Perceived and physiological evidence of music performance anxiety in popular music vocal students

This study investigated physiological manifestations and self-perceived trait levels of performance anxiety for higher education contemporary commercial music vocalists undertaking tasks of increasing difficulty in a studio setting. Research has documented the prevalence of performance anxiety across musical genres generally, but understanding of how individual trait levels of performance anxiety affect physiological indicators across a range of task difficulty is limited. Studies measuring physiological manifestations of anxiety among instrumentalists, woodwind players and singers have reported varying results regarding heart rate (HR) and electrodermal activation (EDA) in high-stress settings and when performing challenging musical tasks. In this study, contemporary commercial music singers completed 10 different vocal tasks while wearing a device that measured their HR and EDA (physiological stress). Participants also reported their trait level of music performance anxiety in a survey (K-MPAI measure). The results show that electrodermal activation increased with task difficulty, but the results for HR were less clear, with average levels not consistently related to task difficulty in a linear fashion. This study demonstrated that when performing increasingly challenging singing tasks, contemporary commercial music vocalists with higher trait levels of music performance anxiety experienced elevated levels of EDA. Those with low levels of trait music performance anxiety did not experience higher levels of EDA with increasing task difficulty. The results provide new insights to contemporary commercial music vocalists regarding non-invasive ways of monitoring anxiety levels during individual practice and lessons that could lead to targeted interventions to address performance anxiety triggers in their individual systems.