A performance is an act or process of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function. [1]
A performance is an act or process of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function. [1]
In the work place, job performance is the hypothesized conception or requirements of a role. There are two types of job performances: contextual and task. Task performance is dependent on cognitive ability, while contextual performance is dependent on personality. [2] Task performance relates to behavioral roles that are recognized in job descriptions and remuneration systems. They are directly related to organizational performance, whereas contextual performances are value-based and add additional behavioral roles that are not recognized in job descriptions and covered by compensation; these are extra roles that are indirectly related to organizational performance. [3] Citizenship performance, like contextual performance, relates to a set of individual activity/contribution (prosocial organizational behavior) that supports organizational culture. [4] [5]
In performing arts, a performance generally comprises an event in which a performer, or group of performers, present one or more works of art to an audience. In instrumental music and drama, a performance is typically described as a "play". [6] Typically, the performers participate in rehearsals beforehand to practice the work.
An effective performance is determined by the achieved skills and competency of the performer, also known as the level of skill and knowledge. In 1994, Spencer and McClelland defined competency as "a combination of motives, traits, self-concepts, attitudes, cognitive behavior skills (content knowledge) that helps a performer to differentiate themselves as superior from the average performer". [7] A performance also describes the way in which an actor performs. In a solo capacity, it may also refer to a mime artist, comedian, conjurer, magician, or other entertainer.
Another aspect of performance that grew in popularity in the early 20th century is performance art. The origins of Performance art started with Dada and Russian constructivism groups, focusing on avant-garde poetry readings and live paintings meant to be viewed by an audience. It can be scripted or completely improvised and includes audience participation if desired. [8]
The emergence of abstract expressionism in the 1950s with Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning gave way to action painting, a technique that emphasized the dynamic movements of artists as they splattered paint and other media on canvas or glass. For these artists, the motion of putting paint on canvas was just as valuable as the finished painting, and so it was common for artists to document their work in film; such as the short film Jackson Pollock 51(1951), featuring Pollock dripping paint onto a massive canvas on his studio floor. [9] Situationists in France, led by Guy Debord, married avant-garde art with revolutionary politics to incite everyday acts of anarchy. The "Naked City Map" (1957) fragments the 19 sections of Paris, featuring the technique of détournement and abstraction of the traditional environment, deconstructing the geometry and order of a typical city map. [10]
At the New School for Social Research in New York, John Cage and Allan Kaprow became involved in developing happening performance art. These carefully scripted one-off events incorporated the audience into acts of chaos and spontaneity. These happenings challenged traditional art conventions and encouraged artists to carefully consider the role of an audience. [11] In Japan, the 1954 Gutai group led by Yoshihara Jiro, Kanayma Akira, Murakami Saburo, Kazuo Shiraga, and Shimamoto Shozo made the materials of art-making come to life with body movement and blurring the line between art and theater. Kazuo Shiraga's Challenging Mud (1955) is a performance of the artist rolling and moving in mud, using their body as the art-making tool, and emphasizing the temporary nature of performance art.
Valie Export, an Austrian artist born Waltraud Lehner, performed "Tap and Touch Cinema" in 1968. She walked around the streets in Vienna during a film festival wearing a styrofoam box with a curtain over her chest. Bystanders were asked to put their hands inside the box and touch her bare chest. This commentary on women sexualization in film focused on the sense of touch rather than sight. [12] Adrian Piper and her performance Catalysis III (1970) featured the artist walking down New York City streets with her outfit painted white and a sign across her chest that said "wet paint." She was interested in the invisible social and racial dynamics in America and was determined to encourage civic-mindedness and interruption of the system. [13] [14] Carolee Schneemann, American artist, performed Interior Scroll in 1975, where she unrolls Super-8 film "Kitsch's Last Meal" from her genitals. This nude performance contributes to a discourse on femininity, sexualization, and film.
