The Effects of Background Music in Speech Performance Chelsie Chen Supervisor: David Kristian Horman SMA Cita Hati West Campus, Surabaya-East Java/Indonesia, [email protected] Juara Harapan Category Psychology LPB Sosial Nasional 2019 1. Introduction dampen one’s anxiety and Speeches are used in many circumstances improve performances. nowadays; from wedding openings, competition ceremonies, graduation events, to The hypothesis in this research would be that delivering new proposal plans on work and background music will help lower anxiety many more in our daily lives. With public levels and increase one’s performance. speaking requirements all over the place, it If hypothesis were to be proven correct, it means that the ability to deliver speaking have will help people who are grappling with long-lasting effects on social skills, behaviour, speaking anxiety, or stage fright in general. education, and employment. Less pressure upon them would lead to a healthier mental health, and encourage them 1.2 Problem to be more confident in speaking out within Ironically, based on Raja (2017) “75% the public with music’s help. participants admitted their fear of public With this, it can also mean better speech speaking” which shows that it is a performances with one’s increased commonality to feel fear, or anxiety when in confidence and less fear. preparation of a speech. Additionally, the Otherwise, music has also been known for fear of public speaking is found to be a prosocial behaviour after listening to uplifting bigger concern in comparison of fear of death music, according to North et al. (2004). By in a poll conducted by onepoll to rank a list setting up background music and benefitting the of phobia fears. speaker, the audiences might also keep a better Anxiety is primarily known as a natural impression of the speech and considerably get response to stress which comes with symptoms influenced, therefore causing the speech such as increased heart rate, rapid breathing, message to be well delivered. restlessness, trouble concentrating, and difficulty falling asleep. 2. Research Method In order to conduct the research, Cita Hati Music has been readily available since the students with age range of 14 to 16 were given discovery of rocks and sticks, with an opportunity to volunteer over memorizing questionable origins and definitions. Thus, and addressing a speech. 30 people agreed, ethnomusicologists translates music as an and were randomly assigned with the group organized cultural activity. which would either listen to background music Interestingly, Williamson (2014) stated in her or not, in order to eliminate selection bias. The book that “Perhaps the most cited reaction to music that was used in this experiment was an music that is associated with improved well- instrumental, could be searched with the being is the relaxation response of the keyword of “inspiring background music autonomic nervous system, which includes a presentation” with 130 beats per minute. variety of body markers such as lowering of heart rate, breathing rate, blood pressure, 2.1 Study Procedure muscular tension and oxygen consumption.” 1. Partaker would be given briefing of what they had to do during the Therefore, it is intriguing to see whether experiment. playing background music can subconsciously 2. Afterwards, they were given a miniature sized piece of paper in which they could take notes on and memorized a speech for 5 minutes The data between participants which had 3. Then, participants filled in an anxiety background music playing or without test questionnaire background music would be directly 4. Later, they would do the speech with compared to see whether were was a direct a cut-off time* of 3 minutes. effect from the background music. *cut-off time: if 3 minutes have passed, stopwatch In order to make a fair experiment, a speech text, will be stopped and participants shall not be titled “Stress in Teens” which was written for required to continue participants to memorize which was used over all the experimentees. “Teens leads very Asking someone to memorize a speech is stressful lives” was chosen as the speech topic often a daunting task to do. Asking someone due to its non-controversial or non-triggering to create an improv speech in a matter of nature of the subject. It consisted of 219 words minutes or even seconds would be a excluding the title, and spent around 1.5 minutes nightmare. But letting them create their own when read out loud in a natural speed of reading. speech and prepare days in advance, is an Since it was considerably short, 5 minutes was unsuitable notion to have considering the allocated for all participants to memorize and 3 limited amount of time and general lack of minutes cut-off to prevent people from willingness to even try to work on tasks or excessively talking, pause too long, and for projects in