The Second International Conference on Music Communication Science, Science, 3-4 December 2009, Sydney, Australia http://marcs.uws.edu.au/links/ICoMusic09/index.html
Background Music at Work – A literature review and some hypotheses Vivian Shek, Emery Schubert Empirical Musicology Group The University of New South Wales, Sydney
ABSTRACT This paper provides a literature review of research on backgrou background nd music music in the workplac workplace. e. The The review review indicates indicates an impoverished amount of data that is surprising given the potential potential music music may have in increasin increasing g productiv productivity ity and well-being in the workplace. For example, music has been used successfully for therapeutic purposes in the health industry for clients, though not explicitly for workers. Further, a lack of theory was identified as a hindrance to systematic research. research. In light of this, two hypotheses hypotheses are brought brought together together to help provide provide a better better understan understanding ding of how background music can affect people in the workplace: (1) the mood-arousal hypothesis, which predicts that music will improve worker efficiency and well-being when it positions positions the individu individual al close to, or at, an optimum optimum arousal arousal level which facilitates concentration and provides pleasure to the listener; (2) the distraction hypothesis, which predicts that music takes attention away from work tasks, thus reducing productivity, but may facilitate well-being.
1.
INTRODUCTION
Research on the effects of music, and particularly the beneficia beneficiall effects effects of music music,, has been booming booming in the the last last five five years. We are developing a better understanding of how music can be used to positively manipulate a range of social and psychological symptoms. Even more recently, research has been conducted on how music can be used in the workplace (North & Hargreaves, 2008). This paper provides a literature review of how music has been used to benefit people, people, and conclude concludess that research research on music music in the workplace is in an embryonic embryonic state. Further, the few studies that have been cited are typically based on exploration and speculation. There appears to be no established hypothetical or theoretical basis that can be used as a framework to provide provide an understand understanding ing of how music can be used in the workplace to benefit the individual and the workplace environment. The review is therefore followed by hypothetical propositions that may be useful for future research.
2. THE EFFECTS OF BACKGROUND MUSIC In western society music is nearly everywhere. One reason for music’s ubiquitousness ubiquitousness is its beneficial nature in different areas in our society, including medicine, music therapy, education and marketing. In addition, music listening is important for a person’s well-being. Individuals reportedly use music to regulate mood, such as for relaxation or decreasing stress level (Bull, 2007; DeNora, 2000; Haake, 2006). For instance, in a study
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relating to music usage and well-being at the workplace, Haake (2006) found that self-selected music inspired, relaxed and improved the mood of her participants. Furthermore, music is used to regulate a person’s surrounding environment and social context. For example Bronzaft (2002) and Bull (2007) reported that people listen to music on their portable music player (e.g. iPod) to block out noise and avoid interruptions from their colleagues at work. The field of music therapy provides testament to the importance of music in some non-musical behaviours. A study by Bernatzky et al. (2004) demonstrated how music could improve the accuracy of arm and finger movements of patients patients with Parkinso Parkinson’s n’s disease. disease. Music Music could could also help students who are emotionally challenged or have behaviou behavioural ral proble problems ms (Savan, (Savan, 1999). 1999). Not only can music be beneficia beneficiall to patients, patients, but medical medical practition practitioners ers have also taken advantag advantagee of the effects effects of music on their work. A questionnaire investigating the use of music in the operating room found that background music calms surgeons and improves communication between the surgical team (Ullmann et al., 2008). Such studies demonstrate the beneficial effects of music not only in medicine and therapy, but also in the workplace in general. Music has also been used to influence consumers in many different ways. Early studies found that when slow tempo music was played, consumers would spend more time at the premises premises,, such as restauran restaurants, ts, bars or retail retail stores, stores, and consequently spend more money (Milliman, 1982, 1986). In addition, other marketing studies have shown that backgrou background nd music can alter buying buying intention intention (North, (North, Hargreaves, & McKendrick, 1999). Further adding to the ubiquitousness of music through the advancement advancement of technology and ease in obtaining music, an increasing number of people take their music with them everywhere they go (Bull, 2007; Davenport, 1972; DeNora, 2000). Several researches have commented on the omnipresent nature of music being responsible for an increasing number of people listening to music at work (Bull, 2007; Haake, 2006; Prichard, Korczynski, & Elmes, 2007). Although music has an increasing presence in people’s everyday lives, results on the effect of listening to backgrou background nd music music while while a person person is engaged engaged in another another task task are inconclusive (North & Hargreaves, 1999; Oldham, Cummings, Mischel, Schmidtke, & Zhou, 1995). Furthermore, given the potential beneficial effects of music reported in the literature, the question of whether backgrou background nd music music could could be used to produce produce beneficia beneficiall effects in the workplace is in need of systematic investigation (North & Hargreaves, 2008).
