein Kareshki
  • Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    INMI is considered a ubiquitous phenomenon worldwide, while mixed and inconsistent results regarding different aspects of earworms remain challenging. Furthermore, there is a special need for research on earworms in societies other than in European or American.The primary aim of our study is to validate the Persian Involuntary Musical Imagery Scale (PIMIS) and, secondly, to carry out a detailed exploration of earworms among Iranian college students.Methods: A total of 946 Iranian college students were recruited to answer the Persian Involuntary Musical Imagery Scale (PIMIS), and gold standards including the Thought Control Questionnaire (TCQ, to convergent validity), the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21, to concurrent validity), the White Bear Suppression Inventory (WBSI, to predictive validity), as well as the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI), the Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory-revised (OCI-R), and socio-demographic queries. A complex of features regarding the validity and reliability of the PIMIS, along with numerous aspects of earworm, were explored.The Persian Involuntary Musical Imagery Scale encompasses 15 items along with three additional questions. It was found to be a valid and reliable instrument among Iranian college students, qualified to measure individual differences in earworms.Phenomenological evidence and detailed data on individual differences could provide rich knowledge for the rest of the literature paradigms. Moreover, future investigations into the local regions of the Iranian population are recommended.

    Keywords: earworms, involuntary musical imagery, Auditory Perception, Psychometric, individual differences, music cognition, music psychology

    Received: 15 Aug 2024; Accepted: 17 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Tabahori, Bigdeli and Kareshki. 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: Imanollah Bigdeli, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran

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