Relationships between Perceptions of Conducting Effectiveness and Ensemble Performance

Abstract

Conducting is a complex art that involves, among other things, effective nonverbal communication. While this communication includes hand and arm gestures as well as eye contact and facial expression, it also encompasses nonverbal messages sent by the rest of a conductor's body, such as his/her physical appearance. Assumptions based on what conductors look like and how well they fit the stereotypical role they are portraying often affect opinions of their job performance. Thus, the nonverbal messages sent by a conductor's physical appearance could affect ensemble members' opinions of him or her as a conductor. Therefore, this study attempted to investigate whether perceptions of a conductor's body type were a factor when judging the conductor and ensemble performances. Furthermore, relationships between ensemble performance ratings and the conductor's visual appearance characteristics (eye contact, facial expression, and posture), evaluator confidence in the conductor, and overall conductor effectiveness were explored. Neither the conductor's body type nor the gender or college major of the evaluator affected ratings of the conductor and ensemble performances. However, performance ratings were affected when the conductors were viewed in a certain order. There were moderate to moderately strong relationships between the performance ratings and conductor posture, conductor facial expression, evaluator's confidence in the conductor, and overall conducting effectiveness. Eye contact, however, was not strongly related to performance ratings.