Feeling a little bit stressed out about that super important job interview you’ve got coming up? Trying to find a way to get yourself into the right frame of mind before entering? Want to know the secret to marching all up into that sonofabitch and just nailing it? A new study has looked into the effects of certain music on your confidence levels in high powered situations.
The report, conducted by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology found that bass-heavy music helped listeners feel more confident during interviews and meetings. During the course of the research, participants were asked to listen to a bunch of different songs and were asked to rate how powerful and dominant they felt afterwards.
Researchers were then able to divide the songs used into “high power” and “low power” playlists. High powered songs included 50 Cent‘s “In Da Club,” 2 Unlimited‘s “Get Ready For This,” and Queen‘s “We Will Rock You.” On the flipside, songs of lower power were The Notorious B.I.G.‘s “Big Poppa,” the Baha Men‘s “Who Let The Dogs Out?” and Fatboy Slim‘s “Because We Can.”
People who listened to the high power playlist were found to have taken the lead in a debate 34% of the time, whereas people who got down with the low powered bangers only put their front foot forward first 20% of the time.
Though no-one really knows why you’ll be going into an interview fired up and ready to bash the freaking sun after fully Getting Ready For This – science seems to think that people might be preconditioned to associate bass with power already – it seems your best bet, no matter what, is to get your hair did right, get all your research done, jump Into Da Clurrrrb and OWN THAT SHIT, SON.
‘Course, listening to banging tunes to pump yourself up for work things is not exactly the newest concept in the world. Some of the world’s finest men have quietly taken to the howling throes of metal before marching into the Scranton regional manager’s office to demand the raise they clearly deserve.
In case you’ve got an interview coming up in the next few minutes, we’ve put together the same playlist used in the study. We all just listened to the three high power songs, so you’ll have to excuse us momentarily because we now have to quickly duck out to crush bricks with our faces.
Photo: D Dipasupil via Getty Images.
