{"id":716,"date":"2019-02-26T11:00:22","date_gmt":"2019-02-26T11:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.syngli.com\/blog\/?p=716"},"modified":"2025-05-24T18:21:39","modified_gmt":"2025-05-24T18:21:39","slug":"listening-music-can-impair-creativity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.syngli.com\/blog\/listening-music-can-impair-creativity\/","title":{"rendered":"Listening to music can impair creativity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Music can help boost mood, creativity, and productivity. At least, this is what many believe as they listen to music while working. However, psychologists from the University of Central Lancashire, University of G\u00e4vle in Sweden and Lancaster University discovered that music may actually decrease listener\u2019s creativity when solving verbal insight problems.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Photo by Alexandr Podvalny<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The experiment that proved music to be disruptive<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The psychologists presented participants with sets of three words. The participants then searched for a common word that can combine with each of the three words to create new words. For example, given the words: flower, dress, and dial, \u201csun\u201d is a common word which creates the words: sunflower, sundress, and sundial. While performing these tasks, users are exposed to three conditions: background music with unfamiliar lyrics, instrumental music without lyrics, and music with familiar lyrics.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The results showed that background music greatly impaired participants\u2019 ability to complete these tasks. Specifically, they struggled the most with music with familiar lyrics despite how they felt about the songs. The findings challenge the conventional view that music enhances creativity. Instead, they suggest that music, especially familiar music, disrupts creativity in insight problem solving. Perhaps students will now think twice before putting on headphones before studying.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Music can help boost mood, creativity, and productivity. At least, this is what many believe as they listen to music while working. However, psychologists from the University of Central Lancashire, University of G\u00e4vle in Sweden and Lancaster University discovered that music may actually decrease listener\u2019s creativity when solving verbal insight problems. Photo by Alexandr Podvalny… View Article<\/a>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":1772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nListening to music can impair creativity - Syngli - Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Psychologists from the University of Central Lancashire, University of G\u00e4vle in Sweden and Lancaster University discovered that music may actually decrease listener\u2019s creativity when solving verbal insight problems.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.syngli.com\/blog\/listening-music-can-impair-creativity\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Listening to music can impair creativity - 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