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Emotional and motivational uses of music in sports and exercise: A questionnaire

study among athletes
Petri Laukka and Lina Quick
Psychology of Music 2013 41: 198 originally published online 11 November 2011
DOI: 10.1177/0305735611422507

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422507 POMXXX10.1177/0305735611422507Laukka and QuickPsychology of Music

Article

Psychology of Music

Emotional and motivational

41(2) 198­–215
© The Author(s) 2011
Reprints and permission: sagepub.
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DOI: 10.1177/0305735611422507
exercise:  A questionnaire pom.sagepub.com

study among athletes

Petri Laukka
Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Sweden and Department of Social Work and Psychology, Faculty of
Health and Occupational Studies, University of Gävle, Sweden

Lina Quick
Department of Social Work and Psychology, Faculty of Health and Occupational Studies, University of Gävle, Sweden

Abstract
Music is present in many sport and exercise situations, but empirical investigations on the motives
for listening to music in sports remain scarce. In this study, Swedish elite athletes (N = 252)
answered a questionnaire that focused on the emotional and motivational uses of music in sports
and exercise. The questionnaire contained both quantitative items that assessed the prevalence of
various uses of music, and open-ended items that targeted specific emotional episodes in relation to
music in sports. Results showed that the athletes most often reported listening to music during pre-
event preparations, warm-up, and training sessions; and the most common motives for listening to
music were to increase pre-event activation, positive affect, motivation, performance levels and to
experience flow. The athletes further reported that they mainly experienced positive affective states
(e.g., happiness, alertness, confidence, relaxation) in relation to music in sports, and also reported
on their beliefs about the causes of the musical emotion episodes in sports. In general, the results
suggest that the athletes used music in purposeful ways in order to facilitate their training and
performance.

Keywords
arousal, emotion, exercise, function of music, motivation, relaxation, sports, questionnaire

Introduction
There are many case reports of famous athletes who have used music to enhance their perfor-
mance. For example, the celebrated Ethiopian distance runner Haile Gebrselassie synchronized

Corresponding author:
Petri Laukka, Stockholm University, Department of Psychology, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden.
[email: petri.laukka@psychology.su.se]

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Laukka and Quick 199

his running pace with the tempo of the rhythmical pop tune ‘Scatman’ when he set a new
world record for 2000 meters in February 1998 (Lister, 2005). Also, the American swimmer
Michael Phelps, who won 7 gold medals and set 5 world records at the 2007 FINA World
Championships, reportedly listened to hip-hop music before his races in order to get focused
and psyched up (‘More questions with Michael Phelps’, 2007). Empirical investigations on the
how’s and why’s of listening to music in sports remain scarce, but are important for gaining a
better understanding of the potential benefits of music in sports. In the present study, we there-
fore report results from a questionnaire study focusing on elite athletes’ emotional and motiva-
tional uses of music in sports and exercise.
The emotional effects of music have received much attention recently, and evidence from
many sources indicates that music is capable of inducing emotion in listeners (for reviews,
see Juslin & Laukka, 2004; Juslin & Västfjäll, 2008).1 Studies on people’s self-reports of their
everyday music-listening habits have revealed that today’s music listeners actively use music
as a resource to achieve different emotional purposes in everyday life. For example, studies
using various methods like questionnaires (Juslin, Liljeström, Laukka, Västfjäll, & Lundqvist,
2011; Laukka, 2007; Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007; Thayer, Newman, & McClain, 1994; Wells
& Hakanen, 1991), diary and experience sampling studies (Juslin, Liljeström, Västfjäll,
Barradas, & Silva, 2008; North, Hargreaves, & Hargreaves, 2004; Sloboda, O’Neill, & Ivaldi,
2001), and qualitative interviews (DeNora, 2000; Ruud, 1997), have suggested that listen-
ers frequently use music for the regulation of emotion and arousal and that music induces
positive affective states in many everyday listening contexts. Evidence from sporting contexts
is more limited, but a number of questionnaire studies have reported that athletes frequently
listen to music in order to regulate both positive and negative affective states (Stevens & Lane,
2001; Terry, Dinsdale, Karageorghis, & Lane, 2006). Moreover, experimental studies have
shown that athletes report increased positive affect and reduced negative affect in conditions
where they listen to arousing music, compared to no music, during moderate to high inten-
sity activity (e.g., Baldari, Macone, Bonavolontà, & Guidetti , 2010; Bishop, Karageorghis, &
Kinrade, 2009).
With regard to the regulation of arousal, experimental studies in a variety of applied settings
have suggested that loud, upbeat music increases arousal while soft and slow music reduces
arousal (e.g., Bernardi, Porta, & Sleight, 2006; Brownley, McMurray, & Hackney, 1995;
Copeland & Franks, 1991; Edworthy & Waring, 2006; Pelletier, 2004). Music can also reduce
ratings of perceived exertion during training, especially during submaximal work intensities
(Boutcher & Trenske, 1990; Yamashita, Iwai, Akimoto, Sugawara, & Kono, 2006). During
high-intensity training, however, physiological bodily cues become a more dominant influence
on attention and consequently music often has negligible effects on perceived exertion (see
Rejeski, 1985; Tenenbaum, 2001).
Optimal levels of positive and negative affect and arousal are factors that are beneficial for
achievement and motivation in sports (e.g., Hanin, 2007) as well as in other domains (e.g.,
Isen, 2008). Because music can be used for affect- and arousal-regulation purposes, much of
the research on music in sports has focused on identifying possible benefits of using music in
sports settings. In their review of this literature, Terry and Karageorghis (2006; see also
Karageorghis & Terry, 2009) developed a conceptual framework for the benefits of music in
sports and exercise. Among the potential benefits identified in the model were psychological and
psychophysiological effects of music including increased positive affect and reduced negative
affect (e.g., Bishop et al., 2009), pre-task activation or relaxation (e.g., Karageorghis, Drew, &
Terry, 1996), and reduced levels of perceived exertion (e.g., Boutcher & Trenske, 1990). They

