THE SOLO PERFORMER ’ S IDENTITY
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appraisal in a performance context can easily de-motivate a performer, as the ensuing self-doubt can distort perception, leading to further negative appraisal. Fortunately, Steve and I have never experienced these extreme negative reactions to the performance context, though I can recall feeling more or less motivated depending on my level of self-esteem, which was based on my confidence in my preparation and the perceived importance of the performance context and the audience. The critical point is that motivation is strongly affected by self-belief, vitally Dweck and Bempechat (1984) argue that belief about learning capacity is vitally important. They suggest that people believe themselves to possess either ‘incremental’ or ‘entity’ capacities. That is, those who could be described as ‘entity theorists’ would believe that their ability or role in a certain domain is fixed, whereas ‘incrementalists’ would believe that they will always improve next time. The researchers’ practical investigations revealed that entity theorists feared that they might appear to lack ability in front of others. As a result of the desire to save face, entity theorists are much more likely to avoid tasks at which they are not likely to be successful, or might be seen to struggle. Entity theorists typically seek out situations where they have success with low effort and where they would be likely to outshine others (Dweck, 2000). Considering Steve and myself, it could be that Steve is more of an entity theorist than I, since he does not seek out performance situations at all. There are, however, a number of ways to explain the motivational differences between Steve and myself. There have been periods of time in my life when I have behaved like an entity theorist with regard to beliefs I have held about my performing ability, and, contrarily, Steve has displayed incremental motivations in his desire to improve. Perhaps the best way to summarize the implications of these motivational theories is that individuals appear to behave in particular contexts according to broad principles, but individual motivations can change over time. A good example of change can be found in ‘arousal theory’ (see Geen et al., 1984), which suggests that humans seek novelty and challenge in order to attain an optimal personal level of excitement from whatever is the task in hand, but that the optimal personal level varies depending on other concurrent life events. Some theorists regard motivation primarily in terms of a general instinctual drive, whereas others, like those researching arousal and incremental/entity behaviours, acknowledge the role of individual differences as a result of varying social influences and personality (the inner predisposition to behave in certain ways; see Kemp, 1996, for further definitions of personality). Since social influences have already been discussed above (see section on the role of key others in the development of performance skills), an individual’s personality and how this may shape the desire to engage in music performance should now be considered. Personality Research has shown that when musicians are compared with other people, they are found to display more introversion than the population in general (see Kemp, 1996). Examples of traits associated with introversion include being aloof, critical, introspective and individualistic. The requirements of musical skill acquisition would seem to match these characteristics: many numbers of hours need to be invested in lonely solo