Name:Lucas Klein

School/Affiliation:McMaster University

Co-Authors:Laurel J. Trainor

Virtual or In-person:In-person

Abstract:

Optimal interactions in music ensembles, team sports and groups of all types can lead to a shared state of group cohesion that solitary tasks cannot. Group flow, an outgrowth of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s original flow theory, describes a state of mental absorption in a group task. However, most previous research has largely conflated the phenomenology of flow experiences between group and individual tasks, making group flow ill-defined and difficult to measure.
Group music-making is widely practiced around the world, occurs in many contexts, and regularly produces flow states (Tan & Sin, 2021). This study investigates qualities of musicians’ peak experiences in group musical interactions and leverages open-ended descriptions in the development of a musical group flow measurement tool. 86 musicians from 17 countries provided written descriptions of their experiences during peak music performance states. A thematic analysis of responses revealed seven core themes, which fit well with current theoretical frameworks (e.g., (Sawyer, 2007)). Musicians reported feeling deeply connected, a sense of rapport, “in tune” with one another, mutual awareness and equal participation.
We produced a set of ~70 survey items based on those themes and plan to use Likert-style responses on those items from a large online sample to reduce dimensionality and create a short survey for assessing group flow in research. We hope that this empirical assessment of the phenomenology of group flow helps to clarify definitions and facilitates more consistent measurement of the characteristics of subjective mental states in peak group musical experiences.