Freeing the performer’s mind: A structural exploration of how mindfulness influences music performance anxiety, negative affect and self-consciousness among musicians
Music performing usually binds intense psychological experiences, from which music performance anxiety (MPA) is amongst the most damaging and pervasive ones. Alongside, some constructs seem to be associated with MPA, like negative affect and self-consciousness. In the interaction between these three elements, mindfulness seems to be an effective tool to cope with MPA by altering the relationships between it and self-consciousness or negative affect. In this study, a structural model is proposed following a cross-sectional design with a total of 151 spanish-speaking music performers. Results from a structural equation model seems to support the proposed model, making dispositional mindfulness an effective mechanism to alter the way MPA interacts with self-consciousness and negative affect. More specifically, dispositional mindfulness seems to inversely mediate the relationship between negative affect and MPA, while also inversely moderating the relationship between self-consciousness and MPA. In other words, dispositional mindfulness seems to prevent how self-conscious music performers can be or how negative is their mood into developing career-damaging MPA phenomena. Limitation of these findings are discussed, alongside future lines of work to improve the likelihood of this conclusions.