Music performance anxiety and the Italian sport psychology S.F.E.R.A. model: An explorative study on 77 professional musicians

Music performance anxiety (MPA) affects most musicians and is commonly listed among the triggering factors of several pathologies, such as depression, overuse syndrome, choking under pressure and focal dystonia. The study aimed at investigating the relationship between the S.F.E.R.A. model theory (SFERA), a multidimensional model for enhancing sport performances, and MPA in professional musicians. The model allows to analyze performances by monitoring five constructs representing underlying cognitive and metacognitive factors that influence performance, highlighting individual strengths and improvement areas. The results confirmed that severe MPA symptoms are a common issue among musicians (47%), while 36% of the sample experienced musculoskeletal pain related to playing their musical instrument in the 2 months preceding the study. Moreover, musicians who suffered from practice-related pain reported higher levels of MPA. The SFERA factors were strongly and negatively correlated with MPA scores, suggesting that improving the SFERA factors might be helpful in reducing MPA: musicians with high MPA showed significantly lower SFERA scores. Moreover, Energy was the strongest predictor of MPA scores among the five SFERA factors, suggesting that musicians with high anxiety levels present difficulties on emotional regulation during the performance and struggle to focus on their performances while ignoring dysfunctional thoughts. The study indicates that SFERA scores can predict MPA and that sport psychology programs applied to the music field may also be useful protective factors for musicians’ psychophysiological health, especially in music academies and universities.