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Does Listening to Music Stimulate Creative Thinking, or Stifle It?
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Listening To Music While Working
While monotonous work like making a report is tolerable with your favorite music playing in the background, any kind of creative work can be significantly impaired if it is accompanied by music.
Studies show that certain kinds of music may be ‘paired’ with your kind of work, like classical music which are stimulating and ‘positive’ or ‘happy’ can help us perform certain tasks which require ‘divergent’ or out-of-the-box thinking.
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Creativity: The Incubation Period
After a problem has been examined and analysed, creative thinkers often hit a roadblock, which is actually an ‘incubation period’ where the brain works in the background to process information at an unconscious level.
This results in an ‘aha’ or a ‘Eureka!’ moment when the solution or idea pops inside the head later when we are not consciously thinking about it.
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Unexpected Connections
Certain unthought of combinations, associations, innovations and links between remote objects or ideas can be stimulated by specific kinds of music, provided it helps us focus ‘away’ from the problem rather than focussing more on it.
Most music that one listens to while doing creative work is just a distraction, and rather than helping us, it creates more cognitive load on our brain, which has to block out the sound.
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SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
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Restrict yourself
Research suggests placing self-imposed limitations can boost creativity.
It forces your brain to come up with creative solutions to finish a project around the parameters you’ve ...
Re-conceptualize the problem
Instead of thinking of a cut-and-dry end goal to certain situations, creative people sit back and examine the problem in different ways before beginning to work.
If you find yourself stagnating by focusing on generic problems, try to re-conceptualize the problem by focusing on a more meaningful angle.
For example: Instead of thinking “What would be something cool to paint?” rather ask, “What sort of painting evokes the feeling of loneliness that we all encounter after a break-up?”
Create psychological distance
Creating “psychological” distance may be useful for breaking through a creative block.
Try to imagine your creative task as being disconnected and distant from your current position/location - this may make the problem more accessible and can encourage higher level thinking.
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Creativity
While some people are born creative, it is possible to acquire this skill. The right conditions and the right training can make everyone creative, in their own unique way.
As we move from t...
Traits Of Creative People
In various studies, it is found that creative people tend to be more driven, impulsive, and self-confident.
They are less conventional and unorthodox in many aspects of life.
Openness to new ideas, curiosity and disagreeableness comes as common traits of creative individuals, as they are opposite of normal or popular, and like Steve Jobs, are a prickly personality.
Steps Of The Cognitive Process
Creativity can be learned as a cognitive skill using the following steps:
- Preparation: The basic rules, languages, and instructions in any skill.
- Incubation: When ideas wander in your brain's neural network, lost in the wild.
- Illumination: This is the Aha! Moment, the light bulb coming on.
- Verification: Where it is verified that the idea is real or just a random dream without legs.
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Early History
The connection between genius and possible insanity was first documented in 1891 in the Italian physicians’ book The Man Of Genius.
In 1869, this was taken up by the cousin of Charles Darwi...
Genius and Heredity
In a 1904 study by English physician Havelock Ellis, a list was made of 1030 individuals through extensive research, examining thoroughly the intellectual distinction people had by the various factors like heredity, general health, and social class.
These works established that genius minds are often hereditary.
Genetic Studies Of Genius
A body of work of Stanford psychologist Lewis M. Terman, was an in-depth multi-decade study of gifted individuals, and an attempt to improve the measurement of genius and its association with the degradation of mental stability. This also included an enhanced version of the French IQ (Intelligence Quotient) test.