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Researchers have studied the effects of background music played during many different tasks, for instance: driving (Dibben & Williamson, 2007; Slawinski & MacNeil, 2002), reading text (Kalliene, 2002) and solving arithmetic problems (Rauscher, Shaw, & Ky, 1993). On the other hand, some studies have manipulated the characteristics of music to explore their effects on task performance (Sogin, 1988; Thompson, Schellenberg, & Husain, 2001). Other research has manipulated the complexity of the task being performed by the experimental subjects as well as music preference and personality of the experimental subjects (Furnham & Strbac, 2002; North & Hargreaves, 1999; Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003). However, the results are mixed: some research in this area found background music beneficial while other research revealed that background music is detrimental to task performance (North & Hargreaves, 2008). There are several reasons for the discrepancy in research findings. First, the complexities of interacting factors (e.g. music preference, task complexity, personality) are challenging to control and manipulate (North & Hargreaves, 2008). Second, there is a lack of guiding theory in this area. Third, due to the lack of agreement on a theoretical framework, research groups are using their own methodologies, manipulating different independent variables, recording a variety of dependent variables, and using different types of music (North & Hargreaves, 2008). While psychologists have developed standardised measures, such as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, which researchers can use, the field of music at work is still only recently becoming conscious of the variables it needs to investigate. We lack a set of tools that can handle the complexities of measuring and analysing the effects and benefits of music in the workplace. As a result, there is no coherence and no baseline for comparison across studies, making it difficult to bring knowledge forward in this research area as a whole. This paper does not offer a complete solution to these problems, but attempts to make an inroad by proposing some hypotheses that may be used to draw together existing research, and provide a basis for some future studies.
3.
A FRAMEWORK FOR STUDYING MUSIC AT WORK
As mentioned previously, there is no guiding theoretical framework to explain the effects of background music at work. Two hypotheses are presented here: (1) mood-arousal hypothesis; and (2) the distraction hypothesis. Arousal and mood The mood-arousal hypothesis was proposed by Thompson and colleagues (Husain, Thompson, & Schellenberg, 2002; Schellenberg, 2005; Thompson et al., 2001), and is now used as the preferred explanation of the Mozart effect. The Mozart effect refers to the ability of the listener to improve spatial ability scores while listening to music (Rauscher et al., 1993). Rauscher found that after merely listening to 10 minutes of a Mozart sonata, their participants performed significantly better in a spatial reasoning skills task than when the participants listened to 10 minutes of relaxation instruction or sat in silence for 10 minutes. Some studies have replicated these findings using other classical music (Ivanov & Geake, 2003, Rideout, Dougherty & Wernet, 1998, (Nantais & Schellenberg, 1999) or by using other Mozart pieces (Wilson & Brown, 1997). However, several studies failed to replicate Rauschers enhanced spatial ability
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effects. For example, while Nantais and Schellenberg (1999) replicated the earlier results with Schubert’s music, the researchers also found that the superior paper folding and cutting task result disappeared when other auditory stimuli were played. Their participants who preferred to listen to a narrated story rather than Schubert’s music performed better at the paper folding task after listening to the story than to music. This suggested that enhanced performance on the spatial-temporal reasoning test is not solely attributable to the effect of music; indeed, the effect warrants another interpretation. A different explanation of the Mozart effect was proposed by Thompson and colleagues (Husain et al., 2002; Thompson et al., 2001) who demonstrated that a stimulus which can increase an individual’s arousal level to his/her optimal level is able to explain improved cognitive performance. Similar to Nantais & Schellenberg (1999), participants in the Thompson et al. (2001) experiment performed the paper folding and cutting task after listening to music or sitting in silence for 10 minutes. The music was either a Mozart piano sonata that was lively, energetic and in a major key or an Albinoni piece of organ and strings that was sad, slow and in a minor key. Participants’ arousal and mood were measured before and again after the paper folding and cutting task. In addition, participants also rated their enjoyment for the music played if they listened to music. Results revealed that participants who listened to the Mozart music before their paper folding task scored significantly higher than when they sat in silence. In contrast, the performance after listening to Albinoni’s music was worse than after sitting in silence. The authors concluded that the worsened performance after listening to Albinoni’s music was due to the participant’s arousal and mood. Participants who listened to Mozart’s music were more aroused and scored higher on the positive mood scale compared to those who listened to Albinoni’s music. Mozart’s music was also enjoyed significantly more than Albinoni’s music. In summary, Thompson et al. (2001) suggested that stimuli that are enjoyable to an individual will induce a positive mood and increase arousal level, and consequently enhance the performance of a task. This view is also shared by other researchers (Chabris, 1999). The mood-arousal hypothesis therefore suggests that music may assist a person performing a task at work through the positive effect of arousal induced by the music. It further predicts that listening to music a person likes puts the listener in a better mood and consequently, he/she is more likely to perform better. Isen (2000) explained that a person’s mood can have an influence on his/her social behaviour and cognitive processing. With respect to cognitive functioning, positive mood may facilitate decision making, problem solving, creativity and efficiency. For instance, in an experiment by Estrada et al. (Estrada, Isen, & Young, 1997), clinicians were asked to reach a diagnosis from a patient’s data. During the diagnostic process, clinicians who were given a small handful of sweets to put them in a better mood were able to consider a wider range of symptoms and patient information earlier and showed significantly less bias than the clinicians who did not receive the sweets. These findings have implications for the workplace because employees are involved in all the aforementioned cognitive processes (decision making, problem solving and creativity) day to day.