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200 Psychology of Music 41(2)

also included dissociation from unpleasant bodily sensations (e.g., pain, fatigue), and increased
likelihood of athletes experiencing flow states (i.e. states of optimal concentration and absorp-
tion with the activity at hand, see Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) as potential benefits in their model.
The pain-reducing effects of music interventions have received much interest in clinical health
care settings, and recent reviews have shown that music interventions may have positive effects
on reducing anxiety and pain (Nilsson, 2008). Regarding flow, preliminary evidence has sug-
gested that music may promote flow states in sports settings (Karageorghis, Jones, & Stuart,
2008; Pates, Karageorghis, Fryer, & Maynard, 2003).
Terry and Karageorghis’ (2006) model further included ergogenic, or performance-enhancing,
effects of music like increased work output through synchronization of movement with the
tempo of the music, enhanced acquisition of motor skills when the music matches the required
movement patterns, and enhanced performance levels via combinations of all of the mecha-
nisms described above. Several experimental studies have reported results suggesting that
music may have ergogenic effects in sports, like increased endurance, strength and work output
(e.g., Anshel & Marisi, 1978; Crust & Clough, 2006; Rendi, Szabo, & Szabo, 2008; Simpson &
Karageorghis, 2006; Szabo, Small, & Leigh, 1999; Waterhouse, Hudson, & Edwards, 2010).
So far, there have been surprisingly few studies that explore how athletes actually use music
in various sport and exercise settings, and as a consequence we have limited knowledge about
which of the potential benefits of music are considered important by athletes. In a seminal
study, Bishop, Karageorghis and Loizou (2007) conducted qualitative interviews with 14
young tennis players about their use of music listening as a pre-performance strategy.
Additionally, 10 of the participants kept a diary wherein they recorded musical episodes during
one week. The results indicated that participants consciously selected music to elicit various
emotional states, and frequently reported consequences of music listening included increased
positive affect and arousal. Also Gluch (1993), based on qualitative interviews with 6 athletes,
gave examples of how athletes may use music to manipulate arousal levels and to assist in affect
regulation during their pre-performance preparations.
In the present study, we intend to build on the previous work reviewed above and report
results from a questionnaire study on Swedish athletes’ uses of music in sports. Following Juslin
et al. (2011), we included items involving two kinds of self-report, namely semantic and epi-
sodic knowledge, based on a distinction in memory research (Robinson & Clore, 2002; Tulving,
1983). Self-reports that assess aggregated estimates (e.g., about the prevalence of various emo-
tions and motives for listening in relation to music in sports) involve judgments based on
semantic memory and are based on the conscious recollection of general beliefs and factual
information independent of context and personal relevance. Most of the previous research on
uses of music is based on semantic knowledge. However, retrospective and aggregated esti-
mates are often prone to certain biases because the general beliefs that they are based on may
be erroneous (Robinson & Clore, 2002). For example, when asked about how often one does feel
happy when listening to music in various situations, it is possible that participants overestimate
the frequency of experienced happiness based on general beliefs that ‘happiness’ is very typical
of what people feel when listening to music (see Juslin et al., 2011). Self-reports of autobio-
graphical episodes that are relatively close in time (e.g., about the most recent episode wherein
the athletes experienced emotions in relation to music in sports) instead involve judgments
based on episodic memory. Episodic memories are experiential in nature and are usually rich in
information about the characteristics of the recalled episode. By asking the athletes about their
uses of music in sports both in general (using quantitative ratings) and about their most recent
emotional music episode in sports (using free response items) – and by comparing the answers

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Laukka and Quick 201

Table 1.  Demographic details of the participating athletes

Variable Count % Mean Range SD

Gender and age
 Female 135 54% 23.3 16–54 6.3
 Male 117 46% 22.4 16–33 4.6
 Total 252 100% 23.0 16–54 5.5
Years of experience as an active athlete 12.9 3–27 5.1
  1–10 years 89 35% 8.0  
  11–15 years 84 33% 13.2  
  ≥ 16 years 72 29% 19.9  
Number of training sessions/week 8.0  3–16 2.5
(median = 7)
Type of sport
-  Endurance sports
  Long-distance track 20 8%  
 Orienteering 26 10%  
 Biathlon 7 3%  
-  Middle distance running 21 8%  
-  Sprint track (incl. sprint hurdles) 46 19%  
-  Technique and precision sports
  Throwing sports (shot put, 38 15%  
  javelin, discus, hammer)
  Jumps (long jump, triple jump 42 17%  
  high jump, pole vault)  
  Combined events (heptathlon, 19 8%  
 decathlon)
 Badminton 3 1%  
 Archery 2 1%  
 Gymnastics 1 0.5%  
 Equestrianism 1 0.5%  
-  Unspecified track and field 17 7%  

obtained with the two different response formats – we aimed to obtain both more stable esti-
mates about the prevalence of, and data that is richer in content about, different uses of music
in sports and exercise settings.

