Abstract
Introduction
Music often provides a major portion of environmental stimuli in the workplace [1–4]. Numerous studies have established that human emotions enhance work attention performance, an area of priority concern in human factors engineering and human resource management [2, 3]. Work attention performance refers to both speed and accuracy; work quantity minus the error quantity is work attention performance [1, 5]. Instead of rigid, the relationship between emotion and attention is a flexible one, which depends on several factors [6]. While advocating a mechanism in which adults can compensate for the behavioral manifestation of threat-based attention biases, some studies posit that adults with childhood behavioral inhibitions may engage in compensatory processes to regulate emotion-related attention [3]. Numerous studies have also established that music alters human emotions. [4, 7]. Some studies have posited that joyful music shorter in length than unpleasant music could induce value and arousal [8]. As is widely assumed, sad music causes individuals to experience sadness, which is an unpleasant emotion. However, although perceived as sad, listening to such music can evoke positive emotions [7]. A related study suggested that participants rated their moods as more positive and arousal as higher with pleasant music than unpleasant music and white noise. Although additional research using randomized controlled trials is necessary to validate these findings [9], personal preferences influence how music affects emotions [4, 9]. Using a frame of reference related to “occupational form and occupational performance”, sounds, colors and decoration in the work environment are attributable to certain occupational forms [2, 5]. This model maintains that occupational performance changes with occupational form [2, 5]. In general, music would be categorized as part of occupational form. Thus, the music category can change the occupational performance. In other words, some studies have shown that environmental sound and background music brings about changes in human behavior [5, 10]. To the extent to which tempo in music induces a subjective arousal effect largely accounts for time distortions with time being judged longer for fast than for slow tempo [8]. Meanwhile, it has been suggested that, in terms of selecting music, workers strongly like or dislike selecting background music to avoid a situation in which worker attention is negatively affected [2]. Above studies suggest that music and emotions are related. Background music without lyrics alleviates restlessness and distraction in psychiatric patients and enables their activities to proceed more smoothly [10], and it has also been suggested that if background music is played in the work environment, music without lyrics is preferable because songs with lyrics are likely to reduce worker attention and performance [5]. However, a study indicated that background music tended to increase attention test scores of persons with schizophrenia, and suggested that when popular music was played in the background may improve attention performance of persons with chronic schizophrenia [11].
It has been hypothesized that the interaction between emotion and cognition is modulated partially by a genetic polymorphism that influences serotonin neurotransmission [12]. Background music may either increase work attention immediately or affect work attention by inducing emotions/feelings. Figure 1 displays how music, emotions and work attention performance are related. Previous studies on whether background music affects behavior and attention level tend to focus on factors such as music genre, volume, and tempo [13–15].
This preliminary study on the relationship between music, emotions and work attention performance investigates how emotions arising from background music influence work attention performance. exactly how music with and without lyrics affects worker attention is compared.
Methods
This study used a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) design. There are six steps in this study, and two group (n = 32, 33), to explore the relationship between music, emotion and work attention performance; and to compare how music with, and without, lyrics affects worker attention.
Participants
The 65 voluntary participants providing informed consent were on-job students enrolled in a New Taipei City university. They were randomly assigned to two groups that received one of two different stimuli: music with lyrics, and music without lyrics. The participants were 20–24 years old. 31 males and 34 females participated in this study.
Research equipment
Chu’s attention test
Chu’s Attention Test is a standard evaluation tool frequently used in occupational therapy in Chinese societies, is high degree of test-retest reliability (γ= 0.837 p < 0.001) and validity (γ= 0.44, p < 0.01) for attention performance [1, 2]. This is a writing test, including more than 100 questions, each of which requires the participants to view a series of scrambled codes, search for the “∗” sign among the these codes, count the occurrence of “∗” and record it as the answer. The testing time is 10 minutes, and the final score is the “Total number of answers” minus the “Number of wrong answers.” This tool has been used to measure the correlation between work attention level and background music [1, 5].
Background music
Four pairs of music samples were selected. Each pair had the same title, tune and volume; the only difference was the presence or absence of lyrics.
Emotion questionnaire
To measure customers’ feeling (Loved, Joy, Surprise, Anger, Sadness, Fear) by the categorization of social psychology [16]. we used the Likert 5-point scale for them to score on a scale of 1 to 5 – from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Higher score means more strong emotional reaction.
Tool for statistical analysis
All statistics were performed using SPSS15.0 (SPSS Japan, Tokyo, Japan) and p-values less than 0.05 were considered to be statistically significant.
