Happy Music Boosts Brain's Creativity, Study Says (newscientist.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Scientist: Need inspiration? Happy background music can help get the creative juices flowing. Simone Ritter, at Radboud University in the Netherlands, and Sam Ferguson, at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, have been studying the effect of silence and different types of music on how we think. They put 155 volunteers into five groups. Four of these were each given a type of music to listen to while undergoing a series of tests, while the fifth group did the tests in silence. The tests were designed to gage two types of thinking: divergent thinking, which describes the process of generating new ideas, and convergent thinking, which is how we find the best solutions for a problem. Ritter and Ferguson found that people were more creative when listening to music they thought was positive, coming up with more unique ideas than the people who worked in silence. However, happy music -- in this instance, Antonio Vivaldi's Spring -- only boosted divergent thinking. No type of music helped convergent thinking, suggesting that it's better to solve problems in silence. The study was published in the journal PLoS One.

Comments

Not for me

[zifn4b]

When I'm coding, high energy music is what gets my creative juices flowing. There is more evidence to suggest that what is related to creativity is how much stress you are under. The closer you are are to "fight or flight response" the more resources are being taken away from the cognitive processes that give rise to creativity. I'm reminded of several John Cleese quotes on the subject:

"If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play."
"Nothing will stop you being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake."
"Creativity is not a skill, it's a state of mind, being in the open state."

We are not in open states when we are stressed. Perhaps for some "happy music", whatever that means, helps with getting "into the zone". Just find whatever it is that gets you in the zone and practice mindfulness about getting into that zone and staying there as long as you can.

Re:Not for me

[Sumus Semper Una]

I definitely experience the same thing - my creativity is best triggered by high energy music

I kind of wonder whether the real takeaway from the study is supposed to be "listening to music you like helps with creativity." I've certainly found that to be the case when I listen to punk metal (my current musical flavor of choice). And sludge metal helps me when I need to just focus on rote tasks and get into a trance "zone". But I'm sure others would find their creativity or productivity impeded by listening to those genres, so I would never suggest anyone else listen to them to help with tasks unless I know their musical preferences.

Considering that they had people listen to sad, anxious, and calm (or anxious and calm at the same time somehow? Damnit New Scientist, this is why people use Oxford commas!) classical music, I'm not sure you can draw conclusions outside that genre. This seems to be more about "happy classical music" having a positive effect on a greater portion of the population than other emotive flavors of classical music. But even that may not hold true for everyone. Maybe it's just that more people have a positive reaction to "happy classical music" than other kinds of classical music, but that the effect is reversed for some percentage of people.

In short, I find the study interesting, but as usual the magazine article takes the conclusions and runs with them beyond the scope of the actual study.

the real question

[TimMD909]

Now that we know happy music makes people more productive, how will this get incorporated into the open office? I'm assuming my looping Journey "Don't Stop Believing" over and over.

Re:Newflash: Happy music makes you happy!

[Oswald McWeany]

I wouldn't say it's necessarily "obvious" that happy music makes you happy.

I remember as a teenage being depressed over the break up with a girl friend, flipping through radio stations and temporarily stopping on an oldies station. The Cascades "Listen to the Rhythm of The Falling Rain" came on, arguably, a sad song.

I sang along, and like a light switch, started feeling better. Over the years I've found certain sad songs actually cheer me up and make me happy when I'm sad. When I'm sad, happy songs irritate me.