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Arousal has been shown to relate closely to performance. The relationship between arousal level and performance is characterised by the inverted U-shaped pattern of the Yerkers Dodson Law (Wickens & Hollands, 2000). Arousal level that is too low or too high can be unfavourable for work performance. Therefore, to have the best performance, an optimal level of arousal is necessary. Hence, if a person is overly aroused or stimulated, for instance, by the complexity of the task at hand or by other unwanted stimuli, his/her performance will decline. Listening to music requires processing that adds to the workload of the listener. Therefore, when choosing between various pieces or styles of music, the individual, whether consciously or subconsciously, often assesses the complexity and workload of the task that they have to perform and the characteristic of the piece that they are about to listen to. Konecni (1982) observed that people involved in a complex task often chose to listen to less demanding music with simple melodies to limit their already high workload and maintain their arousal level at an optimal level. To summarise, bringing the optimal arousal and positive mood-preference hypotheses together, the so-called Mozart effect found by Rauscher et al.(1993) can be attributed to an elevated level of arousal and an increase in positive mood rather than to Mozart’s music or classical music in general. Appropriate and enjoyable music puts a person in a good mood and also provides stimulation to increase a person’s arousal to an optimal level. Consequently, the individual will perform better at work because of their positive mood and also be more alert, attentive and vigilant because they are brought closer to an optimal arousal level. However, these hypotheses have limitations because of the difficulty in measuring arousal levels directly. Further, individual differences play an important part in a person’s mood; stimuli that will induce a positive mood in one person might not do so for another. Distraction The second hypothesis is that music acts as a distraction and the presence of any music will, in effect, decrease productivity. Indeed, this hypothesis stems from pain research where a beneficial effect of music is to emotionally engage the patient and take the mind of the patient off the painful condition or treatment (Mitchell & MacDonald, 2006). The main advantage music will have under such circumstances is in masking other, possibly more distracting auditory stimuli. For example, some studies have concluded that music is distracting for task performance. In a study by Furnham and Strbac (2002), participants’ performances in a reading comprehension and prose recall task was equally poor when background music or office noise was played compared to their performance in silence. The studies concluded that background music is as distracting as office noise. In the course of normal working tasks, this hypothesis therefore would predict a worsening in task performance.
4.