Research procedure
Figure 2 shows our research procedure.
Analysis
Results
The association between the emotion arise from background music on work attention performance
Table 1 shows that the correlation between work attention performance and the emotion while listening music, we found that listeners self-reported feeling “loved” while music played would implies a higher score on their attention test, with a statistical significance value of 0.025. Whereas, the more music makes a listener feel Sadness, then his/her work-attention performance score will go down; with the statistical significance value at 0.006. Further, if the listener feels really sad from listening to the music, then his/her attention performance test will see more errors (0.000). And the correlation between other moods and work-attention performance were not statistically significant.
The relationship between background music with/without lyrics and attention level
Attention performance scores among all participants were affected by background music with lyrics. Table 2 shows that There are no difference in baseline attention performance between groups 1 & 2 (p = 0.0819), and the average score in Group 1 had a significant decrease between baseline without music (117.15) and when listening to music with lyrics (109.12, p = 0.006). The average attention performance score in Group 2 was higher when listening to music without lyrics (118.03) compared to baseline where there was no music played (116.34), however, the difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.095). Attention performance was also lower when the background music had lyrics compared to when the music did not have lyrics, and the difference was statistically significant (P = 0.049).
Discussion
This study demonstrates that background music may affect worker attention, this study showed that background music without lyrics has a lesser effect on attention performance. And the degree of listeners self-reported feeling “loved” while music played, is positively correlated with their attention-test score, which has statistically significant values. Additionally, the degree of listeners self-reported feeling “sadness” while music played, is negatively correlated with their attention-test score, which has statistically significant values.
Therefore, why should such fondness for a certain music style improve listener’s attention performance in the workplace? Although some studies have demonstrated that work self-efficacy is positively correlated with emotional energy [17], the relationship between emotion and work attention varies according to the individual and case [18]. Thus, exactly what the relationship between emotion and work attention is a contentious issue [9, 18]. Furthermore, this study is limited in that a few participants were involved, subsequent studies of the influence of background music in work environments should utilize more attention test tools and a larger number of test samples.
This study also found that background music with lyrics more significantly affects attention performance than that without lyrics, A previous study also found that background music with lyrics has a greater effect on attention performance compared to that without lyrics [5]. A Taiwanese study also tested the effects of songs with lyrics as background music during group therapy. They found that, in comparison with classical music and traditional Chinese music, songs with lyrics tended to increase the frequency of inappropriate behavior and attention in the group therapy process [10]. The finding of this research is consistent with the current study. Furthermore, because the temporal lobe is extensively connected with the limbic system, and the temporal lobe also determines the human ability for “selective attention”, which is the ability to screen out complex and multiple musical sensory stimuli and focus on one or two things that require special attention [11], therefore, the musical sensory stimuli may change the work attention performance. Russell and Snodgrass (1991) suggested that the complexity of environment stimuli determines the extent of human arousal, possibly moderating approach-avoidance behavior. This theory asserts that a higher complexity of the environmental stimuli (music included) implies a larger effect on humans. Additionally, music with lyrics is a more complex stimulus than instrumental music alone, eventually explaining our finding that background music with lyrics has a more significant effect on attention performance than that without lyrics [15]. However, this research study only employed 65 participants, and all 65 participants in this study were in their early 20 s, future research projects may using a larger sample will make it possible to arrive at a stronger conclusion, and compare the effects of music among different age groups. A laboratory experiment was used in this pilot study; however, future studies can be done in actual workplaces, and the quality and quantity of employees’ task performance can be evaluated to explore the effects of background music on the task attention of employees. Future studies are required in order to generalize findings beyond this pilot study.
Conclusions and suggestions
Understanding how music listening, and work attention are related is of priority concern in human factors engineering and human resource management. Based on the results of this study, we conclude the following: Background music in the workplace should make listeners feel loved or taken care of; music which causes individuals to feel uncomfortable or sad should not be played. Because lovely/pleasant music may increase workers’ efficiency, and sad music tends to decrease workers’ attention performance and even increase their frequency of errors according to the findings of this study; We recommend not using music with lyrics in the workplace, owing to that it tends to more negatively influence workers’ attention levels than instrumental music does; Owing to that only 65 participants were involved in this study, we recommend expanding the number of study participants to ensure the applicability and replicability of our results. This study was performed in lab conditions. In the future, we recommend exploring the relationship between work attention and other aural confounders from the points of occupational form, such as white noise, musical tempo, and sound volume. And demonstrate that in actual working condition.
Conflict of interest
The authors have no conflict of interest to report.