September 21, 2010 at 11:08So, is it useful or harmful to listen to music in the workplace?
Today, during a morning conversation with a colleague about the productivity of work and " the entrance ways into the stream ," I was told about a topic on the site rsdn.ru . There, in one of the comments, a university experiment is described that explains when it is useful and when it is harmful to listen to music in the workplace. Everything seems to be so clear, and everyone guessed about it for a long time, but to have another scientific justification for their guesses will not hurt anyone:
“In response to complaints from employees about noise, you can try to cure the symptoms or eliminate the cause. Eliminating the cause will require the creation of noise barriers - walls and doors - and will cost money. Treating a symptom is much cheaper. By installing Museuc or another source of pink noise, you drown out the noise that interferes with your work with little blood. You can save even more - just ignore the problem; then people will have to resort to tape recorders and headphones to protect themselves from noise. Choosing one of these approaches, you should be prepared to incur an invisible punishment - the creative abilities of your employees will suffer.
In the sixties, researchers at Cornell University conducted a series of tests that determined the effect of music on a working person. They interviewed a group of students of the faculty of computer science and divided them into two subgroups. The first included those who liked background music while working or studying, the second - those who were disturbed by music. Then half of the participants in each of the subgroups were placed in a quiet audience, and the second half in an audience equipped with headphones with the ability to select music. Participants in both classrooms received a Fortran programming task. No one was surprised that the participants of both audiences coped with the task equally quickly and efficiently. As any child knows, performing music homework in mathematics, music does not affect the part of the brain that is responsible for mathematical actions,
However, there was still a hidden factor in the Cornell experiment. In the statement of the problem, it was required that the output data stream be formed through a series of transformations over the numbers from the input data stream. So, the participants were asked to shift each number two digits to the left, then divide it by one hundred, and so on about ten operations. And although this was not explicitly stated in the specification, the final result of all the transformations over the number was necessarily the number itself. Some participants understood this, and some did not. The vast majority of guesses worked in a quiet audience.
Many of the day-to-day tasks performed by professional workers are counted at the center for sequential processing of the left hemisphere. Music does not particularly interfere with such work, since the right holistic hemisphere of the brain is engaged in its perception. But not all tasks can be performed in the left hemisphere. There are also moments of enlightenment, when you exclaim “Aha!”, Having discovered a short path that allows you to save many months or even years of work. Such a creative insight requires the work of the right hemisphere. If the right hemisphere is busy listening to a piano concert, the possibility of creative insight disappears.
The creative penalty imposed by the environment is cunning. Since creativity is already irregular, we often do not notice that it has become less common. Creative thinking of a person is not standardized. The suppression of creative thinking builds up over time. The organization becomes less efficient, people without any inspiration extract results, and the best employees leave the company. ”
If someone did not notice, then here is the link to the original topic again : rsdn.ru/forum/job/3915717.aspx
“In response to complaints from employees about noise, you can try to cure the symptoms or eliminate the cause. Eliminating the cause will require the creation of noise barriers - walls and doors - and will cost money. Treating a symptom is much cheaper. By installing Museuc or another source of pink noise, you drown out the noise that interferes with your work with little blood. You can save even more - just ignore the problem; then people will have to resort to tape recorders and headphones to protect themselves from noise. Choosing one of these approaches, you should be prepared to incur an invisible punishment - the creative abilities of your employees will suffer.
In the sixties, researchers at Cornell University conducted a series of tests that determined the effect of music on a working person. They interviewed a group of students of the faculty of computer science and divided them into two subgroups. The first included those who liked background music while working or studying, the second - those who were disturbed by music. Then half of the participants in each of the subgroups were placed in a quiet audience, and the second half in an audience equipped with headphones with the ability to select music. Participants in both classrooms received a Fortran programming task. No one was surprised that the participants of both audiences coped with the task equally quickly and efficiently. As any child knows, performing music homework in mathematics, music does not affect the part of the brain that is responsible for mathematical actions,
However, there was still a hidden factor in the Cornell experiment. In the statement of the problem, it was required that the output data stream be formed through a series of transformations over the numbers from the input data stream. So, the participants were asked to shift each number two digits to the left, then divide it by one hundred, and so on about ten operations. And although this was not explicitly stated in the specification, the final result of all the transformations over the number was necessarily the number itself. Some participants understood this, and some did not. The vast majority of guesses worked in a quiet audience.
Many of the day-to-day tasks performed by professional workers are counted at the center for sequential processing of the left hemisphere. Music does not particularly interfere with such work, since the right holistic hemisphere of the brain is engaged in its perception. But not all tasks can be performed in the left hemisphere. There are also moments of enlightenment, when you exclaim “Aha!”, Having discovered a short path that allows you to save many months or even years of work. Such a creative insight requires the work of the right hemisphere. If the right hemisphere is busy listening to a piano concert, the possibility of creative insight disappears.
The creative penalty imposed by the environment is cunning. Since creativity is already irregular, we often do not notice that it has become less common. Creative thinking of a person is not standardized. The suppression of creative thinking builds up over time. The organization becomes less efficient, people without any inspiration extract results, and the best employees leave the company. ”
If someone did not notice, then here is the link to the original topic again : rsdn.ru/forum/job/3915717.aspx