Under Pressure: Listening to Music Reduces Test Anxiety and Mitigates Its Effect on Exam Performance More than Writing About Worries Among Female College Students

The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of two five-minute test anxiety interventions (listening to self-selected music and writing about test worries) on anxiety and academic test scores in an introductory psychology course. College students (n = 108) attending a women-centered institution in the Northeastern United States participated in a randomized controlled trial and focus groups (n = 41). Over the course of a semester, students (106 female, 2 non-binary) participated in four activities (music, writing, two control groups), one before each of the four academic exams. Music listening resulted in the lowest post-intervention anxiety scores of all conditions. For exam scores, the main effect of the condition was not significant; however, a significant condition X pre-intervention anxiety interaction revealed that music and the active control condition led to superior exam performance among students experiencing greater pre-exam anxiety. Themes from the focus groups described participants’ experiences in each of the four interventions and helped to contextualize the main findings. In this sample of predominantly first- and second-year female students, listening to a calming song before an academic test is a practical and scalable method to address test anxiety and to attenuate its effect on performance for those with elevated pre-exam anxiety.