Methods
Participants and procedure
A self-administered electronic questionnaire was sent to 438 Swedish athletes who practiced
various individual sports on a national or international level. Table 1 presents the characteris-
tics of the sample in terms of various background variables obtained in the questionnaire; 252
athletes (135 women and 117 men; mean age = 23 years; response rate = 58%) participated in
the study.

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202 Psychology of Music 41(2)

The participants were contacted using e-mail and were asked if they would like to participate
in a survey concerning uses of music in sports. The addresses were provided by various national
athletic associations and sports clubs, as well as social networking websites. The prospective
participants were informed about the goal of the study, that their participation would be confi-
dential, and that data would only be used for scientific purposes. ‘Survey Monkey’ was chosen
as the most appropriate online survey package to communicate the questionnaire to the target
audience (http://www.surveymonkey.com). The data collection was conducted as a part of the
second author’s undergraduate research thesis.

Questionnaire
The questionnaire featured 24 items with varying response formats: forced-choice, quantita-
tive ratings, and open-ended responses. Besides questions about various background variables
(items 1–6; see Table 1), the questionnaire included questions about (1) the athletes’ everyday
music listening habits (items 7–10), (2) semantic estimates of various motivational and emo-
tional uses of music in relation to sports (items 11–16), and (3) episodic estimates about the
most recent emotional episode that the athletes had experienced in relation to music in sports
(items 17–24). The fixed response options were based on earlier empirical studies of motiva-
tional and emotional uses of music in everyday life settings (e.g., Juslin et al., 2011; Laukka,
2007; Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007), the theoretical framework of possible benefits of music in
sport and exercise contexts developed by Terry and Karageorghis (2006), and previous work on
athletes’ uses of music in sports (Bishop et al., 2007).
Music preferences were assessed by presenting the participants with a list of 8 different
musical genres from which they were asked to choose the genre(s) that they most liked to listen
to in various contexts. The responses were subsequently categorized according to Rentfrow and
Gosling’s (2003) 4 broad dimensions of music preferences: uptempo and conventional music
(‘pop music’, ‘Swedish dance band music’), energetic and rhythmic music (‘soul/rnb/hiphop’,
‘electronic dance music’), intense and rebellious music (‘hard rock’, ‘rock and alternative’), and
reflective and complex music (‘classical music’, ‘jazz & blues’); see Juslin et al., 2011. The design
of the questionnaire is explained in detail in the results section, and the complete questionnaire
is available upon request from the authors.

Results
Everyday music listening
The participants were first asked to rate how important music is to them, in a general sense, in
their everyday life on a 6-point scale (1 = not at all important, 6 = very important). The mean
importance rating was 4.42 (SD = 1.32), which indicated that the participants generally con-
sidered music important, and the distribution of the answers (N = 252) was as follows: 6 (24%),
5 (31%), 4 (20%), 3 (13%), 2 (10%), and 1 (1%). The participants were then asked to estimate
how often they usually listen to music, using an open-ended response. The answers (N = 248)
were categorized into the following alternatives: 66% reported listening to music several times/
day, 19% listened to music once/day, 13% listened a couple times/week, and 3% listened once/
week or less. We next queried about what musical genres the participants liked to listen to in
their everyday life, by choosing one or several genres from a list. Results revealed that 71%
preferred uptempo and conventional music, 66% preferred energetic and rhythmic music, 63%
preferred intense and rebellious music, and 16% preferred reflective and complex music.

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Laukka and Quick 203

Figure 1.  Relative frequency of music listening in different situations in sports and exercise in response to
the question ‘How often do you listen to music in the following situations?’ as rated on a 6-point scale (1 =
very seldom, 6 = very often). Error bars = 95% confidence intervals

Finally, the participants were asked to estimate approximately how often they experienced
emotions in relation to music, by choosing among 4 response alternatives. Forty-six percent
reported experiencing emotions ‘often’ (66–99% of the listening time), 44% reported experi-
encing emotion ‘sometimes’ (33–66% of the listening time), 10% answered ‘seldom’ (1–33%
of the listening time), and no participant reported that they ‘never’ (0% of the listening time)
experience emotions in relation to music (N = 252). Female participants reported a signifi-
cantly higher prevalence of musical emotions than male participants, as indicated by a chi-
square test. Fifty-three percent of the female participants reported experiencing emotions
‘often’, compared to 36% of the male participants (χ2 = 6.95, df = 1, p = .008).

Uses of music in sports and exercise

First, the participants were asked to rate how important music was to them during practicing
sports on a 6-point scale (1 = not at all important, 6 = very important). The mean importance
rating was 3.70 (SD = 1.51) and the distribution of the answers (N = 239) was as follows: 6
(13%), 5 (20%), 4 (26%), 3 (17%), 2 (15%), and 1 (10%). Female participants (M = 3.94, SD =
1.53) rated music as significantly more important for practicing sports than did the male par-
ticipants (M = 3.42, SD = 1.44) as indicated by a t-test (t237 = 2.69, d = 0.35, p = .008). Also, a
t-test showed that music was rated as significantly more important in everyday life, than in a
sporting context (t238 = 7.63, d = 0.51, p < .001). Not surprisingly, the importance ratings for
music in everyday life and in sports were positively correlated (r = 0.47, p < .001), suggesting
that athletes who value music in everyday life also are more likely to consider music to be
important in sports.
Next, the athletes were asked to rate how often they listened to music during different situa-
tions (exercise sessions, warm-up, pre-event preparations, during competition, and after com-
petition) in sports and exercise on 6-point scales (1 = very seldom, 6 = very often).2 We conducted
a mixed model ANOVA with situation as a repeated measure (5 levels) and gender as a between-
subjects factor. We found significant main effects of situation (F4, 948 = 51.26, partial η2 = 0.18,
p < .001, Greenhouse-Geisser corrected) and gender (F1, 237 = 7.04, partial η2 = 0.03, p = .009),
but no interaction between the factors. Overall, women (M = 3.10, SD = 1.27) reported

