Summary: A new study contradicts the popular belief that listening to music can help boost creativity. Researchers found people who listened to background music showed a significant impairment in the ability to complete tasks that tested verbal creativity.
Source: Lancaster University.
The popular view that music enhances creativity has been challenged by researchers who say it has the opposite effect.
Psychologists from the University of Central Lancashire, University of Gävle in Sweden and Lancaster University investigated the impact of background music on performance by presenting people with verbal insight problems that are believed to tap creativity.
They found that background music “significantly impaired” people’s ability to complete tasks testing verbal creativity – but there was no effect for background library noise.
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
Dr Neil McLatchie of Lancaster University said: “We found strong evidence of impaired performance when playing background music in comparison to quiet background conditions.”
Researchers suggest this may be because music disrupts verbal working memory.
The third experiment – exposure to music with familiar lyrics- impaired creativity regardless of whether the music also boosted mood, induced a positive mood, was liked by the participants, or whether participants typically studied in the presence of music.
However, there was no significant difference in performance of the verbal tasks between the quiet and library noise conditions.
Researchers say this is because library noise is a “steady state” environment which is not as disruptive.
“To conclude, the findings here challenge the popular view that music enhances creativity, and instead demonstrate that music, regardless of the presence of semantic content (no lyrics, familiar lyrics or unfamiliar lyrics), consistently disrupts creative performance in insight problem solving.”
Source: Gillian Whitworth – Lancaster University
Publisher: Organized by NeuroscienceNews.com.
Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is credited to Lancaster University.
Original Research: Open access research for “Background music stints creativity: Evidence from compound remote associate tasks” by Emma Threadgold, John E. Marsh, Neil McLatchie, and Linden J. Ball in Applied Psychology: An International Review. Published February 2 2019.
doi:10.1002/acp.3532
[cbtabs][cbtab title=”MLA”]Lancaster University “How Listening to Music ‘Significantly Impairs’ Creativity.” NeuroscienceNews. NeuroscienceNews, 27 February 2019.
<https://neurosciencenews.com/music-creativity-10831/>.[/cbtab][cbtab title=”APA”]Lancaster University (2019, February 27). How Listening to Music ‘Significantly Impairs’ Creativity. NeuroscienceNews. Retrieved February 27, 2019 from https://neurosciencenews.com/music-creativity-10831/[/cbtab][cbtab title=”Chicago”]Lancaster University “How Listening to Music ‘Significantly Impairs’ Creativity.” https://neurosciencenews.com/music-creativity-10831/ (accessed February 27, 2019).[/cbtab][/cbtabs]
Abstract
Background music stints creativity: Evidence from compound remote associate tasks
Background music has been claimed to enhance people’s creativity. In three experiments, we investigated the impact of background music on performance of Compound Remote Associate Tasks (CRATs), which are widely thought to tap creativity. Background music with foreign (unfamiliar) lyrics (Experiment 1), instrumental music without lyrics (Experiment 2), and music with familiar lyrics (Experiment 3) all significantly impaired CRAT performance in comparison with quiet background conditions. Furthermore, Experiment 3 demonstrated that background music impaired CRAT performance regardless of whether the music induced a positive mood or whether participants typically studied in the presence of music. The findings challenge the view that background music enhances creativity and are discussed in terms of an auditory distraction account (interference‐by‐process) and the processing disfluency account.
