Studies published in the journal Music psychology We tested whether exercise affects people’s musical experience. Researchers found that participants, regardless of their musical style, rated unfamiliar music as more enjoyable after running for 12 minutes on a treadmill.
Past studies have shown that listening to music while exercising improves performance. However, research author Michael J. Hove and his team wondered if this relationship would be bidirectional. Does exercise affect listening to music?
“I was curious about how exercise would change the experience of listening to music, depending on what happened to me after playing hockey. After a hockey game, music would sound great to me. Get home. After I was there, I often sat in the car and listened to the end of the song, “said Hove, an associate professor at Fitchburg State University. “I couldn’t turn it off. As a music psychologist, I knew extensive literature on how listening to music could improve athletic performance, but in the opposite direction. Few studies have seen (how exercise affects listening to music). “
Physical activity has well-known therapeutic effects. For example, research shows that exercise can increase mood, arousal, and dopamine levels. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is part of the brain’s reward system. In particular, these three factors are also related to the enjoyment of music. With this evidence in mind, Hove and his team suggested that exercise could enhance a person’s musical enjoyment, perhaps through mood, arousal, or concentration of dopamine.
A sample of 20 college students aged 19 to 25 participated in the study. The experiment included two 1-hour lab sessions (exercise session and control session) held every other week. In both sessions, participants listened to clips of 48 unfamiliar songs from different genres (rock, indie, electronic, etc.) and were “very excited” from the level of fun and awakening of each clip (“calm”). Scale up to “) was evaluated.
On exercise day, participants listened to and evaluated half of the song’s clips before running on the treadmill for 12 minutes. After the exercise, they listened to and evaluated the clips of the remaining songs. The procedure was similar on Control Day (Control Task), except that participants evaluated the clips of the song before and after listening to the podcast. Participants were also tested to assess emotions and emotions before and after exercise and control tasks and to measure blink rate as an indicator of dopamine function. The students listened to each song twice, and the order of the songs was balanced between the exercise day and the control day.
Researchers averaged each student’s musical enjoyment rating across songs and tested whether these averages changed from pre-test to post-test (before and after an exercise or control task). They found that students’ evaluation of music enjoyment increased significantly after exercise, but not after listening to the podcast. This applies regardless of the energy of the song and suggests that exercise has enhanced the enjoyment of music, whether the song is bright or mellow.
Participants showed a stronger increase in post-exercise positive mood and a stronger increase in arousal compared to listening to podcasts. Mood changes were not associated with changes in music enjoyment on either exercise days or podcast days, but changes in arousal were largely associated with changes in music enjoyment on both days.
In other words, students who rated themselves more “excited” after exercising or listening to podcasts tended to find music more enjoyable. As the authors of the study pointed out, these findings are consistent with evidence that awakening plays a role in the way people experience and enjoy music.
“We measured several factors that could be associated with changes in music enjoyment. The factor that showed the most obvious association with increased music enjoyment was increased arousal.” Hove told PsyPost.
Interestingly, exercise did not affect participants’ dopamine function when measured by blink rate. Changes in music enjoyment were positively correlated with blink rate, but the relationship was not statistically significant. The authors stated that future studies with larger samples and more direct measurements of dopamine may shed more light on the potential role of dopamine in the relationship between exercise and musical enjoyment.
Overall findings suggest that exercise enhances the joy of music by increasing arousal, not by increasing mood. Since listening to music and exercising are two treatments for depression, Hope and his colleagues suggest that the combination of the two practices may provide optimal results. “Music and exercise do not replace established therapies like psychotherapy or pharmacology, but they provide free and accessible non-invasive ways to increase joy. Includes stress reduction, cognitive improvement, health and well-being. “
The study “Physical exercise increases perceived musical pleasures: the regulatory role of arousal, mood, or dopamine?” Was written by Michael J. Hove, Steven A. Martinez, and Samantha R. Shortrock.