Williams and Krane define the ideal performance state as a mental state having the following characteristics: [15]
Other related factors are: motivation to achieve success or avoid failure, task relevant attention, positive self-talk, and cognitive regulation to achieve automaticity. Performance is also dependent on adaptation of eight areas: Handling crisis, managing stress, creative problem solving, knowing necessary functional tools and skills, agile management of complex processes, interpersonal adaptability, cultural adaptability, and physical fitness. [16] Performance is not always a result of practice, but rather about honing in a skill. Over practicing itself can result in failure due to ego depletion. [17]
According to Andranik Tangian, the best results are achieved when spontaneity and even improvisation are backed up by rational elements that arrange means of expression in a certain structure, supporting the communication (not just verbal) with the audience. [18] [19]
Theatrical performances, especially when the audience is limited to only a few observers, can lead to significant increases in the performer's heart rate. This increase takes place in several stages relative to the performance itself, including anticipatory activation (one minute before the start of subject's speaking role), confrontation activation (during the subject's speaking role, at which point their heart rate peaks) and release period (one minute after the conclusion of the subject's speech). [20] The same physiological reactions can be experienced in other mediums such as instrumental performance. When experiments were conducted to determine whether there was a correlation between audience size and heart rate (an indicator of anxiety) of instrumental performers, the researcher's findings ran contrary to previous studies, showing a positive correlation rather than a negative one. [21]
Heart rate shares a strong, positive correlation with the self reported anxiety of performers. [22] Other physiological responses to public performance include perspiration, secretion of the adrenal glands, and increased blood pressure. [23]
Motor learning refers broadly to changes in an organism's movements that reflect changes in the structure and function of the nervous system. Motor learning occurs over varying timescales and degrees of complexity: humans learn to walk or talk over the course of years, but continue to adjust to changes in height, weight, strength etc. over their lifetimes. Motor learning enables animals to gain new skills, and improves the smoothness and accuracy of movements, in some cases by calibrating simple movements like reflexes. Motor learning research often considers variables that contribute to motor program formation, sensitivity of error-detection processes, and strength of movement schemas. Motor learning is "relatively permanent", as the capability to respond appropriately is acquired and retained. Temporary gains in performance during practice or in response to some perturbation are often termed motor adaptation, a transient form of learning. Neuroscience research on motor learning is concerned with which parts of the brain and spinal cord represent movements and motor programs and how the nervous system processes feedback to change the connectivity and synaptic strengths. At the behavioral level, research focuses on the design and effect of the main components driving motor learning, i.e. the structure of practice and the feedback. The timing and organization of practice can influence information retention, e.g. how tasks can be subdivided and practiced, and the precise form of feedback can influence preparation, anticipation, and guidance of movement.
In positive psychology, a flow state, also known colloquially as being inthe zone, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting transformation in one's sense of time. Flow is the melting together of action and consciousness; the state of finding a balance between a skill and how challenging that task is. It requires a high level of concentration. Flow is used as a coping skill for stress and anxiety when productively pursuing a form of leisure that matches one's skill set.
Metacognition is an awareness of one's thought processes and an understanding of the patterns behind them. The term comes from the root word meta, meaning "beyond", or "on top of". Metacognition can take many forms, such as reflecting on one's ways of thinking and knowing when and how to use particular strategies for problem-solving. There are generally two components of metacognition: (1) knowledge about cognition and (2) regulation of cognition. A metacognitive model differs from other scientific models in that the creator of the model is per definition also enclosed within it. Scientific models are often prone to distancing the observer from the object or field of study whereas a metacognitive model in general tries to include the observer in the model.
In psychology, self-efficacy is an individual's belief in their capacity to act in the ways necessary to reach specific goals. The concept was originally proposed by the psychologist Albert Bandura.
Self-monitoring, a concept introduced in the 1970s by Mark Snyder, describes the extent to which people monitor their self-presentations, expressive behavior, and nonverbal affective displays. Snyder held that human beings generally differ in substantial ways in their abilities and desires to engage in expressive controls. Self-monitoring is defined as a personality trait that refers to an ability to regulate behavior to accommodate social situations. People concerned with their expressive self-presentation tend to closely monitor their audience in order to ensure appropriate or desired public appearances. Self-monitors try to understand how individuals and groups will perceive their actions. Some personality types commonly act spontaneously and others are more apt to purposely control and consciously adjust their behavior. Recent studies suggest that a distinction should be made between acquisitive and protective self-monitoring due to their different interactions with metatraits. This differentiates the motive behind self-monitoring behaviours: for the purpose of acquiring appraisal from others (acquisitive) or protecting oneself from social disapproval (protective).
Competence is the set of demonstrable characteristics and skills that enable and improve the efficiency or performance of a job. Competency is a series of knowledge, abilities, skills, experiences and behaviors, which leads to effective performance in an individual's activities. Competency is measurable and can be developed through training.
