F. I. T. Cutting Edge text

Theoretical Developments 
Until the publication of our first review paper (Karageorghis & Terry, 1997), the 
approach taken to the study of music in sport or exercise was largely unstructured and 

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atheoretical in nature. Researchers often adopted what became known as a “vitamin model” 
(Sloboda, 2008) whereby they presupposed that a particular piece of music would have 
certain “active properties” that might cause the listener to feel sedated or elated, happy or sad. 
This approach failed to account for two critical aspects of music that determine how 
individuals respond to a particular song or piece of music. The first relates to the moods, 
memories, attitudes, and preferences of the listener, while the second concerns the social 
context in which the music is heard. The presence of others, the type of activity one is 
engaged in, and the significance of that activity all come together in shaping one‟s response 
to music.
In our 1997 review paper we sought to provide researchers with an underlying framework 
and a number of methodological recommendations to guide their efforts. In particular, we 
suggested that the selection of music for experimental conditions should account for factors 
such as the age profile, musical preferences, and socio-cultural background of experimental 
participants. Moreover, we provided some guidelines on the design of music-related studies 
emphasizing the inclusion of appropriate dependent measures. Early work in this field had 
yielded frustratingly equivocal findings (see Lucaccini & Kreit, 1972 for a review). 
Accordingly, it was impossible to conclude that music would have a beneficial effect when 
applied to real-life sport and exercise tasks. Our review identified a number of 
methodological limitations that contributed to the equivocal findings. It also provided a 
starting point for the theoretical developments that followed and gave subsequent empirical 
investigations a sharper focus, particularly in terms of how researchers selected music for 
experimental conditions. The present chapter primarily addresses theoretical advances and 
empirical research since our 1997 review. 

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