1. Tevin Tyus, Seth McDermott
Introduction
Athletes today are always trying to find ways to perform better within their sport. The
incorporation of music whether before or during athletic competition is a growing outlet for
athletes to gain a competitive edge mentally and physically. Music has its own motivational role
when it comes to athletes and their ability to block out distractions while focusing on their
competition or exercise. When looking at what might influence ones performance some
constructs that arose were self-efficacy, maladaptive cognition, and emotion because they all
could potentially play a part in how one might perform.
Athletes encounter many types of outside factors that could potentially affect their
performance such as; being stressed about finals, problems with significant other, or previous
sub-par performances. Music on the other hand has become very popular in today’s sports
culture because of the intrinsic motivation it can provide along with blocking out outside
factors that may hinder an athlete mental state prior to or during competition. When looking
into what can cause an athlete to lose focus during competition, resulting in a lower exertion,
we see a possible connection between music and athletic performance. However, we wonder if
the genre of music may play a part in music’s ability to motivate an athlete during exercise or
competition along with making sure ones emotions and self-efficacy does not negatively impact
the participant’s performance.
Previous studies that have looked at music and its effects on one’s athletic performance
are few but are quickly gaining popularity due to music’s increasing role in today’s sport

2. culture. An article by Terry et al states that one’s body can synchronize its motions with
motivational music, which results in a better athletic performance. This study used a repeated
measures laboratory experiment that had athletes run on a treadmill until exhaustion while
either listening to motivational music, neutral music, or no music. Motivational music included
encouraging lyrics and high beats per minute songs, whereas neutral music included lower rate
of beats per minute with less encouraging lyrics. This study also found that motivational music
had increased physiological effects, beneficial time to exhaustion, and increased oxygen
consumption whereas neutral music had equal time to exhaustion and oxygen consumption but
produced lower physiological effects (Terry, Karageorghis, Saha & D’Auria, 2012). This study
also tested the participant’s mood and feeling after each exercise to find possible effects from
the music. Similar to this study we will measure psychological affects and emotions. Along with
looking at how specific music genre’s induce certain factors within an athlete during
performance, rather than using certain songs with calculated beats per minute.
For our study we will test the participant’s moods, cognitions, and efficacy after exercise
as well but this data will be used to see whether their current state of mind negatively or
positively impacted their exertion during our study. A study conducted by LaGrange et al.
examined the relationship between maladaptive cognitions and depressive symptoms. This was
a correlational study that used an Automatic Thought Questioner (ATQ- Hollon and Kendall,
1980) to attain their current emotions and cognitions. The study found a strong correlation
between maladaptive thoughts and depressive thoughts that actually increased with the age of
participant (LaGrange, 2011). The current study will use the ATQ to asses our participants’

3. cognitions in search of potential depressive thoughts that could potentially compromise our
participants exercise results.
Another article discussed the relationship between self-efficacy, competition success,
delight, self-esteem, and body-care amongst elite artistic roller skaters (Barkhoff, 2010). While
mainly focusing on the self-efficacy portion of the study, they use Bandura’s definition of self-
efficacy which is expectations regarding one’s ability to successfully perform a given behavior.
They state that Banduras theory suggests that those who had a higher level of self-efficacy
were more likely to perform their tasks than those with low efficacy. This study relates to ours
because we are measuring athletes performance, then measuring via a survey how they view
themselves and their ability to complete these exercises. This previous study demonstrated, a
significant difference in self-efficacy between the athletes that medal in the competition and
those who didn’t medal. This shows that those athletes who received a medal rated high in self-
efficacy and those who did not rated low levels of self-efficacy. This ties into the current study
because we are testing whether a particular music genre, will motivate an athlete to perform
better while taking into consideration their self-efficacy level and whether the music has a
positive effect or a negative effect on their performance.
A study conducted by Vladimir J. Konecni (2008) examined what music does to induce
emotion. This article discussed the history and relationship between music and emotions. This
relates to our study because we our using music as our independent variable to determine
whether or not the genre of music will indeed induce any particular emotions that may have
positive or negative effect on our participants ability to perform these exercises. Both music
psychologists, and the general public, have made assumptions that music directly induces

4. emotion in the listener. In reality the actual number of relevant studies is quite small and
unconvincing. However, Konecni study did find that music does induce low-grade basic
emotions like sadness, anger, happiness, and hope through mediators, such as dance and
cognitive associations to real world events. This suggests that if music can induce basic
emotions then those emotions can help an athlete perform better if the music genre inspires
them to push harder during their exercise, or to potentially perform worse if the music evokes
negative emotions.
Hypothesis: The current study hypothesized that participants with higher levels of self-
efficacy will have higher levels of athletic exertion while listening to hip-hop during their
performance as opposed to country music or heavy metal. While looking at the self-efficacy,
emotion, and maladaptive cognition to determine whether these constructs will negatively or
positively affect the participant’s performance in each exercise. With music genres being the
independent variables and the performance on different exercises being the dependent
variables.
Method
Participants
Participants were 30 student athletes participating in various sports at Whitworth
University. Even though Whitworth University is around 60% females and 40% males we expect
our participants to be around 60% males to 40% females ranging between the ages of 18 and 24.
The sampling procedure used a convenience sample when recruiting which targeted Psych
students, Athletic teams, and competitive intramural participants. We required all of our