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204 Psychology of Music 41(2)

Table 2.  Relative frequency of emotional and motivational uses of music in sports and exercise, in
response to the question ‘How often do you listen to music during your sports practice because of the
following reasons?’ as rated on a 6-point scale (1 = very seldom, 6 = very often)

Rank Motivation Mean rating Standard deviation

 1. To increase pre-event activation/to pump up 4.68 1.52
 2. To increase positive affect 4.22 1.59
 3. To get help with my motivation 3.70 1.69
 4. To perform better 3.68 1.75
 5. To experience ‘flow’/being in the zone 3.60 1.76
 6. To increase self-efficacy and self-confidence 3.34 1.74
 7. To increase my endurance 3.19 1.72
 8. To relax and calm down 3.13 1.67
 9. To help me concentrate 2.94 1.63
10. To decrease negative affect 2.93 1.72
11. For entertainment 2.84 1.56
12. To decrease my perceived exertion 2.70 1.70
13. To divert my attention from fatigue and pain 2.36 1.55
14. To be able to synchronize my movements with the 1.93 1.36
music
15. To improve my acquisition of motor skills 1.68 1.06

Note: N = 245

listening to music slightly more often than men (M = 2.69, SD = 1.12). The reported frequency
of listening as a function of the different situations is shown in Figure 1. As indicated by the
95% confidence intervals shown in Figure 1, ‘pre-event preparations’ were reported signifi-
cantly more often than ‘warm-up’ and ‘exercise sessions’, which in turn were reported signifi-
cantly more often than ‘during competition’ and ‘after competition’ (N = 243).
We then asked the athletes about what type of music they prefer to listen to during sports by
marking the most appropriate alternative from a fixed list of musical genres (they were only
allowed to mark one alternative). Results showed that 32% preferred intense and rebellious music
in sports, 28% preferred energetic and rhythmic music, 25% preferred uptempo and conventional
music, and only 1% preferred reflective and complex music (14% preferred “other” music). The
athletes were also asked to report how often they chose the music that they listened to during
sports by themselves, by selecting among 5 response alternatives (N = 235). Most of the ath-
letes made the choices of what music to listen to during sports by themselves: 31% reported
that they ‘often’ (66–99% of the listening time) chose the music by themselves, 30% answered
‘always’ (100% of the listening time), 22% answered ‘sometimes’ (33–66% of the listening
time), 13% answered ‘seldom’ (1–33% of the listening time), and 4% answered ‘never’ (0% of
the listening time).
The athletes were next asked about their motivations for listening to music during sports.
They were presented with a list of 15 different motives for listening, and were asked to rate how
often they listened to music in sports for each motivation on 6-point scales (1 = very seldom, 6 =
very often). The selection of motives was based on prior research on uses of music in everyday
and sporting contexts (e.g., Bishop et al., 2007; Laukka, 2007; Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007;
Terry & Karageorghis, 2006). The results are shown in Table 2 and suggest that the athletes

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Laukka and Quick 205

Table 3.  Responses to the question ‘How common is it that you feel each of the following emotions
in response to music in sport and exercise?’ in terms of the mean rating and standard deviation of each
emotion term (1 = never, 4 = always)

 1. Happy 3.14 (0.73) 13. Ecstatic 2.10 (0.90)

 2. Alert 2.98 (0.87) 14. Interested 1.97 (0.85)
 3. Confident 2.73 (0.92) 15. Moved 1.97 (0.88)
 4. Relaxed 2.45 (0.86) 16. Relieved 1.70 (0.75)
 5. Enjoying 2.40 (0.93) 17. Loving 1.70 (0.85)
 6. Calm 2.37 (0.86) 18. Curious 1.65 (0.78)
 7. Chills/thrills 2.35 (0.94) 19. Angry 1.54 (0.79)
 8. Expectant 2.34 (0.94) 20. Solemn 1.52 (0.73)
 9. Amused 2.21 (0.95) 21. Frustrated 1.32 (0.59)
10. Proud 2.19 (0.93) 22. Sad 1.31 (0.54)
11. Longing 2.12 (0.93) 23. Indifferent 1.27 (0.56)
12. Nostalgic 2.10 (0.89)

Note: N = 245

intentionally used music for a wide range of motives during their sports practice. The most
common motives were related to the control of arousal, emotion regulation, motivational
aspects, performance aspects, and the experience of flow. All items received high ratings by at
least some participants, suggesting that all motives were represented in our sample of athletes.
Motives related to motor aspects of the performance received the lowest frequency estimates in
our sample.
Finally, we also asked the athletes to rate the relative frequency with which they feel various
affects and emotions in response to music during sport and exercise from a list of 23 emotion
terms in random order (on a 4-point scale; 1 = never, 2 = seldom, 3 = often, 4 = always). The emo-
tion terms were based on earlier survey studies of emotional reactions to music in everyday life
(e.g., Juslin et al., 2011; Laukka, 2007), complemented with terms more specific for sport
and exercise contexts (e.g., Terry & Karageorghis, 2006). The results are shown in Table 3,
and clearly indicate that positive emotions were most prevalent during sport. ‘Happy’, ‘alert’, and
‘confident’ were the most frequently reported terms, whereas ‘sad’ and ‘indifferent’ were the
least frequently reported terms. A t-test conducted on the mean frequency ratings across all
emotion terms, indicated that female participants (M = 2.14, SD = 0.48) reported somewhat
higher overall frequencies of felt emotions in response to music than did male participants
(M = 1.99, SD = 0.46), t(240) = 2.41, d = 0.32, p = .016.

