That background music everywhere you go… disrupts creativity

Shut it off!

sci-news.com: Background Music Stints Creativity, Says New Study

In a series of three experiments, a team of psychologists from Lancaster University, the University of Central Lancashire and the University of Gävle investigated the impact of background music on creativity. Their findings 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), disrupts creative performance in insight problem solving.

“We found strong evidence of impaired performance when playing background music in comparison to quiet background conditions,” said study co-author Dr. Neil McLatchie, a researcher at Lancaster University.

However, there was no significant difference in performance of the verbal tasks between the quiet and library noise conditions.

“This is because library noise is a ‘steady state’ environment which is not as disruptive,” the researchers explained.