Social facilitation is a social phenomenon in which being in the presence of others improves individual task performance. That is, people do better on tasks when they are with other people rather than when they are doing the task alone. Situations that elicit social facilitation include coaction, performing for an audience, and appears to depend on task complexity.
Test anxiety is a combination of physiological over-arousal, tension and somatic symptoms, along with worry, dread, fear of failure, and catastrophizing, that occur before or during test situations. It is a psychological condition in which people experience extreme stress, anxiety, and discomfort during and/or before taking a test. This anxiety creates significant barriers to learning and performance. Research suggests that high levels of emotional distress have a direct correlation to reduced academic performance and higher overall student drop-out rates. Test anxiety can have broader consequences, negatively affecting a student's social, emotional and behavioural development, as well as their feelings about themselves and school.
Proactivity or proactive behavior refers to self-initiated behavior that endeavours to solve a problem before it has occurred. Proactive behavior involves acting in advance of a future situation, rather than reacting. It refers to taking control of a situation and making early changes, rather than adjusting to a situation or waiting for something to happen.
Job performance assesses whether a person performs a job well. Job performance, studied academically as part of industrial and organizational psychology, also forms a part of human resources management. Performance is an important criterion for organizational outcomes and success. John P. Campbell describes job performance as an individual-level variable, or something a single person does. This differentiates it from more encompassing constructs such as organizational performance or national performance, which are higher-level variables.
Contextual performance is defined as the activities that employees carry out to contribute to the social and psychological functionality of an organisation.
Situational Leadership Theory, now named the Situational Leadership Model, is a model created by Dr. Paul Hersey and Dr. Ken Blanchard, developed while working on the widely known text book, Management of Organizational Behavior. The theory was first introduced in 1969 as "Life Cycle Theory of Leadership". During the mid-1970s, Life Cycle Theory of Leadership was renamed "Situational Leadership Theory."
Procedural memory is a type of implicit memory which aids the performance of particular types of tasks without conscious awareness of these previous experiences.
Sport psychology was defined by the European Federation of Sport Psychology (FEPSAC) in 1996, as the study of the psychological basis, processes, and effects of sport. Otherwise, sport is considered as any physical activity where the individuals engage for competition and health. Sport psychology is recognized as an interdisciplinary science that draws on knowledge from many related fields including biomechanics, physiology, kinesiology and psychology. It involves the study of how psychological factors affect performance and how participation in sport and exercise affect psychological and physical factors. Sport psychologists teach cognitive and behavioral strategies to athletes in order to improve their experience and performance in sports.
Goal orientation, or achievement orientation, is an "individual disposition towards developing or validating one's ability in achievement settings". In general, an individual can be said to be mastery or performance oriented, based on whether one's goal is to develop one's ability or to demonstrate one's ability, respectively. A mastery orientation is also sometimes referred to as a learning orientation.
In the study of learning and memory, varied practice refers to the use of a training schedule that includes frequent changes of task so that the performer is constantly confronting novel instantiations of the to-be-learned information.
Positive psychology is defined as a method of building on what is good and what is already working instead of attempting to stimulate improvement by focusing on the weak links in an individual, a group, or in this case, a company. Implementing positive psychology in the workplace means creating an environment that is more enjoyable, productive, and values individual employees. This also means creating a work schedule that does not lead to emotional and physical distress.
Research into music and emotion seeks to understand the psychological relationship between human affect and music. The field, a branch of music psychology, covers numerous areas of study, including the nature of emotional reactions to music, how characteristics of the listener may determine which emotions are felt, and which components of a musical composition or performance may elicit certain reactions.
Adaptive performance in the work environment refers to adjusting to and understanding change in the workplace. An employee who is versatile is valued and important in the success of an organization. Employers seek employees with high adaptability, due to the positive outcomes that follow, such as excellent work performance, work attitude, and ability to handle stress. Employees, who display high adaptive performance in an organization, tend to have more advantages in career opportunities unlike employees who are not adaptable to change. In previous literature, Pulakos and colleagues established eight dimensions of adaptive performance.
Andranik Semovich Tangian (Melik-Tangyan) ; born March 29, 1952) is a Soviet Armenian-German mathematician, political economist and music theorist. Tangian is known for the mathematical theory of democracy, the Third Vote election method, criticism of flexicurity employment strategy and models of artificial perception of music. He is professor of the Institute for Economics (ECON) of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.
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