By Eli Dew
Introduction
Music is an innately human practice. From the humming the song that is stuck in your head to walk out songs to specific life and cultural moments, such as the quinceanera or weddings, music can serve a variety of purposes. In a recent study, researchers found that over fifty percent of college students’ study and do other classwork while listening to music1. This largely due to music through platforms like Spotify making music much more accessible. Music is a powerful form of self-expression, but can music help you be better at school?
Is Music Helpful?
Despite its wide use, there seems to be some disagreement when looking into music’s effect on studying in general. For example, there are some studies who have found that one’s individual WMC (Working Memory Capacity) is what causes either positive or negative effects on cognitive ablitly2. Working memory is the modern revised idea of human short-term memory. That makes one’s WMC basically the amount of unique different information one can remember at a time. This difference in size of WMC allows for those with larger capacities to be less negatively affected by music, while those with less were more affected2.
Another factor for that has been investigated is individual characteristics. For example, there was a study that found introverted people are negatively affected by pop music while extroverts were not3. There are a variety of personality traits that allow one to be more or less resistant to being distracted by music. This could explain some of the variation in the research.
However, the largest factor seems to be the music itself. We all have our own individual music tastes. Some love country but hate rap. Others might prefer rock or R&B. The point is when not everyone enjoys the same type of music, the same music will not have the same effect on everyone. This also applies when talking about how distracted one get by music. When one is listening to a musical genre, they enjoy they tend to be less distracted and tend to remember better4.
It also matters on whether there are or aren’t lyrics in the songs that someone is listening to. Largely speaking, the presence of lyrics acts as an extra set of variables for your working memory to hold. Due to the limits of working memory, you are unable to retain new information if large portions of that memory being taken by the extra load of lyrics5. There have been direct comparisons that instrumental and classical music is less distracting that pop and hip-hop music, which allows people to retain more information6.
Finally, it also matters how energetic and dynamic the music is. Songs can have many different aspects that would make the song more distracting. This doesn’t make the song bad by any stretch, but it does make it worse to study to. Here’s just a few of the different things that make songs distracting how fast the tempo, how much volume varies and how high it gets, how often sections repeat, and the range of pitch of the singer/instruments7. All these factors must be accounted for in order to find your perfect study playlist.
Conclusion
What should you take away with all this information? Music can sometimes be more detrimental to your ability to have meaningful study sessions. There are, however, ways to minimize the negative effects of music. First, figure out your musical mood of the day. If country sounds good, go with country music, whatever genre works. Then, look for instrumental songs, as they are less distracting that songs with lyrics. Finally, look for songs that are generally simple and repetitive to minimize working memory load.
I personally use albums that I already enjoy and then look for an instrumental only version of the album. This works well as I’m already familiar with the songs, so I don’t get surprised, while also ensure I’m also not getting distracted because the music is getting annoying. Another great option is the plethora of lo-fi beats compilations on YouTube. These beats are an easy way to quickly put yourself in the mood to lock in on homework. Whatever your personal taste, look for simple, repetitive, instrumental music.
References
- Goltz, F., & Sadakata, M. (2021). Do you listen to music while studying? A portrait of how people use music to optimize their cognitive performance. Acta psychologica, 220, 103417. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2021.103417
- Christopher, E., & Shelton, J. (2017, March 6). Individual differences in working memory predict the effect of music on student performance. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211368116301279
- Furnham, A., & Bradley, A. (1999, January 6) Music while you work: the differential distraction of background music on the cognitive test performance of introverts and extraverts. Applied Cognitive Psychology https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/(SICI)1099-0720(199710)11:5%3C445::AID-ACP472%3E3.0.CO;2-R
- Johansson, R., Holmqvist, K., Mossberg, F., & Lindgren, M. (2011). Eye movements and reading comprehension while listening to preferred and non-preferred study music. Psychology of Music, 40(3), 339-356. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735610387777 (Original work published 2012)
- Logie, R. H. (2011) The Functional Organization and Capacity Limits of Working Memory. Current directions in psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society. [Online] 20 (4), 240–245.
- Chou, P. T.-M. (2009, December 31). Attention drainage effect: How background music effects concentration in Taiwanese college students. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ882124
- Kiger, D. M. (1989). Effects of Music Information Load on a Reading Comprehension Task. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 69(2), 531-534. https://doi.org/10.2466/pms.1989.69.2.531 (Original work published 1989)