Break a leg!

Ever since I was younger, I have loved to sing! I performed solo's in the school plays, and then as I got older, and into High School, I joined theater, and I did some musical numbers and dances as well. I was never afraid to get up there and sing or perform when I was on stage with other people, because even though my time frame of performances was all over the place, I had done it for so many years I was pretty comfortable with it and I had my friends right their with me for support. Then, I got to college, and although I am not a music or theater major by any means, I thought it may be fun to try out private vocal lessons for my performance credit. I mean, how hard could it be right? WRONG. The vocal techniques are completely different than anything I had ever learned before, and I had to change everything from the way I stood, to my breathing, and even the shape of my mouth and where I place my tongue on certain notes. Who knew that your tongue or teeth could be so important in singing? Anyways, so I received my song that I was to perform in front of the the entire vocal staff and vocal majors, and figured with a little (A LOT) of practice, I could master the techniques. Of course, wrong again, this was something I learned really quickly takes YEARS to master, and even though I felt like when I was in the comfort of my one-on-one lesson with Dr. Findlen or at my house, a soon as I hit that stage and saw my large and really intimidating audience, I forgot everything she had taught me and what I had been practicing. When I began singing, I was singing from my chest not my abdominal area, I had my shoulders tensed up, and I was singing as if I had a head mic on and my shoes glued to the floor. Of course, they told me all the things I did, which I had already knew they were going yo say. So why did I do it?

I was experiencing the effects of social facilitation. This theory by Zajonc states that people have the tendency to perform better in the presence of others on tasks which they believe are easy, or they have mastered whereas people will perform not as well in the presence of others if they believe the task is hard or if it is new to them. 

(Social Facilitation: The Zajonc Solution, 1965).

We also see a similar figure in the book to the one above, which explains the theory of social facilitation more visually, which I like best! There are three steps in the Zajonc Solution. 1) the presence of others during a task creates a physiological arousal which stimulates behavior, 2) this increase of arousal then causes an elicited dominant response, which is the quickest and easiest reaction towards the task causing the arousal, and 3) the difficulty of the task either enhances the performance (this occurs when a task is simple or mastered) or impairs the performance (this occurs when the task is difficult or is unfamiliar) (Zajonc, 1965).

So in relation to my example, the graph would label as follows:

Presence of others: The vocal staff and majors

Arousal: Myself singing on stage alone (Well minus David our pianist)

Dominant Response Increases: My dominant response was incorrect because these techniques and being alone on  stage are all fairly new to me.

Result? My performance was impaired/decreased.

It is obvious in this situation, social facilitation got the best of me, and once I feel more comfortable with the techniques, maybe one day my dominant response will result in performance increase! I know that is sure true for a majority of the vocal majors. They are all so good!

Until Next Blog, 

Your Social Psychista

Word Count: 644

Zanjonc, R. B. (1965). Social facilitation. Science, 149, 269-274.