Emotional episodes in relation to music in sports

The last part of the questionnaire concerned emotional episodes in relation to sports, and the
participants were asked to recall the latest episode in sports and exercise when they had experi-
enced emotions in relation to music using mainly free-response questions. The free responses
were subsequently coded by two independent coders, and the average inter-coder agreement
(estimated in terms of Cohen’s Kappa) was к = 0.94.
The athletes were first asked to indicate how long ago the episode had taken place. The ath-
letes’ free responses (N = 210) were coded into 3 categories, and the results showed that 27%

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206 Psychology of Music 41(2)

40

30
Frequency (%)

20

10

Figure 2. The ten most frequently reported emotion categories in 210 emotional episodes in relation to
music in sports and exercise

referred to an episode that had taken place ‘just now up to a couple of days ago’, whereas 26%
referred to an episode that had taken place ‘within the last month’ and 43% referred to episodes
that had occurred ‘more than one month ago’. Five percent of the answers were not possible to
categorize into time periods (e.g., ‘I cannot remember any such episode’).
Next, the participants were asked to describe what emotions they had experienced during
their recalled episodes. The participants’ free responses (N = 210) were categorized into 12
categories and the results are shown in Figure 2. As can be seen, the most frequently reported
emotions were alert (36%), happy (23%), calm/relaxed (8%) and confident (8%). Examples of
responses in the ‘alert’ category were: ‘It gave me energy and a will to run faster’, ‘To wake up
and be alert though I am drowsy in the morning’, and ‘Pumped up’. Examples of responses for
the remaining main categories in Figure 2 were: Happy – ‘Happy, motivated, and elated’, ‘It was
a feeling that made me feel joy in what I was doing’; Calm/relaxed – ‘I often calm down when I
am listening’, ‘It keeps me calm and makes me think about things other than the competition’;
Confident – ‘That I was invincible, that nothing could stop me’, ‘I felt strong and knew that no
one could beat me on that day’; and Expectant – ‘Full of expectation’, ‘I can’t wait to start run-
ning’. The results were similar to the previous semantic estimates (see Table 3), though there
were also some notable differences. For example, in the episodic estimates ‘alert’ was the by far
most often reported response, whereas in the semantic estimates the most frequently reported
emotion was ‘happy’. The episodes further revealed a category that was not present among the
choices for the semantic estimates, namely ‘focused’ (3%), which refers to a state of cognitive
focus on the activity at hand. Also, ‘frustration’ was among the 10 most frequently reported
emotions for the episodes but not for the semantic estimates, though it must be noted that nega-
tive affect was rarely reported in both the episodes and the semantic estimates. 4.5% of the
responses referred to emotions/affects other than in Figure 2, but each of these were only
reported once; also 4.8% of the responses could not be categorized in terms of emotions (e.g., ‘I
don´t know’).

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Laukka and Quick 207

The participants were then asked to report the duration of the emotional episode, and their
free responses (N = 209) were categorized into 4 alternatives: 20% reported that the emotion
lasted ‘less than 5 minutes’, 17% reported that it lasted ‘5–15 minutes’, 19% reported that it
lasted ‘15 minutes to 1 hour’, and 29% reported that it lasted ‘more than 1 hour’. 15% of the
answers could not be categorized in terms of durations. The athletes were further asked to rate
how intense the experienced emotion was on a 6-point scale (1 = Not at all intense; 6 = Very
intense). The mean intensity rating was 4.37 (SD = 1.17) – which indicates that on average the
athletes reported fairly intense emotions/affects in their episodes – and the distribution of
answers (N = 212) was as follows: 6 (18%), 5 (31%), 4 (30%), 3 (15%), 2 (4%), and 1 (2%). It
can be noted that because the feelings reported by the participants were predominantly short
(less than one hour) and fairly intense, together with the fact that they involved specific states
rather than broad dimensional descriptions, it is likely that the reports mainly referred to emo-
tions rather than moods, as commonly conceptualized (e.g., Beedie, Terry, & Lane, 2005;
Scherer, 2005).
The participants (N = 212) further reported what genre of music they listened to
during the emotional episode by marking the most appropriate option from a fixed list of
alternatives, and the distribution of responses was similar to the semantic estimates:
38% reported listening to uptempo and conventional music, 30% listened to intense and rebellious
music, 28% listened to energetic and rhythmic music, and 2% listened to reflective and complex
music.
The participants were next asked to describe the situation in which the emotional episode
took place, in terms of what they did and where they were. Their free responses were catego-
rized into 5 categories, which received the following frequencies: ‘during training and warm-
up’ (57%; ‘Jogging out in the woods’, ‘I was doing an early morning strength training session,
I was alone and tired and the music made the training more fun’), ‘before competition’ (33%;
‘I’m lying on the couch getting a massage while concentrating on the upcoming race’, ‘In a
hotel room before the competition’), ‘during competition’ (4%; ‘At the Swedish national cham-
pionships’, ‘At an indoor competition’), and ‘after training/competition’ (3%; ‘It was after my
debut, I was in the car’, ‘During the prize award ceremony’). Three percent of the answers could
not be categorized into the above situations. As can be seen, the most common situations in the
episodes are similar to the ones reported in the semantic estimates – during training/warm-up
and before competition – whereas the episodes more seldom referred to situations that took
place during competition or after the event.
The athletes were also asked to describe their opinion of how the experienced musical emo-
tion affected their performance. The results are shown in Table 4 and suggest that the athletes
attributed a wide variety of positive and performance enhancing effects to the musical emotion
episodes. The most commonly reported effects were related to the control of arousal (‘increase
level of activation/to pump up’), and aspects related to performance and motivation. Seven
percent reported that the emotion had ‘no effect’ on their performance, and 1% reported that
the emotion had adverse effects. These results show many similarities to the semantic estimates
of various motivational and emotional uses of music in sports (see Table 2), which indicates
that the athletes were able to recall episodes in which the reported motivations for using music
in sports had had the intended effect.
Finally, the participants were asked about what they thought caused the emotion in their
reported episode. The large majority of responses referred to ‘aspects of the music’ (61%; ‘Good
song’, ‘The music and what it produces’, ‘The beat of the music’, ‘The music takes you to a

