In a series of earlier posts here and here, I wrote about Amy Cuddy and her research about how changing our posture and adopting a more expansive pose (Power Pose), in fact causes us to act and feel more powerfully.

But are there any other ways for us to feel more powerful and more confident?

According to researchers at the Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management – there is.

All it takes is putting Queen or 50 Cent on your iPhone and turning up the volume.

Researchers ran a series of experiments to study how music, and in particular powerful songs with a heavy emphasis on bass, like Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and 50 Cent’s “In Da Club”, tended to empower people and make them feel more in control and more powerful.

You can read an article about their research here.

In the article, Dennis Rucker, one of the researchers at Northwestern, discussed how athletes, before a game, are seen listening to music to put themselves in a proper frame of mind:

“One ritual we have noted is that athletes often arrive at the stadium wearing earphones. And these athletes often emerge from the locker room to the sound of music pounding. It is as if the music is offering a psychological coat of armor for the competition about to occur.”

The article then discussed how people can use this same ritual to prepare for the “competitions” in their lives (e.g. job interviews).

Bottom line – whether it is listening to music with a strong emphasis on bass, or adopting a Power Pose, there are rituals that we can perform before an interview that can put us in a frame of mind that will enable us to succeed.