AT WORK
There is little research investigating the use of background music at the workplace. Of the early studies dealing with background music at work and productivity, Oldham et al. (1995) was considered the most comprehensive study by North & Hargreaves (2008). Over a period of four weeks a selection was made from 256 full-time office employees
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who were provided with a personal stereo headset. The participating employees had one of 32 job titles, and carried out their job tasks which required varying levels of complexity. To consider job complexity in the study of background music and productivity was rare at the time of this study and was an important contribution. The job performance data of all participants were also monitored for four weeks before the beginning of the study. These data were used as a baseline for comparison. The participants were asked to listen to music as often as they would like during their work and were asked to record the amount of time they listened to music and the type of music they listened to. The job performance data of all participants were also collected during the four weeks of music intervention, and for four weeks after the intervention. Oldham et al. (1995) found that employees given the personal headset performed significantly better at their job compared to those without the personal headset during the music intervention weeks. Adding to the importance of considering task complexity in music listening research, Oldham et al. (1995) found an interaction effect with task complexity and music listening, namely, employees with the most simple jobs benefited most from the music whereas employees with more complex jobs did not benefit from the music and performed worse than the group without the stereo headset. Although the study is influential in the area of music listening at work, their technology is outdated for today’s workplace. A more recent study was conducted by Lesiuk (2005). In a five-week music listening and productivity study with IT professionals, Lesiuk (2005) measured worker’s affect, quality of work, time on-task, and also took a daily music listening log. She found that music listening increased workers’ positive affect and improved their mood. The finding that workers’ moods did improve would have helped their cognitive and creative processes, supporting the mood-arousal hypothesis discussed above. Even though Lesiuk’s study is more timely and has more relevance to the contemporary workplace compared to the Oldham study, her research was restricted to the field of software engineering. Further, to ask her participants to work without music for part of the study could be unnatural for some individuals and consequently affect their performance. As to the main studies cited that explicitly address the question in the workplace, the Oldham (1995) and Lesiuk (2005) papers provide some interesting propositions about how music can benefit people in the workplace. Both the mood-arousal hypothesis and the distraction hypothesis received some initial support. Music can place the listener in a good mood, possibly leading to better performance, but for some tasks, particularly complex ones, work performance appears to be negatively affected (distraction hypothesis).
5.
CONCLUSION
Background music has great potential in increasing productivity and well-being in the workplace. However, while advances in similar applications of music, such as music therapy, have developed considerably over the years, the use of music at work has been neglected, as indicated in the review of the literature. Further, there is little in the form of hypotheses and theory that has been used to drive such research. This paper proposes some frameworks that may help provide a better understanding of the use of music in the workplace by articulating two hypotheses – the
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mood-arousal hypothesis that explains how music can improve performance, and the distraction hypothesis, which explains why music may reduce productivity. While these hypotheses provide some framework for organising and planning further studies of music at work, they are not intended as an all encompassing solution to such study, but to help better understand the underlying aspects and functions of music in the workplace.
6.
REFERENCES
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Milliman, R. E. (1982). Using background music to affect the behavior of Supermarket Shoppers. Journal of Marketing, 46, 86-91. Milliman, R. E. (1986). The influence of Background Music on the Behavior of restaurant Patrons. Journal of consumer Research, 12, 286-289. Mitchell, L. A., & MacDonald, R. A. R. (2006). An Experimental Investigation of the Effects of Preferred and Relaxing Music Listening on Pain Perception. Journal of Music Therapy, 43(4), 295-316. Nantais, K. M., & Schellenberg, E. G. (1999). The Mozart effect: an artifact of preference. Psychological Science, 10(4), 370-373. North, A. C., & Hargreaves, D. J. (1999). Music and driving game performance. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 40, 285-292. North, A. C., & Hargreaves, D. J. (2008). The social and applied psychology of music: Oxford University Press. North, A. C., Hargreaves, D. J., & McKendrick, J. (1999). The Influence of In-Store music on Wine Selections. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84, 271-276. Oldham, G. R., Cummings, A., Mischel, L. J., Schmidtke, J. M., & Zhou, J. (1995). Listen while you work? Quasi-experimental relations between personal-stereo headset use and employee work responses. Journal of Applied Psychology, 80(5), 547-564. Prichard, C., Korczynski, M., & Elmes, M. (2007). Music at work: An introduction. Group & Organization Management, 32(1), 4. Rauscher, F. H., Shaw, G. L., & Ky, C. N. (1993). Music and spatial task performance. Nature, 365, 611. Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2003). The Do Re Mi’s of Everyday Life: The Structure and Personality Correlates of Music Preferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(6), 1236–1256. Savan, A. (1999). The effect of background music on learning. Psychology of Music, 27, 138-146. Schellenberg, E. G. (2005). Music and Cognitive Abilities. Current directions in psychological sciences, 14(6), 317-320. Slawinski, E. B., & MacNeil, J. F. (2002). Age, music, and driving performance: Detection of external warning sounds in vehicles. Psychomusicology, 18(1-2), 123-131. Sogin, D. W. (1988). Effects of three different musical styles of background music on coding by college-age students. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 67, 275-280. Thompson, W. F., Schellenberg, E. G., & Husain, G. (2001). Arousal, mood, and the Mozart effect. . Psychological Science, 12, 248-251. Ullmann, Y., Fodor, L., Schwarzberg, I., Carmi, N., Ullmann, A., & Ramon, Y. (2008). The sound of music in the operating room. Injury, 39, 592-597. Wickens, C., & Hollands, J. (2000). Engineering psychology and human performance (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
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