
Listening to music 'significantly impairs' creativity - altairiumblue
https://sciencesources.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-02/lu-hlt022619.php
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matchagaucho
Misleading title.

 _" 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)."_

This seems more like a pattern recognition puzzle. Not the flow state of
"creativity".

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l_t
They do address this in the paper:
[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/acp.3532](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/acp.3532).
It seems this type of test is fairly common.

I guess there are a lot of different kinds of creativity. This seems to target
something I'd think of specifically as "lateral thinking." I agree it doesn't
seem like a very satisfying test, though.

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dgzl
Regardless of the test, the title is misleading.

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jugg1es
I have found this anecdotally to be true when doing the actual design work of
a project. However, once I know what I want to do, music does typically put me
into a groove. If you normally listen to music while coding, you may not
realize how distracting it can be during periods of deep thought.

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DougN7
It took me years to convince my kids that studying with (vocal) music was not
a good idea. After a particularly bad semester at college my daughter got
desperate and decided to study without music. Her grades shot way up and now
she’s a believer :)

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jeremyleach
Actively listening to music engages pattern recognition, prediction and
working memory in the listener. It makes sense that this would disrupt
concurrent 'creative' or more realistically, pattern matching tasks. However,
this experiment does not seem to cover non-concurrent listening to music, aka
the Mozart effect. It could well be that listening to music enhances creative
ability when subsequently not listening to music. So that regular music
listening enhances ability to make creative pattern associations over the long
term.

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ebg13
It seems like what this study is really showing, which everyone should already
understand, is that your brain cannot process two different information
streams at the same time with any measure of success. The farther away your
audio stream is from information and the closer it is to steady state (say,
unvarying trance beats or, even better, brown noise) the less the impact will
be. It's like comparing one person talking to you vs two people talking to you
simultaneously. This has been studied before already to death.

But the OP article's premise of tying language center and word selection to
"creativity" is weird and sounds like just bad science.

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jeremyleach
Exactly this.

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ccvannorman
fta: 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

