Learned helplessness - Music performance anxiety

*After much effort and dedication, Inkeri graduated with honours as a Master in oboe performance. "Great performer, self-confident and very expressive" - that is how her teachers and classmates would describe her. Inkeri felt competent in the oboe and she could not remember having experienced music performance anxiety even in high-stress situations such as jury examinations or her graduation recital. 

Inkeri started to audition for a position in national and international orchestras. Despite her multiple attempts, she did not manage to secure one. The recruitment processes were very demanding. In every audition, she had to compete with at least 30 other oboe players. Divided by a visual barrier (a common practice use to avoid juries' visual biases), she had to impress juries playing between 5-10 minutos without any feedback.

Eventually, the constant negative responses got to her. Unlike before, she started to feel worried about upcoming auditions and thinking she would fail again. She started to experience mouth dryness, something particularly troublesome for oboists. Feelings of hopelessness and depression followed shortly after. In sum, her self-efficacy and motivation to practice thoroughly weakened. "What is the point of practicing so much if they are going to tell me no anyway?" - she started to ask herself. Curiously, these emotions which generated unpleasant sensations arrived only during auditions and not in other musical contexts. 

Learned helplessness

I could comment of various elements of this case. But I want to focus on the question Inkeri posited for herself: "What is the point of practicing so much if they are going to tell me no anyway?". In psychology there is a term called learned helplessness and it can explain the origin of this question. 

When someone is continuously exposed to stress and fail to control the situation regardless of how much they try, it is possible that they will stop trying future solutions. Learned helplessness includes at least two key elements: the first is a loss of motivation to cope with future challenges because we do not see how our actions can change the circumstances; the second is underestimating our own capacities to adapt even when we achieved a desired outcome (for example, we attribute a positive result to luck: "luckily, today I played well". Here one does not recognise their own personal effort and they attribute success to something uncontrollable like luck). 

I invite you to watch this video were learned helplessness and its effects is demonstrated in a group of students:

Learned helplessness and feedback

Feeling that we can face a challenge is essential in preventing learned helplessness. One way to develop our confidence is through adequate feedback. Sometimes we are judged and some other we judge. These assessments can happen during jury examinations, individual lessons, auditions, practicing, listening to oneself, etc. Since we are exposed to a constant evaluation, it is crucial take into account some advice to give an adequate feedback. That is, one that facilitates our learning and guards our mental health. Next, I suggest some guidelines to provide positive feedback.

• Clearly highlight the strength of our students or ourselves: For example, "I believe you have a mature understanding of this piece", "your dynamic range has been touching", "you manage to differentiate the multiple voices of these sections rich in counterpoint", "this is the first time that I managed to play the whole piece from beginning to end", etc.
• Focus on actions and not in personal labels: For example, if there is some rhythmic problem, you could communicate it by saying "I perceive that the rhythm is a bit inconsistent in this section", instead of saying "you don't control the rhythm". Additionally, instead of saying "this section is easy, don't make your life more difficult", you may suggest "I think I hear what you want to achieve. You could obtain that result with less effort if you try this". 
• Providing clear problem-solving suggestions: Similarly to the rhythm example, you could suggest "to solve this problem, why don't you try marking the pulse in eights instead of quarter notes?". 
• Celebrate your accomplishments: Remember those moments when you succeeded some musical goal that was important to you. These are good moments to remind yourself that you are capable of fulfilling your duty. It can be something as "small" as playing a scale with a natural phrasing, as well as something more demanding like giving a full recital deeply engaged in the moment and despite some mistake here and there. As musicians, we are used to pay attention to what could have worked better, but it is less frequent observe and appreciate the small, midd or great victories.
• Ask yourselves: Lastly, I invite you to remember one time in which you gave or received feedback. What worked well? Was there something that made you feel bad? What would you have changed in a future feedback delivery to nurture your or your students' self-confidence? If you would have the power to make decisions on a big scale (say you are the principle of a music school) how would you prevent your students developing learned helplessness?

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Oriele Montezuma, who was my professor of Psychology of Learning back in 2009, for her feedback while writing this text. Her commentaries helped to improve the content of this entry. What I learned from her, remains close to me.

*Case based on Kenny (2010).

Sources

American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Learned helplessness. In APA dictionary of psychology. Retrieved on April 10, 2020, from https://dictionary.apa.org/learned-helplessness

OpheliaProject. (2021, August 27th). Learned helplessness - Dr. Charisse Nixon [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtB6RTJVqPM

Kenny, D. T. (2010). The role of negative emotions in performance anxiety. In P. N. Juslin & J. A. Sloboda (Eds.), Handbook of music and emotion: Theory, research, and applications, pp. 425-452. UK: Oxford University Press.