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208 Psychology of Music 41(2)

Table 4.  Athletes’ views on the effects of emotion on their performance in 210 emotional episodes in
relation to music in sports and exercise

Suggested effect Frequency Examples

  1. Increase level of
activation/to pump
up
 2. Increase endurance/
fatigue management
 3. Increase performance
 4 Increase motivation
 5. No effect
  6. Feel more confident
  7. Increase focus and
concentration
 8. Positive affect
  9. Relax and calm down
10. Negative effect
21% ‘I became pumped up’, ‘A bit more pepped up and more
adrenaline’, ‘I got my pulse up before the game’
19% ‘I forgot about being tired’, ‘Everything felt easier and
my endurance increased’, ‘I felt less tired’
17% ‘It had a positive influence’, ‘It increased my capacity’,
‘I performed my task better’
14% ‘I became motivated to go for it’, ‘A feeling of stronger
motivation’, ‘It made it feel like it was worth the effort’
7% ‘Nothing special’, ‘It did not affect my race very much’
5% ‘I got more confident and believed more in myself ’, ‘It
made it easy to create positive images of myself during
the competition’
5% ‘I became more focused on the task at hand’, ‘I was able
to focus my energy towards my goal to get a medal’
4% ‘I became happy’, ‘I got a lovely feeling’
3% ‘I was able to stay calm’, ‘It decreased my nervousness
before competition’
1% ‘It was the wrong type of music, too calm and not
energizing at all’

world of your own where you are the king’). Other causes mentioned by the athletes were:
‘memories’ (8%; ‘My associations to the music that was playing’, ‘The music made me remem-
ber good things’), ‘the situation’ (7%; ‘The atmosphere, the surroundings and the fact that it
was a championship’, ‘Inspiring words from my coach’), ‘personal factors’ (7%; ‘That I was in
good form and really wanted to win’, ‘My goals and dreams’), ‘the lyrics’ (6%; ‘Words in the lyr-
ics’, ‘The words of the songs mean a lot’), ‘pre-existing mood’ (2%; ‘I already felt relaxed and at
peace’, ‘The fact that I already was nervous’).
We also wanted to investigate which combinations of emotion, musical style, attributed
effect on sporting performance, and situation occurred with a frequency higher than chance.
To this end we conducted a configural frequency analysis using the exact binomial test
(Bergman & El-Khouri, 2002; Lienert & Krauth, 1975). We included the 4 most frequently
reported categories of emotions (alert, happy, calm/relaxed, confident), the 3 most frequently
reported musical genres (uptempo and conventional, intense and rebellious, and energetic
and rhythmic), the 4 most frequently attributed effects of the musical emotion (increased level
of activation, increased endurance, increased performance, and increased motivation), and
the 2 most frequent situations (during training, and before competition) in the analyses. Only
one configuration occurred with frequency significantly higher than chance, namely ‘alert/
energetic and rhythmic music/increased level of activation/before competition’ (observed fre-
quency = 15, expected frequency = 3.39, χ2 = 39.69, p < 0.001, Bonferroni-adjusted), and
this combination could thus be called the most typical episode among the ones reported in our
material.

