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  • 2018.10.17 Music and Creativity

    Accepted author manuscript, 552 KB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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Background Music Stints Creativity: Evidence from Compound Remote Associate Tasks

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>1/09/2019
<mark>Journal</mark>Applied Cognitive Psychology
Issue number5
Volume33
Number of pages16
Pages (from-to)873-888
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date2/02/19
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Background music has been claimed to enhance people's creativity. In three experiments, we investigated the impact of background music on performance of Compound Remote Associate Tasks (CRATs), which are widely thought to tap creativity. Background music with foreign (unfamiliar) lyrics (Experiment 1), instrumental music without lyrics (Experiment 2), and music with familiar lyrics (Experiment 3) all significantly impaired CRAT performance in comparison with quiet background conditions. Furthermore, Experiment 3 demonstrated that background music impaired CRAT performance regardless of whether the music induced a positive mood or whether participants typically studied in the presence of music. The findings challenge the view that background music enhances creativity and are discussed in terms of an auditory distraction account (interference‐by‐process) and the processing disfluency account.