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When you walk into a basketball game, and the team is warming up, there’s usually music playing over the PA system. It’s usually loud and inspirational. It’s supposed to pump up the fans and, more importantly, the players. And it does. The coaches and players think this is a great idea. They choose the music, they think, because it’s fun and getting pumped up helps them win. This is a classic psychological blunder.
I’ll tell you why, but first, a riddle.
I was sitting in an airport dozing off waiting for a delayed flight. A shady looking man, wearing a white tank top and a fedora, with tattoos everywhere and a feather earring, sits down across from me. He looks around at the sleeping people all around us. A devilish expression flashes across his face. Then he gets out his phone.
As I watch, he presses the screen and suddenly the woman sitting next to me bolts upright and says “WHHAAAA?! What was that?!”
Then he presses the screen again, this time a little lower down. The couple sitting next to him both wake up instantly and look at each other in alarm. Again he presses, and now the guy on his other side snaps awake and says “Come on, man! What’s wrong with you?!” The fedora man laughs, gets up, and walks on to the next gate.
The question is, what did the shady guy do on his phone?
That’s the whole riddle. If you want a hint, read the next paragraph. The paragraph after that tells you the answer.
One of the best ways to lose weight is to not get hungry. Since that’s impossible, the next best thing is to only get hungry when your body needs food. And the way to do that? Don’t go into the kitchen. Kitchens make you hungry. There’s more to it than just the kitchen, but before we continue, let’s talk about stimulus and response. A stimulus is something external, like a bell ringing. A response is something you do, like, if you’re a dog Pavlov’s laboratory, start to slobber. This is classical conditioning: You associate a stimulus and a response. Like a drooling canine, you’ve learned to associate the kitchen with eating. So going in the kitchen makes you hungry. That’s hint level 1. Here’s hint level 2: Any stimulus can become meaningful. Even if it started out neutral, over time it will begin to elicit a reaction. That’s why movie theaters pump the smell of popcorn into the air outside their doors. That smell isn’t intrinsically attractive, but you’ve been conditioned, so now, when you smell it, you crave popcorn. And finally, hint level 3: These associations can be negative, too. How do you feel when you in the doctor’s office, when someone with rubber gloves uses a cotton swab to cover the inside of your elbow with rubbing alcohol? Not good. This is not an intrinsically negative or painful experience, but it elicits fear because you know what’s coming next.
So here’s the answer to the riddle, but I’ll unravel it slowly. The man in the fedora was using his phone to generate a stimulus that elicits horror. He generated one stimulus at a time. Most people found the first stimulus neutral so they easily slept through it. But the person sitting next to me had formed an association with the first stimulus, a visceral revulsion, a hatred and fear that shocked her awake like a slap in the face. This stimulus, this sound, had caused her pain many times. The couple across the aisle from me reacted the same way to a different sound. Why? Because the iPhone lets you pick what your alarm clock will sound like. The guy in the fedora was playing iPhone alarm sounds, one by one, and each time, anyone within earshot who used that alarm on their phone was painfully awoken.
Alarm clock sounds are among the most powerful, hated sounds in the 4.3 billion year history our planet. Now, what if you could turn the emotional power of the alarm clock sound to your advantage? Maybe you can.
Warmup music is supposed to be exciting. "We Will Rock You" by Queen. "Back in Black" by ACDC. "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor. A bunch of newer songs that will pump you up. These aren’t neutral stimuli. If you haven’t learned to associate them with excitement already, they’ll still pump you up. If you have—and you probably have—they’ll pump you up even more.
Choosing songs that pump you up to the max, thinking it’ll help you win, is a classic psychological blunder: Thinking only about yourself (i.e., you’re being egocentric). Yes, these songs pump you up. But they do the same thing for your opponent. Helping both teams does not give you an advantage.
If you want pump up music that will help you win, you need to choose songs that will help you more than they help your opponent. It’s about getting an advantage, not just getting pumped up.
Here’s how. It takes a little planning ahead and a little science. The first step is to harness the alarm clock effect. Alarm clocks start neutral but, over time, they become emotional triggers. You want to do that with songs. Start by choosing a set of songs. I’d name the playlist “secret weapon.” You might choose neutral songs, or you might choose something slow and sad—a song that will deflate your opponent rather than pump them up. Long before your first game, you have to start training your team. The goal is to make it so this song pumps them up. It’s actually easy to do. Your alarm clock terrifies you because it happens together with suffering. A song will pump you up if it happens together with excitement. So, play the song when the team is excited, at the start of practice, during fun drills, etc.
It won’t be fun. Players might revolt. Just tell them, you have to make sacrifices to win games.
During warmups of your first home game, put your playlist on the PA. Your team will get pumped up, just like it did last year. The difference is, last year the opponent was getting just as pumped; this year they’ll wilt like flower petals.
The problem is your fans will wilt too. They haven’t gone through the training. But every game they attend will be a training session, it will strengthen the association for the fans—and redouble it for the players—between the music and getting pumped. Plus, you know what gets fans REALLY pumped up? Winning!
Think about it. You start the game ready to roll. The other team starts confused and a little sad. They go on a 10-0 run and you call timeout. "The Way We Were" comes on the PA and they cool off. Then you go on a 10-0 run and they call timeout. "The Sounds of Silence" plays and by the end of the timeout, they’re so depressed they can barely take the court. They give up. Game, set, match.
Will this really work? A century’s worth of psychological research and theory says it should. Classical conditioning is a psychological law and everyone understands the alarm clock effect. However, theory is one thing, direct evidence is something else. I don’t have any direct evidence that secret weapon-style pump-up music before a game would actually change a team’s win-loss record. But I hope someone tries it, and if you do, comment down below and let us know how it goes!!
