“An Idle Mind Used to Be the Devil’s Workshop”: How Music influences our Mind-Wandering
Getting stuck in traffic, standing in line at H&M, brewing your coffee, or just walking to class, much of our life is consumed by it- Waiting! Which might seem mundane…but think about the amount of time waiting, and more importantly, the time your mind spends unconsciously producing numerous thought trains. And sure, sometimes it is harmless, or fun (Shower thoughts?) But, sometimes we let our mind-wandering marinate our negative feelings or insecurities. I’m sure you have heard the quote, “An idle mind is the Devil’s workshop.” Why do we say that? Is there a way for us to stop this Devil’s workshop?
Going back to the initial examples, being stuck in traffic, standing in line at H&M, brewing your coffee, or just walking to class. What do they all have in common? What’s playing in the background? Yes, it’s music! So…can only by listening to the right kind of music really stop your mind from wandering to the dark hidden forces of your mind? Moreover, can it help to maximize your productivity?
Background
Now to gain a current understanding of this concept in science, we must learn two key-elements defining our thought-process. First, conscious-controlled thought, this is your regular thinking (Smallwood & Schooler, 2015). That is, thoughts we deliberately and consciously interact with. Second, non-intentional thoughts or ‘mind-wandering,’ this thought-system is characterized by a transition in attention from a current task to unrelated thoughts (Smallwood & Schooler, 2015). Simply put, think of the last time you were asked something, and you responded, “Sorry! I zoned out.” That is mind-wandering!
Work studying this unintentional cognition suggests that a large amount of our time is spent mind-wandering (Kilingsworth & Gilbert, 2010). Further, this mind-wandering may have negative or positive valence in the kind of thought production (Fox et al., 2018). So, our unintentional switch between awareness and unawareness can leave us thinking happy and powerful thoughts or sad and frustrating thoughts. Recent studies exploring how music moderates the relationship between mind-wandering and valence of thoughts have shown that sad music evoked sadder thoughts and more mind-wandering than happy music (Taruffi, Pehrs, Skouras, & Koelsch, 2017). However, until recently, there was limited research that actually explored the type of music that might impact our emotional arousal and our tendency to engage in mind-wandering.
Music Time!
A team of researchers (Koelsch, Bashevkin, Kristensen, Tvedt, & Jentschke, 2019) sampled 62 participants to test the effectivity of how different kinds of music positively or negatively guide our thoughts and influence our global mental processing. To do so, first, each participant was hooked up to an Electrocardiogram (ECG), essentially a tool to measure arousal, heart rate, and heart rate variability. The participants then answered a set of questions to capture their current mood. The use of the ECG and self-reported mood from the participants allowed the researchers to understand each participant’s physiology at baseline, that is without the effects of the experimentation.
Following the baseline stage, the participants proceeded to listen to six 2-minute selections of heroic and sad orchestral music, at three different tempo levels — one pair at 64bpm (Slow), a second pair at 95bpm (Medium), and a third pair at 115bpm (High). Combing the three different tempos with the two genres, resulted in six musical categories: Slow Heroic, Medium Heroic, High Heroic, Slow Sad, Medium Sad, and High Sad. Here is the music used in each category:
Between each music-listening turn, participants were asked to self-report factors concerning the nature of their mind wandering, these included: the last thing they were thinking about before the music stopped, degree of mind wandering, positivity/negativity of thought, arousal, the motivation of thoughts, and how music selection channeled their mind wandering.
What did they find?!
Now, does the type of music actually control where our mind would wander off to? Well, maybe? As they found, the kind of music one listened to didn’t have a high effect on mind-wandering. Results from this specific study suggest that thoughts drifted away from the music about 73.1% of the time. However, this drift from conscious thought-engagement was closely similar in both heroic and sad music. Now, the type of music didn’t really explain the degree of mind-wandering, BUT the music did seem to impact the body’s physical reactions and where thoughts drifted to! Notably, this study reported, listening to the three sad music pieces, was associated with a decreased heart rate, and wandering of thoughts towards sad or demotivating things — like experiencing a breakup or funeral. On the other hand, listening to the three heroic musical pieces was associated with an increase in heart rate, and participants reported feeling more positive, inspired, alert, and less afraid. And what’s even more fascinating is that thoughts guided by heroic music were reportedly more productive, action-oriented, or motivating! For example, participants reported engagement in thoughts like, “how I could help my friend to tidy her home,” “whether I will eat at home or at the student center,” or logical reasoning (either-or). So, one could assume that music does possibly facilitates the nature of our mind wandering! This makes me wonder, how have I let my favorite artists control my thoughts over the years?
Major Takeaways
Despite some of its fascinating implications, like most research, we must account for the limitations of this one. Firstly, the researchers make inferences based on relatively unrepresentative and small sample size, so really, how well do these results apply to such a large music-listening population? Additionally, there are some issues with how the researchers assessed mind-wandering. Although they did use ECG measures to measure participant arousal, it fails to exactly capture mind-wandering. Thus, the researchers primarily rely on self-report measures to assess mind-wandering. Mind-wandering is explained as an unconscious/unaware thought-process, so asking participants to report on such unaware thoughts might add additional challenges to the results. Further, concepts such as mind-wandering are not concretely defined and understood. For instance, how would you define ‘mind-wandering’? How about your best friend? Are your definitions the exact same). Hence, such a design faces issues with clarity and additional participant and research biases. These limitations define ground for future research where one could work on creating a clearer understanding of mind-wandering, replicate this research with larger sample size and assessing results, or even compare heroic music to other upbeat/triumphant genres and assessing differences within these!
All in all, the researchers were not really successful in reflecting the effect type of music has on triggering mind-wandering. Needless to say, sad music should not be your go-to if you want to motivate yourself to finish that paper due tonight at 11:59; however, heroic music might help you meet that deadline! Hopefully, after reading this, you create your “I’m my own Hero” playlist full of heroic music to get through the last month of the year!
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