Background Music: Working Well
May 2, 2019
Crank up the death metal. Chill.
Classical music composed by Bach, Beethoven, Strauss, and, especially, Mozart is supposed to stimulate the creative and cognitive centers of the brain. Supposedly listening to this music while studying or working also facilitates better retention of information and skills. That information has been slung around schools and daycare centers for decades, but according to Neuro Science News it is false: “How Listening To Music ‘Significantly Impairs’ Creativity.”
Swedish and British psychologists, respectively from the University of Gävle and University of Central Lancashire conducted tests on how music impacts people’s performance when they worked on creative verbal insight problems. Contrary to the popular belief, the psychologists discovered that background music “significantly impaired,” but performed well with regular library background noise. The experiment was described as follows with the following conditions:
“For example, a participant was shown three words (e.g., dress, dial, flower), with the requirement being to find a single associated word (in this case “sun”) that can be combined to make a common word or phrase (i.e., sundress, sundial and sunflower). The researchers used three experiments involving verbal tasks in either a quiet environment or while exposed to:
Background music with foreign (unfamiliar) lyrics
Instrumental music without lyrics
Music with familiar lyrics”
When exposed to music, the participants’ struggled, but did much better when they had regular quiet or library background noises. The regular quiet or library background noises were not disruptive, because it created a steady state environment that is not disruptive. It does not matter what type of music people listen to during creative activities, because apparently it is inhibits ideal function.
Bummer. Music is bad for creativity. What are all the iGens and millennials supposed to do when they concentrate. Maybe check their mobile phones?
Whitney Grace, May 2, 2019
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