Study finds listening to music 'significantly impairs' creativity
Regardless of whether the music has familiar or unfamiliar lyrics, or is even instrumental, it can negatively impact verbal tasks.
Wednesday 27 February 2019 15:55, UK
Most of us are happy to put on our headphones when getting down to do some work, but listening to music could actually "significantly impair" our creativity, according to a new study.
Psychologists from Lancaster University, and the universities of Central Lancashire and Gavle in Sweden, have investigated the effect of music on people's thinking skills.
They discovered that background music had a negative impact on people's ability to complete tasks which involved verbal creativity.
Their study used three forms of music:
:: Background music with foreign and thus unfamiliar lyrics
:: Instrumental music without any lyrics at all
:: And music with familiar lyrics in English
While the participants were listening to these tracks, they were shown three words - for instance dress, dial, and flower - with the requirement being to find an associated word which would be combined with them all to make a common word or phrase.
Click below to see if you've figured it out.
Dr Neil McLatchie of Lancaster University said: "We found strong evidence of impaired performance when playing background music in comparison to quiet background conditions."
According to the researchers, this may be because music disrupts the verbal working memory part of the brain.
The experiment in which participants were exposed to music with familiar lyrics also impaired the participants' creativity, despite whether they liked it or not.
Regardless of whether the music boosted their mood or completely induced a positive one - and even if the participants typically studied in the presence of music - it "significantly impaired" their performance, the researchers found.
Although the participants performed poorly when listening to music, there was no difference between quiet and library noise conditions.
According to the academics, this may be because library noise is a "steady state" environment which isn't as disruptive as music.
"To conclude, the findings here challenge the popular view that music enhances creativity," said the researchers.
They stressed that "regardless of the presence of [lyrics, music] consistently disrupts creative performance in insight problem solving".