How audience and general music performance anxiety affect classical music students' flow experience: A close look at its dimensions.

Flow describes a state of intense experiential involvement in an activity that is defined in terms of nine dimensions. Despite increased interest in understanding the flow experience of musicians in recent years, knowledge of how characteristics of the musician and of the music performance context affect the flow experience at the dimension level is lacking. In this study, we aimed to investigate how musicians' general music performance anxiety (MPA) level (i.e., the general tendency to experience anxiety during solo music performances) and the presence of an audience influence the nine flow dimensions. The participants were 121 university music students who performed solo a music piece once by themselves (private performance) and once in front of an audience (public performance). Their general MPA level was measured with an adapted version of the STAI and ranged from 27 (very low MPA) to 76 (very high MPA). The level of the nine flow dimensions was assessed with the Flow State Scale-2 after each performance. The levels of "concentration on task at hand," "sense of control," and "autotelic experience" decreased significantly with increasing general MPA level. The levels of "unambiguous feedback" and "loss of self-consciousness" decreased significantly with increasing general MPA level during the public performance only. The level of "sense of control" was significantly lower during the public performance than the private performance across participants. The level of "unambiguous feedback" was significantly lower during the public performance than the private performance for participants with a general MPA level higher than 47. The level of "loss of self-consciousness" was significantly lower during the public performance than the private performance for participants with a general MPA level higher than 32. In contrast, the general MPA level and the audience did not significantly affect the levels of "challenge-skill balance," "clear goals," and "action-awareness merging." These results show that the effects of general MPA level and audience vary greatly across flow state dimensions. We conclude that musicians' flow state should be analyzed at the dimension level rather than as a global score. We discuss how our findings could inform the development and implementation of interventions.

Musicdrops@work: Impact of Shared Listening to Short Live Music Interventions on Sense of Belonging and Subjective Wellbeing at Work.

Assuming live music can foster belonging in the workplace, this study linked companies in the secondary and tertiary sectors with the world of music performance. Specifically, students from a Swiss music university offered live mini-concerts (10 min of classical music) on the premises of three companies over a period of 3 months. To analyze the impact of these brief musical interventions on the sense of belonging of staff in these companies, a mixed methods approach was adopted using a standardized questionnaire (Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire, a short online questionnaire on the appreciation of the music and the emotional state induced, and focus groups interviews at the end of the experiment). The short concerts were much appreciated. On the individual level, they led to a greater sense of pleasure and were perceived as a break, a possibility to connect to one's emotions and above all, as a "moment for oneself." On the group level, the short concerts allowed the members of teams to meet, prompted conversations and new ways of sharing, created links, and offered opportunities to get to know work colleagues differently and to discover them on a more personal level.

Music in Seclusion Rooms-Development, Implementation, and Initial Testing of a Music Listening Device.

Although presented as a care measure, the use of seclusion rooms (SR) is controversial for both ethical and therapeutic reasons. Given that music seems to have a positive impact on psychiatric patients, offering them the possibility of listening to music might help to improve the care dimension of SR use. This study aimed to develop, implement, and test a musical listening device that would be completely at patients' disposal, easy to use and beneficial to the quality of care provided in SRs. Over a 12-week period, interviews were conducted with nurses (N = 6) caring for patients placed in an equipped SR. The music player was user friendly, encouraged patients to make choices and decisions, helping them to regain control over themselves and their behavior, and elicited various patient-nurse interactions, thus contributing to the establishment of a caring relation. Further research is warranted to examine whether the systematic use of the music player has an impact on the subjective experience of both patients and caregivers, and on daily ward routine.

Are only Emotional Strengths Emotional? Character Strengths and Disposition to Positive Emotions.

This study aimed to examine the relations between character strengths and dispositional positive emotions (i.e. joy, contentment, pride, love, compassion, amusement, and awe). A sample of 574 German-speaking adults filled in the Dispositional Positive Emotion Scales (DPES; Shiota, Keltner, & John, 2006), and the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS; Peterson, Park, & Seligman, 2005). The factorial structure of the DPES was examined on item level. Joy and contentment could not be clearly separated; the items of the other five emotions loaded on separate factors. A confirmatory factor analysis assuming two latent factors (self-oriented and object/situation specific) was computed on scale level. Results confirmed the existence of these factors, but also indicated that the seven emotions did not split up into two clearly separable families. Correlations between dispositional positive emotions and character strengths were positive and generally low to moderate; a few theoretically meaningful strengths-emotions pairs yielded coefficients>.40. Finally, the link between five character strengths factors (i.e. emotional strengths, interpersonal strengths, strengths of restraint, intellectual strengths, and theological strengths) and the emotional dispositions was examined. Each of the factors displayed a distinctive "emotional pattern"; emotional strengths evidenced the most numerous and strongest links to emotional dispositions.