Krause, Amanda, Forbes, Melissa, and Lowe-Brown, Xanthe (2024) Does Reality Television-Style Singing Influence Singing Self-Concept? Journal of Voice. (In Press)

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Abstract

Hypothesis: Due to upward social comparison, we hypothesized that exposure to reality television singing (a technically demanding style of contemporary commercial music singing) would negatively influence singing self-concept compared to hearing amateur singers or plain, unembellished singing by professionals.

Study Design and Methods: A between-subjects, online experiment was used. A sample of 212 individuals (Mage = 33.14; 69.30% female) participated in the study. After completing a background section, participants were randomly allocated into one of the experimental conditions (hearing one of four versions of a well-known song: a control version with piano and no singing, amateur singing, professional plain singing, and professional singing in the style of reality television singing). Participants were then asked to judge the performance they heard and to respond to items concerning their singing self-concept (including singing ability).

Results and Conclusions: A series of ANCOVAs was used to examine the impact of the experimental condition on the participants’ performance judgments and singing self-concept. The amateur singing was judged as the lowest quality. While there was no significant difference by experimental condition regarding possessing good singing ability, the experimental condition did affect people's singing aspirations and perceived ability to sing along with the performers. The pattern of results suggests that exposure to reality television-style singing may have negative impacts on people's singing self-concept via upward social comparison. Self-concept has been identified as an important predictor of musical engagement and participation and plays a role in motivating action. These results encourage music educators, singing voice pedagogues, and community musicians seeking to promote musical and singing participation to be aware of cultural influences on an individual's singing self-concept.

Item ID:	75563
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1873-4588
Keywords:	Contemporary commercial music singing; Musical identity; Singing ability; Singing self-concept; Social comparison theory; music psychology; psychology of music; social and applied psychology of music; music education; music performance
Copyright Information:	© 2022 TheVoice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. After a 12-month embargo this author accepted manuscript is available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
Date Deposited:	12 Sep 2022 04:04
FoR Codes:	36 CREATIVE ARTS AND WRITING > 3603 Music > 360304 Music performance @ 40% 52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5205 Social and personality psychology > 520505 Social psychology @ 60%
SEO Codes:	13 CULTURE AND SOCIETY > 1301 Arts > 130102 Music @ 40% 28 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 2801 Expanding knowledge > 280121 Expanding knowledge in psychology @ 60%
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