Music negatively affects creativity
An international team of scientists has challenged the popular view that listening to music stimulates creativity. It is just the opposite. As the findings suggest, people appear to be less creative when listening to music than when sitting in silence. At least when it comes to verbal creativity.
Despite the prevailing view that music flying in the background can pomoc rise to the heights of creativity, new research suggests it may have the opposite effect of what was intended. According to scientists from the University of Central Lancashire, the University of Gävle in Sweden and Lancaster University, no type of melody is helpful during proto concentrate.
Research psychologistow prove that music flying in the background „significantly impairs” The ability to perform tasks requiring verbal creativity. Interestingly, the negative effect was not observed when there was a soft background noise typical of a library or it was quite quiet. Admittedly, the study tested only one form of creativity, so further analysis is needed to find out whether other forms are also negatively affected by music.
Listening to music while working is widespread. Many osob claims it helps them focus. Dr. Neil McLatchie of Lancaster University decided to see if this was true, especially when it came to twohe side of the tasks faced by employees.
ParticipantoThe study asked people to find one word associated with three seemingly unrelated words. In addition, the word was said to allow the creation of a new word. For example, to słow „dress”, „dial”, „flower” perfectly matched the word „sun”, ktory allows the creation of wordsow „sundress”, „sundial” i „sunflower”.
A similar technique often used to test verbal creativity and conditioningow, whichor reinforce it. In three experiments poroIn three experiments, the quiet conditions typical of a library with roof different types of music. During the task, volunteers were played instrumental music, songs in a foreign language with unfamiliar lyrics to the participants, or songs with familiar lyrics to them.
– We found strong evidence of reduced performance when playing background music in cfownaniu with quiet conditions – awarded McLatchie. The researchers suggest that this may be because the music pricks theoca verbal working memory.
Participants were presented with 38 tasks, of whichoof which 20 were considered relatively easy and the remaining 18 were extremely difficult. In each of the three experiments, participants performed significantly more tasks when they worked in quiet. However, there was no significant ro¿ers in performing tasks between complete silence and the noise of the library.
– In summary, our findings challenge the popular view that music enhances creativity. We show that music, regardless of the presence of semantic content – music without text, with known text or unintelligible text, consistently interfered withoca creative action in problem solvingow – emphasized McLatchie.
McLatchie also acknowledged that their study does not explain why music interferes with verbal creativity. Perhaps music has a positive effect on someore types of creativity, and negatively on others.
In earlier research on visuospatial problem solvingoin it was shown that the background sounds had a positive effect of the. Other studies have found that music can improve motivation. In contrast, a 2017 study found that one particular type of music – fast, uplifting classical pieces such as Vivaldi’s Four Seasons – enhanced a key component of creativity: divergent thinking.
It appears that music’s ability to stimulate verbal creativity is severely limited at best. Looking at a blank sheet of paper in silence can be frustrating, but it can be roalso the best way to focus on a task.
