Scientists found that moderate (适度的) noise can make people more creative, The New York Times reported.
Scientists did tests on students. They divided them into four groups. They then asked the students to do certain tasks involving creative thinking. But each group did the task with different volumes (音量) of background noise. They found that students did best when working under moderate noise—70 decibels (分贝). This is about the same volume of background noise in a cafe. Students did worse in low noise (50 dB). This is the volume of a quiet room. They did the poorest when in a high-noise (85 dB) environment. This is the noise level in a factory.
Moderate noise can distract (分心) people just enough so that they think more creatively. "It helps you think outside the box," Raci Mehta, a lead researcher in the study, said to the Business Standard. On the one hand, working in a very quiet place can strengthen our focus. But it also stops
us from thinking abstractly (抽象).
"This is why if you are too focused on a problem and you can't solve it," said Mehta, "you leave it for some time and then come back to it and you'll get the solution."
However, the scientists said that when you need to do detailed things, like proofreading (校对) a paper, a quiet place is better than a noisy one.
