Music use in exercise : a questionnaire study

Although there is much research looking at music’s effects on sport and exercise performance, little is known about exercisers’ own application of music during workouts. An online questionnaire exploring its relationship with gender, formal music training, personality and 5K performance was completed by 282 regularly exercising participants (159 women, 116 men, 6 undisclosed, Mage =37.68, SD = 10.16). Women were more likely to use music during exercise than men (p = .011), and to synchronize to the beat (p = .002), and women’s preferences were spread over a range of pop, rock, and dance music, whereas men’s were focused on rock-related styles. Being open to new experiences was associated with preferring rock, metal, and indie music (p = .042) and those who intentionally synchronised their movements were more open to new experiences than non-synchronizers (p = .003), although a minority of participants synchronised intentionally. Most gym users listened to their own music in the gym rather than music played by the facility. These findings provide new insights into exercise music use, challenging assumptions that formal music training affects how music is applied in exercise, and that synchronization to the beat is the “norm” for exercisers listening to music

Evaluation of a motivational pre-exercise music intervention

While music has been found to motivate exercisers during workouts, its potential as a pre-exercise motivator has rarely been investigated. This study evaluated a self-selected, pre-exercise music intervention against implementation intentions (writing down 'if … then …' sentences relating to overcoming barriers) and a control condition. A total of 50 participants (Mage = 43) took part in a longitudinal, randomised, between-participants study, from 99 recruited. For both interventions, participants had significantly more success meeting self-set exercise goals than the control group, and the music group exercised significantly more frequently than the control group. There was support for music as a comparable intervention to implementation intentions

Talking about sunbed tanning: Social representations and identity-work

Rationale Despite the publicised health risks associated with its usage, sunbed tanning remains popular in many Western countries. Previous research indicates that knowledge of the harmful effects does not necessarily lead to a reduction in sunbed use. Objective The aim of this study was to develop a more extensive social psychological understanding of sunbed use, in the United Kingdom, by exploring the social representations of sunbed tanning held by both those who use and who have never used sunbeds. Method Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 sunbed users and 10 who had never used a sunbed. Results A thematic analysis identified two dimensions in the social representations of both the users and non-users; these were concerned with a) health and b) beauty. However, whereas non-users emphasised the health risks, users downplayed and minimised them, instead emphasising the health benefits. Similarly, whereas non-users emphasised the negative aspects of excessive concern with beauty, sunbed users challenged and distanced themselves from this negativity. Sunbed users were engaged in a form of identity-work to protect themselves from the wider negativity and disapproval of which they were aware. Conclusion Theoretically, social representations theory has provided a unique lens through which to explore this topic, highlighting the importance of taking into consideration the wider environment in which sunbed use takes place. Preliminary practical suggestions include that health workers should consider identity-work when designing interventions aimed at reducing sunbed use. Findings also suggest that, rather than continuing to educate sunbed users about the risks, campaigns and interventions should challenge the commonly drawn upon arguments about the health benefits. These benefits emerged as a particularly powerful discursive tool for the sunbed users in helping to justify their behaviour, but also to counteract negative stereotypes and assumptions they knew others held of them

Evaluation of a motivational pre-exercise music intervention

While music has been found to motivate exercisers during workouts, its potential as a pre-exercise motivator has rarely been investigated. This study evaluated a self-selected, pre-exercise music intervention against implementation intentions (writing down ‘if… then…’ sentences relating to overcoming barriers) and a control condition. Fifty participants (Mage = 43) took part in a longitudinal, randomised, between-participants study, from 99 recruited. For both interventions, participants had significantly more success meeting self-set exercise goals than the control group, and the music group exercised significantly more frequently than the control group. There was support for music as a comparable intervention to implementation intentions

Where do our music preferences come from? Family influences on music across childhood, adolescence and early adulthood

While much is known about the influence of peers and parents in developing musical memories and preferences, the wider family context has not yet been considered. We present novel empirical evidence from surveys (N = 100) with young adults and interviews (N = 15) and surveys (N = 24) with young adults and their influencers, which sheds light on how family dynamics influence the development of music listening, habits and preferences. Close family relationships were associated with more shared musical experiences, positive musical memories and greater tolerance for different musical styles, with little evidence for conflict between parents and adolescents. Many memorable experiences in early adolescence were shared with parents, and parents’ own preferences were passed on. Other family members also played important roles, sometimes substituting for parents, and friends were also influential as surrogate siblings. Family in a broader sense thus influences enculturation and provides a supportive shared context for musical development

