The most recent non-enjoyable performance

performs as a soloist, in ensembles or large groups seems to make a difference to the performers’ level of stress independently of their narratives (at least of the narratives investigated here). Multiple factors may contribute to these results, including

differences in the levels of exposure or in frequency of performing. For example, soloists perform significantly less frequently than musicians playing in ensembles or large groups (F(2, 591) = 6.43 p < .05; Soloists: M = 16.56, SD = 27.48; Ensemble performers: M = 25.67, SD = 31.64; Large group performers: M = 27.94, SD = 35.63). There may also be multiple reasons why musical genre predicts the quality of the performance experience over and above the other factors investigated.

The model of the regression explained 20 per cent of the variance in performance experiences, which suggests that there are factors that impact on the experience that were not included in this study. It is important to keep in mind that the study

investigated only a limited number of background and musical variables, and a limited number of narratives. For instance, it is reasonable to hypothesise that there may be other kinds of narratives that were not explored in this study, but that may also shape the performance experience (i.e. the extent to which enjoyment is viewed as a goal of performance).

In conclusion, from all the variables initially included in this study (age, gender, status role and musical genre), only the fact of belonging to the non-classical music genre, and of scoring high in the people-oriented, source-oriented, self-oriented and magical- moment narratives, predicted a higher frequency of enjoyable performance experiences. On the other hand, only the people-oriented narrative and playing in a large group, rather than in ensembles or as a soloist, predicted a lower frequency of stressful experiences.

3.3.6 The most recent non-enjoyable performance

The main goal of this study was to better understand highly enjoyable performance experiences. However, non-enjoyable performances were included in the study in order to compare both experiences in terms of emotions, narratives and background variables.

For this purpose, performers were asked to bring to mind their most recent non- enjoyable performance. In this case, 43% of performers (N = 247) referred to a performance in which they were performing as soloists, 36% (N = 208) in ensembles and 20% (N = 115) in large groups or orchestras. These results were consistent with the fact that many performers (55 per cent) did not enjoy performing as soloists (they reported that this was the setting they preferred the least). Fortunately, most performers reported having this kind of experience seldom (80%; N = 458), although 17% (N = 99) reported having this experience often, and 3% (N= 20) most of the time.

3.3.6.1 Emotions reported during the non-enjoyable performance

The non-enjoyable experience was marked by high levels of worry and fear, and also by a lack of motivation and an absence of positive emotions. Less than 1% of performers (N = 5) reported elation; 2% (N = 15) joy; 3% (N = 21) positive arousal and 4% (N = 27) confidence. By contrast, as many as 62% (N = 389) reported feeling worried; 37% (N = 232) feeling fearful and 32% (N = 201) unmotivated. The high levels of worry and fear reported were expected, because negative performance experiences are often related to performance anxiety. But surprisingly, almost one third of performers reported feeling unmotivated during that performance, which suggests that anxiety is not the only problem performers encounter in performance.

3.3.6.2 Quality of the last non-enjoyable performance

Performers were asked to evaluate their last non-enjoyable performance as either

anxiety-provoking, unpleasant or routine (in the context of non-enjoyable experiences, I interpreted ‘routine’ as being boring or without any particular interest). These categories were chosen in order to explore whether there were other negative emotions besides anxiety that could characterise the experience (i.e. frustration or feeling unmotivated). Surprisingly, less than half of the performers assessed that experience as anxiety- provoking (41%; N = 218), while 39 % (N = 206) categorised it as unpleasant and as many as 21% (N = 110) as routine.

Chi-squares were run in order to investigate whether the type of assessment the performers made of the experience was associated with their background variables. Table 3.17 shows the associations that were found to be statistically significant. For instance, the performance was evaluated as anxiety provoking by more women than men, more students than professionals, and more soloists than non-soloists. On the other hand, around a quarter of professional performers, and one third of performers playing in large groups evaluated their non-enjoyable performance as routine. These results suggest that performers who are both professional performers and who perform in big groups or orchestras may encounter motivation issues in performance.

Table 3.17 Associations between performers’ assessments of their last non-enjoyable

performance as ‘anxiety provoking’, ‘unpleasant’ or ‘routine’ and their background and musical variables.

