Music listening as self-enhancement: Effects of empowering music on momentary explicit and implicit self-esteem

Abstract

In everyday life people use music to adjust their levels of arousal, to regulate their mood and emotions, and to cope with previous experiences, indicating that music plays an important role for everyday wellbeing. While the relationship between music and emotions has received considerable interest in past decades, little is known about the self-esteem boosting function of empowering music. In the present study, we investigated the relationship of music listening and self-esteem, by examining how momentary explicit and implicit self-esteem are (a) influenced by the expressive properties of music and (b) predicted by individual differences in responses to music. Results indicate that both explicit and implicit self-esteem are affected by music listening but in different ways. While momentary explicit self-esteem changed as a function of the expressive properties of the music and was positively predicted by liking, implicit self-esteem was positively predicted by empathy and negatively predicted by nostalgia. In contrast to changes in self-esteem, no changes in mood were observed. We anticipate our findings to be a starting point for further investigations of the cognitive and affective processes involved when listening to empowering music

The Sound of Success: Investigating Cognitive and Behavioral Effects of Motivational Music in Sports

“…Although there is evidence in favor of a positive effect of music listening on self-esteem (Brown and Mankowski, 1993 ; Elvers et al, 2017 ), this study found neither a direct effect of motivational music on the enhancement of state self-esteem nor a reduction of cognitive and bodily anxiety. Since mean gain scores for state self-esteem were negative across conditions, the ball-throwing task itself seems to have had a negative impact on self-evaluative cognitions.…”

“…More specifically, this account suggests that listening to music fulfills self-enhancement needs, providing listeners with enhanced self-esteem, optimism, and self-worth. Initial experimental evidence suggests that listening to powerful music activates power-related cognition and behavior (Hsu et al, 2014 ) and that listening to empowering music enhances momentary self-esteem (Elvers et al, 2017 ). Following from this initial evidence, we assume that motivational music also exerts a positive influence on self-evaluative cognition and subsequent behavior.…”

“…However, the self-enhancement effects are moderated by the listener's response to the music in terms of liking, familiarity, and empathy. While empirical evidence has been gathered with regard to changes in momentary (explicit) self-esteem (Elvers et al, 2017 ), it remains to be investigated how behavioral aspects relating to the notion of self-enhancement are influenced by listening to motivational music.…”

Editorial: The Impact of Music on Human Development and Well-Being

“…Within these lifespan perspectives, research into music's contribution to health and well-being provides evidence of physical and psychological impacts (MacDonald et al, 2013;Fancourt and Finn, 2019;van den Elzen et al, 2019). Benefits are also reported in terms of young people's educational outcomes (Guhn et al, 2019), and successful musical activity can enhance an individual's sense of social inclusion (Welch et al, 2014) and social cohesion (Elvers et al, 2017).…”

Deep-Learning-Based Multimodal Emotion Classification for Music Videos

“…A number of studies have attempted to show how music carries human affective states [2] and boosts mood and self-confidence [3][4][5]. Sometimes, this emotional effect is counterintuitive, as even sad music can evoke pleasure and comfort in listeners [6,7].…”