Should you listen to music when you work? Some will say they love it, claiming that it improves their performance; others will say they cannot work effectively with music playing in the background. It just depends on what sort of work you're doing.
In a recent study, we brought participants into our lab with a variety of tasks. They included an easy task — searching through word lists and crossing out words containing the letter "a" and a more difficult task — memorizing word pairs and recalling the partner to each word. Some participants completed all of the tasks in silence, whereas others completed the tasks with instrumental music that was either loud or soft, and either simple or complex, the latter meaning music with more instrumental tracks.
We found that participants who listened to simple music or no music performed about the same on the easy task. Contrarily, participants performed worse on the more difficult task when they listened to any music, regardless of complexity or volume, compared to those who didn't listen to any music.
Not surprisingly, we typically need to use fewer of our mental resources when we perform easy tasks, whereas demanding tasks require more brainpower. However, because we might be less engaged during easier tasks, there's a greater risk of drifting off to sleep. Music might give us the extra boost we need to get refreshed. Listening to music can become overkill (过犹不及). So we have to strike a balance between the type of music and the type of task.
A. What should we make of these findings?
B. Several key findings emerged from our study.
C. However, difficult tasks already demand a lot of our mental resources.
D. Our research has found that the effects of work may depend on our personalities.
E. We want to develop a more comprehensive framework that could be applied broader.
F. However, participants who listened to complex music performed best on the easy task.
G. Interestingly enough, our research has found that both of these perspectives can be true.
