Name:Lucas Klein

School/Affiliation:McMaster University

Co-Authors:Oliver Durcan, Justin Beshay, Dr. Laurel J. Trainor

Virtual or In-person:In-person

Short Bio:

I’m curious about how and why harmonious collective action can align, engage and motivate groups of people. My PhD work focuses on the phenomenology and dynamics of group flow states arising from interpersonal interactions like ensemble music performance and team sports. I use time series analysis to study coordination patterns and qualitative methods to study subjective responses—using joint action theory to investigate group flow experiences. My personal life is full of mountain adventures, meditation, ultimate frisbee, ballroom dancing and live music.

Abstract:

Does the sense of engagement, mental absorption and automaticity of action that individuals can experience during the skilled execution of goal-directed tasks—flow state—have a corollary that occurs only at the group level? Since its inception (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, 1990), little empirical work has investigated the phenomenology of group flow, the experience of mutual enjoyment and togetherness during the seamless execution of joint action. The heterogeneity of collective tasks (e.g., conversational group problem-solving versus team sports versus ensemble music performance) in which group flow experiences can occur challenges theoretical work to produce consistent measurement techniques relevant to the features of the interaction itself. This project aims to identify the experiential outcomes specific to musical group flow and develop a data-driven approach to measuring it.

We asked for free form written descriptions of highly enjoyable and absorbing (“peak”) group musical experiences from 85 musicians with diverse backgrounds and analyzed them using inductive thematic analysis. The seven major themes that characterized their responses informed the creation of 71 survey items, which were vetted by subject matter experts. A separate sample of 716 musicians responded to Likert-type versions of those items after recalling a recent instance of music performance. We then explored the dimensionality and factor structure of their responses.

Exploratory factor analysis revealed three major factors containing 15 items corresponding to mutual enjoyment, automaticity and fluid interaction. Our results pave the way for the development of measurement instruments based in the phenomenological qualities of real musical experiences.