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Laukka and Quick 209

Discussion
To summarize, the main results suggest that athletes often listen to music, and believe music to
be important, in everyday as well as in sports settings. During sport, both semantic and epi-
sodic estimates suggested that the athletes most often listened to music during pre-event prepa-
rations, warm-up, and training, and less frequently during competition or after the event. The
most frequently reported motives for listening to music in sports were to increase levels of acti-
vation, motivation, performance and positive affect. The athletes further reported that they
mainly experienced positive affective states (e.g., alert, happy, calm/relaxed, confident) in rela-
tion to music in sports. These results extend previous findings which have mainly been based on
qualitative interviews with few participants (e.g., Bishop et al., 2007), and suggest that emo-
tional and motivational uses of music are an integral part of both training and preparation for
competition for many athletes.
Like previous studies, the results indicate that music is often used during pre-event prepara-
tions (e.g., Bishop & Karageorghis, 2009), but less so during competition or after the event. This
result could be expected because there are likely fewer opportunities for listening to music dur-
ing competition in most sports. Also, many governing bodies of sport are currently banning the
use of music in competition, which obviously further diminishes the possibilities of listening to
music during competition (see Karageorghis & Terry, 2009). It should be noted that the preva-
lence of listening in various sporting situations is also influenced by the motives for listening.
The most frequently reported motive in both the semantic and episodic estimates was to increase
the level of activation, or to ‘pump up’, a listening strategy for optimizing the arousal level
before the event, whereas motives relevant for after-event use, like relaxation, were less fre-
quently reported. Also, most of the frequently-reported motives for listening, like increasing
levels of motivation, positive affect, flow, and endurance can be seen as strategies for making
training more enjoyable and effective. In general the picture presented by the current results
is that the athletes reported using music in very purposeful ways to facilitate their training
and performance. This impression is accentuated when looking at studies of everyday music
listening where listening for entertainment is among the most frequently reported motives for
listening (e.g., Laukka, 2007), whereas it was less frequently reported in the sports context of
the present study. The results also give face validity to Terry and Karageorghis (2006) concep-
tual model of possible benefits of music in sports and exercise in the sense that the athletes
reported using music for all of the reasons included in the model. However, motives related to
motoric aspects received relatively lower frequency estimates than the other motives, and it
remains to be investigated whether this was a characteristic unique to our sample (e.g., due to
the specific sports included) or if motives related to motor aspects of the behavior are generally
less frequently endorsed. Also, further experimental research is warranted to investigate how
music may affect performance in sports in positive as well as in negative ways.
As in previous studies focusing on everyday listening contexts, the athletes reported that the
emotions and affective states that they felt in relation to music in sport settings were mainly
positively valenced (e.g., Juslin et al., 2011). However, a distinct feature of the current results
was that all of the most frequently mentioned emotions and affects could be related to perfor-
mance and motivation in sports. ‘Happy’ emerged as the most frequently-reported emotion in
the semantic estimates, and optimal levels of positive affect are often considered beneficial for
achievement and motivation in sports (e.g., Hanin, 2007). ‘Alert’ was the most frequently men-
tioned affective state in the episodic estimates. Alertness, in addition to being a positively-
valenced affective state, may be conceived as including both a physiological arousal component

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210 Psychology of Music 41(2)

and a cognitive component and, based on the current data, seems to be of primary importance
in musical sporting episodes. This is not surprising because being alert implies a state of optimal
arousal and a cognitive mindset of appropriate focus and concentration for successful perfor-
mance. Feeling confident also emerged as an important affective state in relation to music in
sports. Confidence in one’s own capability to perform a task in sports and other domains is
crucial for the successful execution of, as well as the level of motivation and perseverance in,
the task (e.g., Bandura, 1991). Feeling calm/relaxed was also frequently mentioned by the ath-
letes, and is related to the regulation of both arousal levels and mood. As a final example, the
athletes also frequently reported that they felt ‘enjoyment’ in relation to music in sports.
Enjoyment of an activity is beneficial for developing an intrinsic motivation for the activity
(Deci & Ryan, 2000). In contrast, emotional states that are relatively frequently occurring in
relation to music in everyday listening but that have no obvious implications on performance
and motivation (e.g., loving, nostalgic, sad; see Juslin et al., 2011) seem to occur less frequently
in sporting than in everyday settings. Taken together the reported prevalence of emotions in
relation to music in sports suggests that the athletes use music to induce affective states that are
relevant and potentially beneficial to their sporting activities.
Our study further presented novel data about the athletes’ beliefs about the causes of the
emotion in their reported musical emotion episodes in sports. The main finding here was that
most of the athletes attributed the cause of the emotion to the broad category of ‘aspects of the
music’, and only relatively small percentages of the episodes referred to situational and per-
sonal factors unrelated to the music itself. Juslin and Västfjäll (2008) recently proposed several
psychological mechanisms by which music may evoke emotions, and it may be illuminating to
compare the athletes’ answers with their model. Many answers included in the ‘aspects of the
music’ category did mention music in very general terms only (e.g., ‘the music’), but some ath-
letes explicitly mentioned musical features (e.g., ‘the beat of the music’, ‘increases in tempo’,
‘loud music with a good punch’). Such answers can be interpreted as referring to the brain stem
reflexes mechanism, by which fundamental acoustic characteristics of the music are processed
by the brain to indicate potentially important and urgent events. A few participants further
mentioned features related to the musical structure (e.g., ‘the melody and tones of the music’)
and such answers could instead refer to the musical expectancy mechanism which refers to a
process whereby an emotion is induced in the listener because features of the music violates,
delays, or confirms the listener’s expectations about the continuation of the music (e.g., Huron,
2006; Meyer, 1956). However, many of the responses included in the ‘aspects of the music’
category also referred to the music in terms of aesthetic preferences (e.g., ‘good music’, ‘music
that I like’). Answers such as these are hard to interpret in terms of Juslin and Västfjäll’s (2008)
mechanisms, but point out the need for further research on the relationships between music
preferences and musical emotions.
Juslin and Västfjäll (2008) also included visual imagery, or the process whereby an emotion
is induced in a listener because she conjures up visual images while listening to the music, as a
mechanism in their model. Only a handful of responses were related to this mechanism (e.g., ‘I
visualized myself on a sunny beach with a piña colada in my hand while the tune was playing’),
and no answers explicitly referred to the emotional contagion mechanism (i.e., the process
whereby emotions are induced by music because the listener perceives the emotional expres-
sion of the music and then mimics this expression internally). Eight percent of the athletes
surveyed also mentioned that ‘memories’ were a likely cause of the musical emotions. Answers
in this category can be interpreted both in terms of the episodic memory mechanism – through
which an emotion is induced in the listener because the music evokes a particular event in the

