Music With and Without Lyrics Increases Motivation, Affective Valence, and Arousal During Moderate-Intensity Cycling

Music is used during exercise to enhance psychological and physiological responses, including increased motivation, improved affective valence, optimized arousal, and reduced perceived exertion. Although researchers have identified several musical elements that may moderate these effects, the contribution of lyrics remains poorly understood. The present study examined the effects of lyrics on motivation, affective valence, arousal, and perceived exertion during moderate-intensity cycling. Thirty college students (Mage = 21.0 ± 2.9 years) completed 8-min bouts of moderate-intensity cycling under three counterbalanced conditions: music with lyrics (ML), music without lyrics (MNL; an instrumental version of the same track), and a no-music metronome control (MC). Motivation, affective valence, arousal, and perceived exertion were sampled at the end of a 6-min warm-up and at four in-task time points (8, 10, 12, and 14 min). Both music conditions produced significantly higher motivation, affective valence, and arousal than the metronome control at the in-task time points (8–14 min), with no differences between ML and MNL at any time point. Significant Condition × Time interactions indicate that these condition differences did not apply uniformly across the analytic window. Perceived exertion increased over time but did not differ across conditions. Under these specific conditions (a single, highly familiar popular track, an 8-min moderate-intensity cycling bout, and a metronome overlaid across all conditions), no additional psychological benefit of lyrical content was detected beyond that provided by the music itself. These results should not be generalized as evidence that lyrics have no effect on exercise-related psychological responses.