Image via: Zeel
We have all been in the position where we find ourselves distracted or bothered by a co-worker playing background music at the office…Seeing no point in changing the co-worker’s habit of playing music even if he/she puts on a pair of headphones, we tend to either let it go and put headphones on or just grow more to consider it white noise. The question to ask is whether this habit actually helps or not? Therefore, we will be going through a simple thought process backed by scientific research to discover the answer to this question.
Three Different Personas and Their Background Music
Image via: St. Elizabeth Healthcare
My personal experience tells me that throughout workplaces, there would be three different personalities when it comes to playing music in the background: Mr. Singer, Mr. Instrumental, and Mr. Silent. All three compete to dominate the atmosphere of the workplace. All three never settle on a common comfortable preference. Here’s a quick definition of the three to put them more into perspective:
- Mr. Singer: As the name suggests, that is the one who plays songs in the background and sings or hums to them while he/she works.
- Mr. Instrumental: The one who focuses more on lyric-free music which provides a ‘fun’ atmosphere to the work environment.
- Mr. Silent: The one who prefers total silence during work.
The dilemma of Work Productivity and Background Noise
During our thought experiment, we will be going through several studies that have shown that playing music in the background doesn’t have a conclusive impact on work productivity. Several aspects are factored in to determine the effect of sound on how fast and efficiently an employee can do his job.
For instance, it depends on the type of work, style of music, and the nature of the task at hand.
To understand the complexity of how music varies according to the situation, we have to create different scenarios – assuming characters we made up listen to their music in headphones – and see what works best according to scientific research.
Three Maintenance Engineers Walk into an Office:
Image via: PPL PRS
A factory technician calls one of them and briefs him about a downed piece of equipment. So, the engineers have two tasks. They have to look for alternatives to keep the factory working without the equipment for now. Then, they can see how to fix it.
Two consecutive objectives…Two different thought processes.
A study conducted by psychologists Simone M. Ritter and Sam Ferguson classified the first task as Divergent thinking: Which is a way of thinking that branches towards multiple solutions or options. And the second task is Convergent thinking: The way of thinking that converges to reach one solution to a problem.
The study showed that Classical Music better promotes divergent thinking while not having any effect on convergent thinking. This concludes that Mr. Instrumental would perform much better in finding alternatives while Mr. Silent would be most likely successful in finding the solution to fix the equipment. No luck for Mr. Singer, however.
Three Creative Designers Walk into an Office:
Image via: Career Assessment Site
The three designers are in one team and they are about to embark on a creative mission to make new concept designs for a set of cartoon characters for an upcoming video.
Another study from the Journal of Consumer Research explored the effect of music – or noise in general – on creative thinking. It concludes that moderate-volumed ambient noise (between 50 to 70 Decibels) increases the Construal Level (CL): The psychological distance between incoming information and thought. This level indicates how abstract a person’s thinking is when processing information. The higher the construal level, the more abstract the thought gets. psychologists also commonly relate abstract thought to creativity.
Among the three personalities, Mr. Instrumental will fare better with his tasks and would most likely be the one coming up with the best results.
Three Secretaries Walk into an Office:
Image via: Robert Half
The three of them oversee the schedules of three different department heads, making sure they sort their files, reply to client e-mails..etc.
Psychologists Luca Kiss and Karina J. Linnell published a research paper on the effect of preferred background music on task-focus and sustained attention. It states that listening to your preferred background music or songs enhanced productivity in low-demand activities such as typing, cleaning, sorting, and coding. The reason for this is that listening to preferred music helped reduce overthinking and stress, making the mind more able to focus in short bursts to maintain the task at hand. And since the task isn’t very stimulating, those short bursts are more than enough to accurately finish the task.
This time, Mr. Singer would be the most efficient and productive while Mr. Instrumental and Mr. Silent would be more distracted by tangents to their tasks.
Can you change your personality or others’?
Having the three different personalities sitting in one office can be challenging as they all demand different preferences to the work environment. However, a thesis from Florida State University links confirmation bias with being able to concentrate with or without music. The belief, in itself, could act as a self-fulfilling prophecy by warping the perception and the mood of the believer. Ultimately, affecting one’s productivity and mental state during work.
From this, you can surmise that you can talk your co-workers into trying a new routine – whether to try music or not. Staying open to new experiences could actually generate harmony in the work environment and cohesion in terms of team productivity. It doesn’t have to end up with either one of you taking your laptop outside the office and working somewhere else. And for sure, it doesn’t have to spark any internal animosity, which will not have good consequences on any given day. Getting out of your comfort zone for a while can actually be beneficial for you, and hopefully, will shift your paradigm towards an efficient result in your work.
