“I’m not scared of the dark; I’m not running, running, running; no, I’m not scared of the fall; I’m not scared, not at all; why would a star, a star, ever be afraid of the dark.” – Ty Dolla $ign, “Scared of the Dark”

When I was brainstorming ideas for this post this week, this song came on. I sat up straight in my chair. I noticed my body language and energy increased. This is one of my go-to songs whenever I am nervous for a presentation or working with a new team. Then it occurred to me. Let’s talk about the relationship between music, our body language, and our confidence in sport.

Before we get into the details of why body language and confidence is important, I want you to choose a song that pumps you up or inspires confidence; a song that could get you out of a bad mood. Fully listen to the song, close your eyes, and just notice how your body language changes.

Let’s reflect. Is it the lyrics to the song that you focused on? The beat of the song? What happened to your body and your mood? Hopefully, you noticed some slight changes, or maybe large, and started to notice the power that music can play into our body language. But why is this important?

 Research done by Kleef in 2009 proposed the emotions as social information model (EASI-model) which proposes that non-verbal behaviors, such as body language, affect others in one of two ways. Those two ways are through inferential processes and affective reactions. The first way, inferential processes, is how others (teammates, opponents, coaches) pick up information about your feelings and attitude. The second way, affective reactions, will actually cause others to reflect the emotions or feelings that you are putting out into the world. 

So, if others are reacting off how we are presenting ourselves, shouldn’t we be making sure we exhibit positive body language as often as we can? We should strive to show confidence in ourselves and as a team in an effort to attempt to intimidate our opponents. You want that competitive edge as an athlete, and this is another way to get it.

Continuing with previous research, it has been found that outcomes of games or our individual performance can change how our body language is. Whether or try to prevent it or not, sometimes our nonverbal reactions “leak” out (Furley & Schweizer, 2016b). Of course, when you have success, you are going to high five and have a certain swagger about you which radiates to your teammates. However, if you have a bad play and suddenly let your shoulders drop, that will also signal your teammates and possibly lead to that affective reaction. 

This makes it important to need to be able to bounce back immediately from negative nonverbal reactions. Ideally, we want to ride the wave of positive body language and minimize the time spent using negative nonverbals. We, also, want to understand how this body language can be a predictor of success.

Research has also looked at nonverbal behaviors and found that high number of touches (high fives, hugs, elbow bumps for COVID safety, etc.) between teammates when playing well has a higher rate of positive outcomes for subsequent performances compared to a lower number of touches. On the flip side, negative outcomes were highly associated with low touches when a team was playing well or a high volume of touches when teams are not performing well (Kraus, Huang, & Keltner, 2010). What this tells us is that we want to maintain and promote those touch nonverbal behaviors when the team is playing well, and taking that into practice as well, while avoiding them when the team is playing poorly. 

Finally, we need to look at how this all comes back around to confidence. Studies have researched how coaches and athletes view confidence. Both coaches and athletes view nonverbal behaviors as a key contributor to team outcome confidence (whether the team thinks they will win or not). Furthermore, athletes believe that their confidence is higher when their teammates display positive nonverbal behavior (Furley & Schweizer, 2019).

To wrap it all up: spread your confidence, spread your positive nonverbal behaviors, and strive for those positive outcomes. Find things that help trigger positive moods and increased confidence. Mine is music. Yours could be positive self-talk. It could be meditation. It could be prayer. Whatever it is, use it. As we all know… Confidence. Is. Key.

“Every time I think I hit my ceiling; I go higher than I’ve ever been”- Eminem