Term of Award

2000

Degree Name

Master of Science

Document Type and Release Option

Thesis (restricted to Georgia Southern)

Department

Department of Health and Kinesiology

Committee Chair

Kevin L. Burke

Committee Member 1

A. Barry Joyner

Committee Member 2

Charles J. Hardy

Abstract

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' intrepretive psychological perceptions of listening to music during the pre-game period. This investigation examined the effects of the individual participant's 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 < .0083) for state self-confidence intensity. The results suggest that an individual music session, featuring the participant's favorite music, significantly enhanced feelings of state self-confidence in collegiate athletes.

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