school; unless they are required to maintaining a predictable schedule for each work on it to chase for their grades. person’s experiment session. However, if we provide participants to have Most music psychologists often separate complete access over the speech sheet while Introverts and Extroverts into different doing the speech, the majority would most categories, but it is arguable that introverts’ likely not feel anxious due to the lack of and extroverts’ results will balance out each pressure to perform. Thus, in fear of other as this is a randomized controlled trial insufficient volunteers due to the requirement and it has been found that roughly more than to put effort on memorizing the speech whilst 50% of the population is an ambivert, who is making sure that they are grasping the topic, a mixture of both an extrovert and an we provided a miniscule piece of paper introvert. Furthermore, extroverts and resembling flashcards, approximately around introverts in the extreme spectrum shall A7 sized which participants are free to use and generally balance out each other’s results. to bring onto the speech. 3. Results and Analysis To assess one’s anxiety, an anxiety test Quantitative data was collected as numbers of questionnaire is created in a form of likert anxiety test results and performance test scales with 22 questions: 20 questions results. Anxiety test result was collected regarding anxiety and another 2 for through an anxiety test questionnaire, participant’s name and class for data sorting. whereas Performance test was scored from The use of likert scales were to increase the the scoring sheet. efficiency to compare between results by adding up the scale rating that participants 3.1 Results selected. Anxiety test questionnaire was placed Below is the complete list of results that each in-between speech memorization to assess participants achieved and their assigned anticipatory anxiety. Meanwhile, speech group after being sorted. performances are scored and tallied by a scoring sheet which was created. Both anxiety Anxiety Perform With test results and speech performance results are Particip Test ance Backgro going to be the dependent variable of this ant Results Test und Number (Max: Results Music? experiment. 100) (Max: 30) 1 50 23 yes 2 54 28 yes 3 41 25 yes 4 44 17 yes 5 28 20 yes Figure 1.Compared mean, median, and mode of anxiety test results. 6 31 25 yes 7 47 18 yes Figure 2 shows that speech performance does not alter with significance when 8 72 21 yes background music is placed. 9 41 23 yes 10 41 23 yes 11 57 23 yes 12 51 24 yes 13 34 22 yes 14 68 21 yes 15 46 21 yes Figure 2.Compared mean, median, and mode 16 52 18 no of performance test results 17 27 27 no All of these findings suggest that 18 50 22 no background music does not significantly 19 52 25 no improve their performance nor anxiety. 20 72 18 no However, like every other research, this result 21 50 25 no has limitations. The first limitation would be that 22 52 20 no there was only one person who assessed this, since there was only a single person who is 23 49 25 no behind this research; therefore, only one person 24 24 25 no did the scoring and judging for every single 25 49 19 no person. Second of all this was that it is only tested within Cita Hati students. This means that 26 50 24 no results would only apply within the students, and 27 43 20 no might differ if done somewhere else. Which 28 31 22 no leads to the third limitation, that is the lack of sample size due to time restriction. If there were 29 55 21 no a bigger sample size, the results would be more 30 54 22 no reliable. Sadly, it is not an easy task to gather Table 1.List of participants and their anxiety volunteers who are willing to attempt results, along with their assigned group memorization as several people whom I offered mentioned that they do not have the confidence Figure 1 shows that background music doesn't to memorize well; extra the limited time needed cause significant impact in participants’ to work on this research leaves no choice but to anxiety levels. have a small sample size. Another consideration would be that this Journal of Education and experiment was done in English. For most Cita Educational Development., 2017 Hati students, English is their second language, not first, therefore they might struggle in Vitkovitch, J. Speech and language skills: their importance in development.J Fam Health comprehending what they are supposed to do, or Care., 2008 in understanding the speech. Burgess, Kaya. Speaking in public is worse Thus, in this experiment it can be deducted that than death for most.The Times retrieved from https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/speaking- there is still a questionable correlation between in -public-is-worse-than-death-for-most- anxiety and background music or speech 5l2bvql mbnt,2013 performance and background music.