What a pitri dish experiment. I don't give this any value whatever to actual
creative tasks like painting or designing a video game. Music can help induce
a state of flow to be creative in a multitude of work environs -- OK, but this
research proved you can't solve a simple word riddle quite as well.

~~~
altairiumblue
I think this is because you expect creativity to mean something resembling
artistic ability (e.g. painting), while the paper's definition is closer to
problem solving (performance on CRATs).

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tnzn
When a scientific definition is too far away from the common definition, using
the word in a headline becomes a problem

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thinkingemote
Interesting. Does programming use this creative language part of the brain or
more mathematical?

I have found that some songs with English lyrics as being distracting but not
as much as people talking on the telephone in an office space

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brianberns
Why are we assuming that language = creative, and mathematics = not creative?

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thinkingemote
Well the article dealt with language, lyrics in music.

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androidgirl
Music is helpful in other ways that might overpower any negative effect.

In my case, music helps me out with my tinitus, without it I'm in a lot of
pain. And unlike, say, white noise, listening to music helps a ton with
depressed mood. I can't get through my days without its help!

Surely others have similar or different reasons for using music while working!

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larkeith
Despite the title and article's claims, it appears that the researchers found
the same:

> 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.

Given that they had to specify this, it would imply that for music without
familiar lyrics creativity was _not_ impaired (at least, to a statistically
significant level) when participants enjoyed the music or usually study to
music.

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DiseasedBadger
The social sciences need to learn that some of the simplest words have the
largest meaning. If your study is about one of those, you'd better be writing
the General Relativity of your field.

This study is absolutely not about creativity. What -if anything at all- it
_is,_ about, I see was left as an exercise to the reader.

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Kaveren
I listen to lofi hip hop or a rain aimbient [0] while programming often.
According to "Is Noise Always Bad? Exploring the Effects of Noise on
Cognition" [1], this is actually fine. I think the rain ambient is fine, and
perhaps even helpful, because it is steady and consistent, like the submission
suggests.

[0] [https://asoftmurmur.com/](https://asoftmurmur.com/) [1]
[https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/665048?seq=1#metadata_i...](https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/665048?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents)

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magicalhippo
When having to do architectural code stuff, then yeah quiet is usually best
for me. But when I need to implement it (which involves a lot of "micro-
creativity") then usually some pumping beats (but no vocal), fex[1], helps me
keep the energy up and the code flowing.

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lwk9gsRlaPs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lwk9gsRlaPs)

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l_t
Pet peeve -- the article says music "significantly impairs" creativity. But I
believe the paper only found evidence that there is a "significant chance that
music impairs creativity." I'm not a stats expert, but I feel like these are
different things?

Either this is an incredibly widespread mistake in science journalism, or it's
not a mistake and I'm an idiot?

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mattkrause
That statement is not particularly precise and tacitly claims a lot of things.
It’s best to think of it as shorthand for something like “When the test, which
is thought to measure creativity, is run with music (vs. without music), the
subjects’ performance decreases more than the sampling variability we’d expect
when repeatedly running one of the conditions in the experiment over and
over.”

This is essentially a __Frequentist __claim, which is a bit different from
your __Bayesian __belief updating about music’s effects. If, when, and how you
can from one to the other has been a major debate in statistics and science.

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lcuff
From years ago, I remember reading about a study involving punch-card batch
processing, where two teams were given a stack of input data and an algorithm
to implement. One team listened to music, the other not. Both teams completed
the task in about the same time, but the team not listening to music saw that
after the complex algorithm, the output was the same as the input.

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jzylstra
Consistent with the study... Creativity (as insight in thought) is a form of
blending from concept to output. You're saying that access to this insight was
not achieved by members of the music-listening group.

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robbrown451
This doesn't surprise me. Music is particularly detrimental to difficult
cognitive tasks for me (i.e. coding), but to "true creativity" as well.

Tedious tasks music is fine with. Like tweaking pixels in a paint program or
something. Things that don't take concentration.

Personally I recommend music be reserved for when you can really "get into
it", such as when doing physical activities (dance, exercise, etc...especially
ones you can do to the rhythm), or just sitting back and listening. And that
should be often.

But using it as background when doing other things that tax your brain is to
me a waste of the music. (as well as the problems noted in the study)

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beaugunderson
Link to paper:
[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/acp.3532](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/acp.3532)

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afturner
I'm a classical singer and just all around lover of music.. I'm also a
software developer. Listening to music while I program is an absolute
disaster. It either has to be a video or an audiobook.

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wildrhythms
I also have a classical music education and cannot write code (or anything
really) with music playing. Vocals, non-vocals, doesn't matter, no matter how
hard I try I find myself getting distracted in trying to dissect the music.

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rcheu
I recently restarted classical music education, and have found it makes it
much harder to listen to music and concentrate on my software engineering. It
used to be okay if the music doesn’t have vocals, now it has to be something
simple I’ve heard many times before.

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Grue3
The problem is that the test subjects were listening to unfamiliar music. If
they were listening to what they're always listening to, they wouldn't be
nearly as distracted. Personally, most of my hobby projects were coded while
listening to loud music (mostly punk rock) that I guess would be quite
distracting to unfamiliar people, but I don't think it stifled my creativity
in any way.

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not_that_noob
I wonder if the type of instrumental music makes a difference. I find that
soft techno like dub techno helps me focus, while classical does not.

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dharma1
+1 for dub techno when working. Pretty much the only thing that helps me focus

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RickJWagner
I hate to see this. I really like music.

I guess when I'm doing something repetitive and manual (like painting a
house), then some music is just a welcome distraction. But when I'm working on
something that requires heavy brainpower (like debugging some failing computer
process), then silence does seem to be best.

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qwerty456127
Indeed, music probably helps only when used as a tool to cut off distractions
or to tune our mood. I used to work in an office where junk music (local
popular radio) played aloud all day long so I listened to a nicer kind of
music in headphones (although what I actually wanted was perfect silence).

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_raoulcousins
Music is a huge distraction while working. White noise or nothing. Some people
on my team listen to podcasts while coding, and most of them were watching
Cohen's testimony in the background on Wednesday. If they're not fooling
themselves about their productivity, I'm really jealous.

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jobigoud
For me it's "nothing". My home office is very calm but if I need to dive into
something really fully and feel like I'm in my own bubble, I use a pair of big
ear muff normally used in construction industry or other high noise
environment (31dB noise reduction). It's like sensory deprivation just for
audio.

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j7ake
So what is the solution to drown out ambient noise for example a noisy work
place?

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niccl
I can't recall where I got this, but I find the generated noise really good at
reducing the distraction from co-workers' conversations, and it's not as
boring as straight noise

    
    
      play -n synth  brownnoise synth pinknoise mix synth sine amod 0.2 60
    

'play' is from the SoX package

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blueboo
If you're listening to music/watching Netflix during work, your work will
probably be automated or outsourced

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pakitan
It's funny the result sounds slightly controversial because music doesn't have
the bad rep that TV does. If the study's conclusion was "Watching TV
significantly impairs creativity", everybody would be like "d'oh!". However,
listening to music is also an act of passive consumption, just like watching
TV, so the result is not too surprising to me.

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Ace17
I think you're confusing "music" with "radio" here.

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pakitan
I'm pretty sure I'm not confusing anything. However you want to define "music"
and "radio", both are passive consumption. Sure, there might be some types of
music that engage your brain more than others but that would still be nothing,
compared to, say, reading a book.

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HNLurker2
(Anecdote) music with lyrics impairs creativity. I think its because lyrics
makes you think.

