Regulating test anxiety by aesthetic musical emotions: based on the mutual promotion and mutual counteraction (MPMC) theory of affect

The aim of the study was to explore whether there are differences in the effects of temporary and short-term interventions for test anxiety (TA) between aesthetic musical emotions and everyday positive emotions based on the mutual promotion and mutual counteraction (MPMC) theory of affect. In Study 1, one hundred and three valid participants with high TA (38 males, 23.29  ± 1.05 years old on average) were equally divided into three groups by matching, and different genres of audio materials (comedic audio, vital music, sublime music) were used to induce different types of emotions (everyday positive emotions, vital music emotions, sublime music emotions) in order to test the effect of temporary intervention on TA. In Study 2, a one-week short-term intervention was conducted based on the former study to further investigate the effects of different audio types in alleviating TA. The results showed an experimental dissociation from Study 1, demonstrating that sublime music had the best effect on sustained intervention of TA, followed by comedic audio, and the effect of vital music was slightly weaker than the previous two. Findings suggest that music genre may be an important factor that should not be overlooked when alleviating TA with music.