How
listening to music 'significantly impairs' creativity
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 [EDITOR'S NOTE: home to the beloved Gavle Goat] 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."