Anxiety

provoking Unpleasant Routine

chi- square Men 29.7% 44.4% 25.9% 27.43** Women 51.7% 32.7% 15.6% Performing as soloist 49.3% 35.7% 15.0% 20.73** Performing in ensembles 33.7% 44.7% 21.6% Performing in large groups 36.4% 31.8% 31.8% Student 49.3% 37.7% 13.0% 10.75* Amateur 40.3% 39.6% 20.1% Professional 36.1% 38.6% 25.3%

*.Chi-square is significant at the 0.05 level. ** Chi-square is significant at the 0.001 level.

3.3.6.3 Exploring the performers’ statements

Performers were presented with a set of statements that attributed the negative quality of their experience to different factors. They were asked to select the statements that best described or explained their experience. Table 3.18 presents the statements that performers selected, ordered from the most frequently to the least frequently selected.

Table 3.18 Statements that performers selected in order to describe and explain their

last non-enjoyable performance

N You felt your performance was not up to your standards 58.1% 363

You felt anxious and tense 51.0% 319

You felt unconnected with the audience or co-performers 40.5% 253 You felt that the fact of you being there playing was meaningless 29.8% 186

You felt your self-esteem was threatened 29.1% 182

You felt that anything terrible could happen 26.4% 165

You felt the audience was uninterested or judgmental 21.1% 132

You think it happened due to…

Not feeling comfortable with or not liking the pieces, the public or

the situation 41.1% 257

A lack of preparation 35.2% 218

Playing with co-performers you did not feel comfortable with 22.7% 142

Your personality traits 21.8% 136

Feeling physically unfit 17.8% 111

Unknown reasons 13.6% 85

The non-enjoyable performance was characterised by the performers’ perception of not performing up to their standards. In line with the results discussed above, it is

noteworthy that only around half of the performers selected the statement ‘you felt anxious and tense’. Many performers appear to not have enjoyed this performance because of a lack of connection with audience or co-performers and because of finding the performance meaningless. This suggests that, just as meaning and connection appear to promote joy, so a lack of connection and meaning may be enough for a performance to be assessed as non-enjoyable. This also suggests that aiming to help performers to reduce anxiety is not enough, because even without anxiety performers may assess their performances as non-enjoyable experiences.

In order to investigate how the performers’ statements associated with a consistent way of experiencing performance (how cognition and emotion associate), chi-squares analyses were run between each statement and the performers’ evaluation of the performance experience during the previous year. This analysis showed that some statements were significantly associated with a high frequency of stressful experiences, which suggested that these statements expressed their usual way of thinking about performances, which in turn elicited anxiety. Some of the statements associated with

frequent stressful experiences showed ‘catastrophising’ and irrational beliefs (Steptoe, 1989): for example, ‘your self-esteem was threatened’ (χ² (2) = 27.768, p < .001), ‘you felt that anything terrible could happen’ (χ² (2) = 32.380, p < .001), or negative self- beliefs, i.e. ‘your personality traits’ (χ² (2) = 18.199, p < .001). A high frequency of stressful experiences was also associated with the statement: ‘you felt anxious and tense’ (χ² (2) = 26.332, p < .001). This result may be due to temperamental factors, (i.e. a predisposition towards greater anxiety), the consequence of irrational or unhealthy beliefs, or the interplay between temperament and unhelpful cognitions.

3.3.6.4 Looking for underlying narratives

In order to see whether statements clustered together in a sensible way (i.e. expressing different ways of making meaning of performance) and thus whether underlying

narratives could be inferred from these statements, a PCA was run with all of them (13). As my goal was descriptive, I decided I could do the PCA despite the fact that all my variables were dichotomous (Jolliffe, 2002). I applied an orthogonal rotation (varimax). The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure verified the sampling adequacy for the analysis, KMO = 652, and KMO for all individual items were above .74, which is above the acceptable limit of .5 (Field, 2009). Bartlett’s test of sphericity (χ² (78) = 718.497 p < .001) indicated that correlations between items were sufficiently large for a PCA. An initial analysis was run to obtain eigenvalues for each component in the data. Four components had eigenvalues over Kaiser’s criterion of 1 and, in combination, explained 53 per cent of the variance; however, the scree plot clearly showed an inflexion after the second component. Two components were retained in the final analysis (see Table 3.19).

