The Surprising Science Behind What Music Does To Our Brains
You're
probably listening to music in your headphones at work right now. Whether you
are powering through your to-do list or brainstorming creative ideas, here is
how the tunes you are playing affect how your brain works.
I’m
a big fan of music, and use it a lot when working, but I had no idea about how
it really affects our brains and bodies. Since music is such a big
part of our lives, I thought it would be interesting and useful to have a look
at some of the ways we react to it without even realizing.
“Without
music, life would be a mistake” --Friedrich Nietzsche
We
can usually pick if a piece of music is particularly happy or sad, but this
isn’t just a subjective idea that comes from how it makes us feel. In fact, our
brains actually respond differently to happy and sad music.
Even
short pieces of happy or sad music can affect us. One study showed that after
hearing a short piece of music, participants were more likely to interpret a
neutral expression as happy or sad, to match the tone of the music they heard.
This also happened with other facial expressions, but was most notable for
those that were close to neutral.
Something
else that’s really interesting about how our emotions are affected by
music is
that there are two kind of emotions related to music: perceived emotions
and felt emotions.
This
means that sometimes we can understand the emotions of a piece of music without actually feeling them, which explains why some
of us find listening to sad music enjoyable, rather than depressing.
Unlike
in real life situations, we don’t feel any real threat or danger when listening
to music, so we can perceive the related emotions without truly feeling
them--almost like vicarious emotions.
We
all like to pump up the tunes when we’re powering through our to-do lists,
right? But when it comes to creative work, loud music may not be the best
option.
It
turns out that a moderate noise level is the sweet spot for
creativity.
Even more than low noise levels, ambient noise apparently gets our creative
juices flowing, and doesn’t put us off the way high levels of noise do.
The
way this works is that moderate noise levels increase processing difficulty
which promotes abstract processing, leading to higher creativity. In other
words, when we struggle (just enough) to process things as we normally would,
we resort to more creative approaches.
In
high noise levels, however, our creative thinking is impaired because we’re
overwhelmed and struggle to process information efficiently.
This
is very similar to how temperature and lighting can
affect our productivity, where paradoxically a slightly more crowded place can
be beneficial.
Take
this one with a grain of salt, because it’s only been tested on young adults
(that I know of), but it’s still really interesting.
In
a study of couples who spent time
getting to know each other, looking at each other’s top 10 favorite songs
actually provided fairly reliable predictions as to the listener’s personality
traits.
The
study used five personality traits for the test: openness to experience, extraversion, agreeableness,
conscientiousness, and emotional stability.
Interestingly,
some traits were more accurately predicted based on the person’s listening
habits than others. For instance, openness to experience, extraversion,
and emotional stability were the easiest to guess correctly. Conscientiousness, on the
other hand, wasn’t obvious based on musical taste.
To
break it down, here is the connection they have found:
- Blues fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, gentle and at ease
- Jazz fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing and at ease
- Classical music fans have high self-esteem, are creative, introvert and at ease
- Rap fans have high self-esteem and are outgoing
- Opera fans have high self-esteem, are creative and gentle
- Country and western fans are hardworking and outgoing
- Reggae fans have high self-esteem, are creative, not hardworking, outgoing, gentle and at ease
- Dance fans are creative and outgoing but not gentle
- Indie fans have low self-esteem, are creative, not hard working, and not gentle
- Bollywood fans are creative and outgoing
- Rock/heavy metal fans have low self-esteem, are creative, not hard-working, not outgoing, gentle, and at ease
- Chart pop fans have high self-esteem, are hardworking, outgoing and gentle, but are not creative and not at ease
- Soul fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, gentle, and at ease
Of
course, generalizing based on this study is very hard. However looking at the science of introverts and
extroverts,
there is some clear overlap.
Another study done on teenagers and
young adults focused on how their driving is affected by music.
Drivers
were tested while listening to their own choice of music, silence or “safe”
music choices provided by the researchers. Of course, their own music was
preferred, but it also proved to be more distracting: drivers made more
mistakes and drove more aggressively when listening to their own choice of
music.
Even
more surprising: music provided by the researchers proved to be more beneficial
than no music at all. It seems that unfamiliar, or uninteresting, music is best
for safe driving.
We
generally assume that learning a musical instrument can be beneficial for kids,
but it’s actually useful in more ways than we might expect. One study showed that children
who had three years or more musical instrument training performed better than
those who didn’t learn an instrument in auditory discrimination abilities and
fine motor skills.
They
also tested better on vocabulary and nonverbal reasoning skills, which involve
understanding and analyzing visual information, such as identifying
relationships, similarities and differences between shapes and patterns.
These
two areas in particular are quite removed from musical training as we imagine
it, so it’s fascinating to see how learning to play an instrument can help kids develop
such a wide variety of important skills.
Similar
research shows this correlation for exercise and motor skills in the same
way,
which is also fascinating.
It’s
not just kids that can benefit from musical training or exposure. Stroke
patients in one small study showed improved visual attention while listening to
classical music.
The
study also tried white noise and silence to compare the results, and found
that, like the driving study mentioned earlier, silence resulted in the
worst scores.
Because
this study was so small, the conclusions need to be explored further for
validation, but I find it really interesting how music and noise can affect our
other senses and abilities--in this case, vision.
Another
study focused on noise, rather than music, showed that when it comes to
being distracted by the conversations of others, phone calls where we can only
hear one side of the conversation are the worst offenders.
After
a survey showed that up to 82% of people find overhearing cellphone
conversations annoying, Veronica Galván, a cognitive psychologist at the
University of San Diego, decided to study why these are such a pain.
In
the study, participants completed word puzzles while one half of them overheard
one side of a mundane phone conversation in the background. The other half of
the volunteers heard the entire conversation as it took place between two
people in the room.
Those
who heard the one-sided phone conversation found it more distracting than those
who heard both people speaking. They also remembered more of the
conversation, showing that it had grabbed their attention more than those who
heard both sides and didn’t remember as much of the discussion.
The
unpredictability of a one-sided conversation seems to be the cause of it grabbing our
attention more. Hearing both sides of a conversation, on the other hand, gives
us more context which makes it easier to tune out the distraction.
Then
again, as we’ve explored before, getting distracted is often not such a bad
things for various reasons.
Back
to music again, and we can see that just like silence doesn’t help us to be
more creative or better drivers, it’s not much use when we’re exercising, either.
Research
on the effects of music during exercise has been done for years. In 1911, an
American researcher, Leonard Ayres, found that cyclists pedaled faster while listening to music than they did in silence.
This
happens because listening to music can drown out our brain’s cries of fatigue.
As our body realizes we’re tired and wants to stop exercising, it sends signals
to the brain to stop for a break. Listening to music competes for our
brain’s attention, and can help us to override those signals of fatigue,
though this is mostly beneficial for low- and moderate-intensity exercise.
During high-intensity exercise, music isn’t as powerful at pulling our brain’s
attention away from the pain of the workout.
Not
only can we push through the pain to exercise longer and harder when we listen
to music, but it can actually help us to use our energy more efficiently. A 2012 study showed that cyclists
who listened to music required 7% less oxygen to do the same work as those who
cycled in silence.
So
in the same way that exercising makes us happier, it’s not surprising that
music adds significantly to our work-out success.
By Belle Beth Cooper http://www.fastcompany.com/3022942/work-smart/the-surprising-science-behind-what-music-does-to-our-brains?partner=newsletter
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