The Effects of Music on the Intensity and Direction of Pre-Competitive Cognitive and Somatic State Anxiety and State Self-Confidence in Collegiate Athletes
Music has been classified as a healing agent (Steckler, 1998), facilitator of mood enhancement (Stratton & Zalanowski, 1997), and contributing factor to improved autonomic responses and performance during stressful tasks for some surgeons (Allen & Blascovich, 1994). Although the psychophysiological effects of music have become a domain of increased interest among sports researchers throughout the last decade (Karageorghis & Terry, 1997), little research was found investigating athletes\u27 intrepretive psychological perceptions of listening to music during the pre-game period. This investigation examined the effects of the individual participant\u27s favorite music on the perception of intensity and direction of pre-competitive cognitive and somatic state anxiety, and state self-confidence in collegiate athletes. Intercollegiate athletes (N = 59) from a university in the southeast participated and were randomly placed in either a music or non-music group. Ranging from 1 hour and 45 minutes to 30 minutes prior to actual competition, participants engaged in a 3-minute session featuring uninterrupted, personally chosen, music listening on portable compact disc players for the music group and their normal pre-game activity for the non-music group. At the conclusion of the 3-minute interval, all participants completed a modified Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (Martens, Burton, Vealey, Bump, & Smith, 1990) with direction variables (Gordon, Burke, Joyner, & Hardy, 1998; Jones, Hanton, & Swain, 1994). Two days after competition, all participants completed a modified Sport Competition Anxiety Test (Martens, Vealey, & Burton, 1990) with direction variables (Gordon et al.; Jones, Hanton, & Swain). Although the six 3-way ANCOVA revealed no significant 2-way or 3-way interactions, there were significant music and gender main effects (g \u3c .0083) for state self-confidence intensity. The results suggest that an individual music session, featuring the participant\u27s favorite music, significantly enhanced feelings of state self-confidence in collegiate athletes