An interpretative phenomenological analysis of exercisers' use of music during workouts

This study explores exercisers’ use of self-selected music. Ten participants (seven female, three male) aged 26–58 years who exercised regularly took part in semi-structured interviews about their exercise and music use. Interviews explored how they sourced, selected and experienced music during exercise. The recorded data were transcribed and analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to identify common patterns while also recognising individual experience. Four themes were identified: Taking control, referring to overcoming internal and external challenges through music; It’s all about me, involving self-identity and social positioning; Exercise-music literacy, concerning musical judgement and technological skills; and Embodiment, concerning body-music-hardware interactions and synchronisation. The results show examples of circumstances under which music provides exercisers with both positive and negative experiences. The findings contribute to understanding of the effects of music in exercise and demonstrate the individuality of preferences and usage

'Talking’ about music - The emotional content of comments on YouTube videos

In music psychology, research has tackled emotional responses to music from a diversity of perspectives. Some studies use imaging to identify evoked brain responses, or physiological measurements like galvanic skin response to uncover particular specific reactions. Experimental research often provides highly manipulated musical stimuli for either explicit judgement by participants of emotions evoked or implicit judgements of surprise or goodness of fit that can shed light on emotions. Other work uses people’s own words and descriptions of emotional responses to gain insight into their feelings, typically gathered through written accounts or interviews (e.g. Lamont, 2011). While this provides rich data, one challenge of this approach is to gain insights that remain close to the actual experience of listening. This presentation tackles the central question of how people communicate their emotional responses to music through the use of YouTube comments. Listeners’ comments are closely connected to the experience of listening, thereby providing rich, realistic, easily accessible and extensive data. We combine manual (content analysis, coding using existing models of music and emotion) and automated (Evaluative Lexicon) methods. These are brought together to explore how people’s comments map onto existing models of music and emotion such as Juslin’s (2013) BRECVEMA model of emotional mechanisms and the Geneva Music-Induced Affect Checklist (Coutinho & Scherer, 2017), and to shed light on how these models might need to be ‘translated’ or extended to account for the range of expressed responses.We will present findings from a large selection of YouTube videos across a range of musical styles and genres, providing information on a) the proportion of usable comments, b) the distribution of comments relating to the artist, music, lyrics, emotional response and evaluative judgement from the listener, and c) the distribution of various emotional components in comments across different music genres. This will provide important insights into the discourse around music and emotion and the ways in which YouTube listeners share their responses. The research is currently ongoing and results will be available at the conference

Assessing Music Perception in Young Children: Evidence for and Psychometric Features of the M-Factor

Given the relationship between language acquisition and music processing, musical perception (MP) skills have been proposed as a tool for early diagnosis of speech and language difficulties; therefore, a psychometric instrument is needed to assess music perception in children under 10 years of age, a crucial period in neurodevelopment. We created a set of 80 musical stimuli encompassing seven domains of music perception to inform perception of tonal, atonal, and modal stimuli, in a random sample of 1006 children, 6–13 years of age, equally distributed from first to fifth grades, from 14 schools (38% private schools) in So Paulo State. The underlying model was tested using confirmatory factor analysis. A model encompassing seven orthogonal specific domains (contour, loudness, scale, timbre, duration, pitch, and meter) and one general music perception factor, the “m-factor,” showed excellent fit indices. The m-factor, previously hypothesized in the literature but never formally tested, explains 93% of the reliable variance in measurement, while only 3.9% of the reliable variance could be attributed to the multidimensionality caused by the specific domains. The 80 items showed no differential item functioning based on sex, age, or enrolment in public vs. private school, demonstrating the important psychometric feature of invariance. Like Charles Spearman's g-factor of intelligence, the m-factor is robust and reliable. It provides a convenient measure of auditory stimulus apprehension that does not rely on verbal information, offering a new opportunity to probe biological and psychological relationships with music perception phenomena and the etiologies of speech and language disorders

Valuation Studies? Our Collective Two Cents

This article presents the results of a poll made among the members of the editorial and advisory boards of Valuation Studies. The purpose is to overview the topic that is the remit of the new journal. The poll focused on three questions: 1. Why is the study of valuation topical? 2. What specific issues related to valuation are the most pressing ones to explore? 3. What sites and methods would be interesting for studying valuation? The answers to these questions provided by sixteen board members form the basis of the article. Based on these answers, it identifies a number of themes concerning the study of valuation, elaborating on the rationale for attending to valuation, the conceptual challenges linked to this, and the specific issues and sites that deserve further attention