Re: Music for Productivity
dakennedy said:
In DA's Fast CD's he talks about using Baroque Music as a means to enhance or encourage a focused mindset.
cranewms2 said:
I have attended other seminars where Baroque music was touted as being great for learning, concentration, etc
My big question is where do I find a list of what musicians and titles that qualify as baroque music and which ones are best?
Because I do research in a semi-related area and because some of my students have chosen similar topics for their independent research topics, I have looked at the research in this area. The truth is that there is no large, robust effect of music on mental performance, certainly not in any way that could predictably affect an individual's performance in the real world.
The effect that is sometimes seen in laboratory studies comes not just from Baroque, but also from other lively classical music pieces. Any number of lively-sounding classical music pieces have sometimes improved laboratory performance in certain mental tasks compared to slow musical pieces. However, there are a lot of caveats in interpreting these laboratory results.
1) The increase in performance is small, variable, and different across individuals. Because it is a small effect and there is so much variability, it is hard to see the effect even when measuring performance precisely. Individuals will rarely if ever notice an effect informally as they sit at their desks working.
2) The small effect seen in some studies appears to come not from the music itself, but from the music's effect on
arousal. Lively music increases arousal. And arousal (up to a point) is well known to improve learning and memory. But other factors affect arousal much more strongly than music -- such as caffeine. Caffeine improves learning and memory, and its effects are robust, relatively large, and extremely well documented. By contrast, music's effect is variable, small, and hard to replicate.
3) In fact, some research suggests that even when people believe they learn better while listening to certain music, they actually learn better without any music.
Bottom line: there is nothing magical about Baroque music that makes your brain focus more. (Baroque music, by the way, is simply art music with certain shared style characteristics from approximately the 1600's. Many of the studies mentioned above used Mozart, which is actually from the Classical period, not Baroque.)
The things that have a big effect on your brain's performance are
1) sleep - inadequate sleep degrades performance
2) food - blood sugar swings, or high or low levels, degrade performance
3) motivation - we use money to get incredible feats of attention, learning, and memory from laboratory participants. (Course credit has little effect!)
4) pharmacological agents - caffeine, nootropics, etc.
Although they don't make for exciting seminar content, all of these have far greater impact than music, so if you want to improve your mental performance, look at the big 3 first.
-andersons