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Laukka and Quick 211

listener’s past (e.g., ‘the music made me remember good things’) – and the evaluative condition-
ing mechanism which refers to a process whereby an emotion is induced by a piece of music
because that piece has been repeatedly paired with other positive or negative stimuli (e.g., ‘my
associations to the music that was playing’). To conclude, the present results indirectly suggest
that psychological mechanisms such as those proposed by Juslin and Västfjäll (2008) may be
underlying musical emotion episodes in sports. However, future research should investigate the
respective contribution of the different mechanisms in various contexts, including sport, in a
more direct fashion.
The results also gave data on what type of music the athletes usually listened to during
sports and exercise, and suggest that the athletes preferred uptempo and conventional, intense
and rebellious, and energetic and rhythmic music, rather than reflective and complex music.
This finding should also be interpreted in light of the motives for listening, because musical
preferences interact with the listening situation and people’ s music selections represent an
attempt to optimize their responses to that situation (e.g., North & Hargreaves, 2000). It is pos-
sible that different musical styles can be used to achieve the same emotional and motivational
functions (e.g., Juslin et al., 2011; Schäfer & Sedlmeier, 2009), but some musical styles may be
particularly appropriate for certain uses (e.g., Schwartz & Fouts, 2003). Because the athletes
mainly listened to ‘pump up’ in a sport context, it seems natural that they would choose high-
arousal music as opposed to calm music.3 This finding converges with previous studies on pre-
ferred music in sports settings which suggest that athletes predominantly listen to ‘motivational
music’ (i.e., music which stimulates or inspires physical activity) during sports (Crust, 2008;
Karageorghis, Priest, Terry, Chatzisarantis, & Lane, 2006). One limitation of the present study,
and most research on music preferences, is the fact that broad categories of different musical
genres (e.g., Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003) may not capture the essence of the musical preferences
since different pieces of music within the same broad category may be very different. A solution
to this problem would be to add descriptions of the music in terms of musical features such as
tempo and intensity, and also to include ratings of liking, familiarity, and other subjective eval-
uations of the music. Such an approach would give a more fine grained description of the musi-
cal piece in question, and has been advocated by Karageorghis et al (2006) in the domain of
sports psychology.
The present study expands upon earlier qualitative studies and provides the first estimates of
the prevalence of various emotional and motivational uses of music among elite athletes.
However, the present data also have several limitations. Most obviously the data consist of ret-
rospective self-reports which may be subject to various biases such as demand characteristics
and recall biases. Unlike many previous studies, we assessed both semantic and episodic esti-
mates in order to achieve more stable estimates as well as richer data about the athletes’ emo-
tional and motivational uses of music. However, future studies on athletes’ uses of music should
also try to incorporate data that are not based on self-report (e.g., behavioral observations), and
self-report data that are not based on retrospective appraisals (e.g., diary and experience sam-
pling studies). Also, though the response rate of the present study was acceptable, it is still pos-
sible that the prevalence estimates may be inflated because the athletes who chose to participate
may have been particularly interested in music. Further, we found that female athletes reported
slightly higher levels of emotion in relation to music in sports than male athletes, which is in
accord with previous studies of everyday music listening (e.g., Juslin et al., 2011). Our study did
not focus on individual differences, but future studies could include personality as a variable of
interest because there are studies suggesting that motives for listening and emotional responses
to music may be affected by personality factors (e.g., Chamorro-Premuzic & Furnham, 2007;

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212 Psychology of Music 41(2)

Juslin et al., 2011; Rawlings & Leow, 2008). Finally, our sample included athletes from a wide
array of sports, but the number of athletes within each sport was rather small which prohibited
the comparison of listening strategies between different sports. However, the different require-
ments and challenges of different types of sports render the question of between-sports differ-
ences in uses of music an interesting topic for future research.

Notes
1. Short definitions of various concepts related to emotion, as discussed in this article, are provided
following Scherer (2005). Emotions are generally considered to be brief and fairly intense affective
responses to objects or events, and consist of several components including evaluations of the
significance of the object/event, physiological arousal, expressive behavior, action tendencies,
and subjective feeling states. Mood, on the other hand, refers to affective states which have lower
felt intensity than emotions; they do not have a clear object, and may last for much longer periods
than emotions (several hours to days). Arousal refers to the activation of the autonomic nervous
system. Arousal can be a component of an emotion, but it can also occur in the absence of emotions
(e.g., during exercise). Affect is used throughout the article as a general term comprising all kinds of
valenced (i.e., positive/negative) states, including but not limited to emotions and moods.
2. Note that for the questions about the relative frequency of a) music listening in various sports
situations and b) various motivations for listening to music during sports, the response options did
not include the options ‘never’ and ‘always. This may have resulted in a slightly narrower range of
responses, because, for example, some participants may have been forced to report that they listened
to music during a particular situation ‘very seldom’ when in fact they may never have listened to
music in that situation.
3. It should be noted that our data on music preferences are based solely on ratings of musical genres
and that we did not have access to information about the actual musical or physical features of the
music that the athletes reported listening to. Thus, the finding that athletes listen to high-arousal
music in order to pump-up rests on the assumption that musical pieces from the preferred genres are
in general more arousing than pieces from the non-preferred genres.

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Biographies

Petri Laukka is an associate professor of psychology at Stockholm University. His main research interests
revolve around emotion science (especially nonverbal communication of affect) and music psychology;
and draw on methods from social and cognitive psychology as well as social neuroscience.

Lina Quick holds a master’s degree in education from Stockholm University, specializing in physical edu-
cation and psychology. She is a former track and field, and bobsleigh, elite athlete and currently teaches
physical education at an upper secondary school in Hudiksvall, Sweden.

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