Many employees enjoy listening to music while they work. Still, little research exists on how listening to music affects work performance. New research (Scott et al., 2024) investigates how listening to music could be “too much of a good thing.”
While listening to music may have benefits, the researchers hypothesized that at a certain point, listening to music can detract from a person’s limited cognitive resources and harm job performance. They argue that the relationship may be curvilinear – meaning that listening to a normal amount of music may not hinder performance and could actually be good, but beyond a certain point, attention and performance may suffer.
IMPACT OF MUSIC ON FOCUS AND PERFORMANCE
In their first study, undergraduates created a personal Spotify playlist and then completed several proofreading tasks, while a control group listened to no music.
The researchers found support for the curvilinear effect – over time, listening to increasingly high amounts of music resulted in worse performance. Participants who believed that cognitive resources are limited showed an especially strong drop-off in performance. Conversely, those who believed more strongly in the power of willpower were able to maintain attention and performance.
In a second study of online participants, employees completed daily surveys for three weeks about their music listening and attention, and a coworker rated their weekly performance. The authors found that for employees with lower belief in willpower, there was a steady drop-off in performance and attention as music listening increased.
PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS
Employees should be aware that listening to too much music, beyond what they normally do, could take their attention away from their work and harm performance. The researchers recommend sticking to the amount of music listening that a person normally does, and not exceeding it. Organizations could target employees’ willpower beliefs, since participants with lower willpower beliefs in this study had a more pronounced decrease in performance. Implementing training on self-control, emotion regulation, and sleep or recovery could help employees learn to better regulate their energy and attention.
Scott, B. A., Awasty, N., Li, S., Conlon, D. E., Johnson, R. E., Voorhees, C. M., & Passantino, L. G. (2024). Too much of a good thing? A multilevel examination of listening to music at work. Journal of Applied Psychology. Advance online publication.
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