Table 3.19 Principal component analysis with the performers’ 13 statements about

their last non-enjoyable performance

Component

Performers' statements regarding their last Non- enjoyable performance Self-oriented negative narrative Other-oriented negative narrative

You felt anxious and tense .708 -.047

Your performance was not up to your standards .645 -.025

You felt that anything terrible could happen .541 -.017

You felt that your self-esteem was threatened .534 .276

This was due to your personality traits .493 .053

This happened due to a lack of preparation .465 .037

This happened because you felt physically unfit .370 -.044

This happened because of unknown reasons .253 -.216

You felt unconnected with the audience or co-

performers -.050 .650

You felt that the fact of you being there playing was

meaningless -.024 .626

You felt the audience was uninterested or judgmental .194 .571

You did not feel comfortable with or did not like the

pieces, the public or the situation .119 .516

You played with co-performers you did not feel

comfortable with -.135 .451

Note. Totated Table Matrix. Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.

Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.

a. Rotation converged in 3 iterations.Values higher than .4 are in bold

I interpreted the two components as being two kinds of narratives, one being negative and self-oriented (narrowly centred on the self), and the other being negative but other- oriented (extending beyond self).

Would these two types of narratives predict the overall assessment of the performance experiences that performers reported? In order to answer this question, a Multinomial Logistic Regression was run with the negative self-oriented and the negative other- oriented narratives as predictors and the assessment of the performance experience during the previous year as the dependent variable. The results showed that, while the ‘negative, other-oriented’ narrative did not predict the assessment of the performers’ experience, the ‘negative, self-oriented’ narrative significantly predicted both a high frequency of stressful and a low frequency of highly enjoyable performances (see Table 3.20).

Table 3.20 Multinomial logistic regression with the assessment of the performance

experience during the previous year as the dependent

Stressful versus Moderately enjoyable performances

B

Odds ratio

95% Confidence Interval for Exp(B)

Lower bound Upper bound Intercept -1.16 (0.14)** Negative, self-oriented .57 (0.13)** 1.76 1.37 2.27 Negative, other-oriented .05 (0.12) 1.05 0.82 1.34

Highly Enjoyable versus Moderately enjoyable performances

Intercept .03 (0.09)

Negative, self-oriented -.29 (0.09)* 0.75 0.62 0.90

Negative, other-oriented .05 (0.09) 1.05 0.88 1.25

*.Chi-square is significant at the 0.05 level. ** Chi-square is significant at the 0.001 level.

b. This parameter is set to zero because it is redundant.

Note: Pseudo R-Square = .08 (Cox and Snell), .09 (Nagelkerke). Model (4) χ² 47.80 p < .001

This analysis suggests that the impact of negative self-centred narratives is more detrimental to performance experiences than the impact of narratives that are negative but other-oriented. Moreover, I infer that a broad perspective on performance, one that integrates its social dimension, may add meaning to the experience and may prevent performers from being caught in a narrow, destructive ego-centred loop such as the one that leads to MPA. Even when a performance goes wrong, thinking in terms of

interaction and connection, as opposed to self-centredness, may free performers from the self-esteem-threatening thoughts that would likely negatively impact on their upcoming performances.

Differences in negative self- and other-oriented narratives were investigated in regard to the performers’ background variables (namely gender, status, role and musical genre) through one-way ANOVAs, with the two narratives as the dependent variables, and background variables as the independent variables. Analyses showed that men and women differed in the negative self-oriented narrative, with women scoring

significantly higher than men on this variable (women: M = .14, SD = 1.01; men: M = - .14, SD = .97; χ² (1) = 12.00, p =. 001). However, no differences were found between men and women regarding the orientation of positive narratives (i.e. being people- or

self-oriented). The differences in their negative narratives might be due to women’s tendency to experience more anxiety than men, with anxiety leading to a narrowing of one’s focus of attention (more self-oriented), thus becoming more self-centred

(Fredrickson, 2005). But they might also result from women reporting their anxious experiences more easily than men; in other words, to the way in which they report emotions rather than to actual differences in their emotional experiences (Robinson & Clore, 2002).

Students, amateurs and professionals only differed in the negative self-oriented narrative, with students scoring significantly higher than their counterparts (χ² (2) = 16.75, p < .001) (see Figure 3.10). No differences were found between the narratives of soloists and non-soloists. However, classical and non-classical performers significantly differed in both narratives; classical performers scored significantly higher in the negative self-oriented (classical: M = .11, SD = .99; non-classical: M = -.29, SD = .93; χ² (1) = 21.46, p < .001) and lower in the negative other-oriented narrative (classical: M = -.9, SD =.99; non-classical M = .22, SD = .98; χ² (1) = 13.06, p < .001) than non- classical performers.

Figure 3.10 Differences in the means of the negative self-oriented narratives of students, amateurs and professional performers

Chapter 4. Summary and Discussion of the Results of