5. participants to have either participated in a collegiate sport at Whitworth, or have been involved
on a competitive intramural team since they have attended Whitworth. Next we supplied each
athlete with a consent forms to fill out before the study took place. After the consent forms were
signed, we went ahead with the instructions for each of the exercise. All participants who signed
a consent form took part in each phase of the experiment from the baseline test with no music to
the specific genre selection we have chosen for them to listen to. A pizza party was provided as
an incentive for every participant that completed a baseline test and a raffle for a $50 gift card to
Sports Authority was provided as incentive for those who completed all aspects of the study.
Materials
Music Genre
This study examined the independent variable of genre of music in order to identify an
effect on performance. Three specific types of music genres were incorporated (hip-hop.
Country, and heavy metal), with the expectation that these genres would have the most effect on
the participants performance
Self- efficacy
The dependent variable was participant’s self-efficacy, emotion, and maladaptive
cognitions, which were recorded through post exercise surveys. It was expected that self-efficacy
would play a critical role in predicting the effect of music on athletic performance when
participants listened to the music during exercise. An Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire ( ATQ,
Hollon & Kendall, 1980) was used to measure participants’ self-efficacy, maladaptive
cognitions, and emotions. The ATQ included a 30 items questionnaire using a 4 point ( 1= not at

6. all, 4= all the time) for the participants to rate their current feelings and emotions to gage their
current self-efficacy following athletic performance.
Athletic Performance
A second dependent variable of athletic performance was also assessed based on
participant completion of 400-meter dash, push-up, and planks. Participants scores were recorded
after completion of each exercise to rate their level of performance and included time for
completing the 400-meter dash, time of holding a plank until failure, and number of push-ups
until failure.
Procedure
The current study utilized both an experiment and self-report surveys to examine
participants’ self-efficacy and athletic performance while listening to different genres of music.
The experiment followed a within-groups design such that each participant was assed under each
of the four experimental conditions, and their performance was compared to their own individual
results under other conditions of music genre. Following informed consent and health assessment
forms, participants were given the following instructions and schedule:
• Day 1: You will participate in 400 meter run, push-ups, and planks until failure, with 3-5
minutes rest between each exercise. You will be listening to no music during exercise, and will
fill out a survey to gauge one’s self-efficacy, emotion and maladaptive cognition.
• Day 2: You will have a minimum of 2 days rest from the experiment between Days 1 &2. You
will participate in 400 meter run, push-ups, and planks until failure, with 3-5 minutes rest

7. between each exercise. You will be listening to hip hop music genre during exercise, and will
then fill out a survey to gauge one’s self-efficacy, maladaptive cognition, and emotion.
• Day 3: You will have a minimum of 2 days rest from the experiment between Days 2 & 3. You
will participate in 400 meter run, push-ups, and planks until failure with 3-5 minutes rest
between each exercise. You will be listening to Country music genre during exercise, and will
then fill out a survey to gauge one’s emotion, self-efficacy, and maladaptive cognition.
• Day 4: You will have a minimum of 2 days rest from the experiment between Days 3 & 4. You
will participate in the final 400 meter run, push-ups, and planks until failure, with 3-5 minutes
rest between each exercise. You will be listening to the Heavy metal music genre during
exercise, and will then fill out a survey to gauge one emotion, self-efficacy, and maladaptive
cognition. You will be asked to complete all 4 days of the experiment, which will take
approximately 2 weeks to complete. However, you are free to leave this experiment at any time
without penalty.
Following completion of the student, participants are thanked for their participation and invited
to sign up for the raffle for a $50 Sports Authority gift card.
Results
This study investigated the hypothesis that participants with higher levels of self-efficacy will
have higher levels of athletic exertion while listening to hip-hop during their performance as
opposed to country music or heavy metal. Participants who fail to complete each section of our

8. experiment were not included. Participants gender differed with ? females and ? males who’s
age ranged between 18-25. The independent variables are the different types of genres of
music (Baseline, Hip-Hop, country, heavy metal) with Athletic Performance. The dependent
variable were the results from the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire ( ATQ, Hollon &
Kendall, 1980). Means of the total scores and standard deviations for this experiment are
presented in table 1.
A One-Way ANOVA repeated measures demonstrated that Athletic Performance
was/was not significantly related to music genre, (F (?,?) =?, p = ?, r = ?) A Tukey HSD post-hoc
test was performed and ? music significantly increased/decreased athletic performance when
compared to baseline/other genre, ect. (p = ?) Although analysis revealed statistical ? between
music genre and Athletic Performance, the proposed hypothesis is ? .
A One-Way ANOVA repeated measures demonstrated that Automatic Thoughts
Questionnaire was/was not significantly related to ? self-efficacy, (F (?,?) =?, p = ?, r = ?) A
Tukey HSD post-hoc test was performed and ? self-efficacy increased/decreased when
compared to ? Athletic Performance results (p = ?) Although analysis revealed statistical ?
between Self-efficacy and Athletic Performance, the proposed hypothesis is ? .
References
LaGrange, B., Cole, D. A.,Jacquez, F., Ciesla, J., Dallaire, D.,Pineda, A.,Felton, J. (2011).
Disentangling the prospective relations between maladaptive cognitions and depressive symptoms.
Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 120(3),511-527. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0024685
Ardipal. (2014). Utilizing music in sport and exercise at elementary school in indonesia. Asian Social
Science,10(5),118-122. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/1510275816?accountid=1149

9. Terry, P. C.,Karageorghis, C. I., Saha,A. M., & D’Auria, S. (2012). Effects of synchronous music on
treadmill running among elite triathletes. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 15(1),52-57.
doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jsams.2011.06.003
Barkhoff, H., & Heiby, E. M. (2010). The relations between self-efficacy,competition success,delight,
self-esteem, and body-care among elite artistic roller skaters. Journal of Behavioral Health and
Medicine, 1(1), 43-51. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0100540
Konečni, V. J. (2008). Does music induce emotion? A theoretical and methodological analysis.
Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 2(2), 115-129.
doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1931-3896.2.2.115