By Peh Tse Wei Tomi (26S06P)

Music. A medium to express oneself. Travelling? Put on music. Working out? Put on music. What about studying? Do you put on music? Here in Singapore, many students enjoy listening and “vibing” to music when they study. However, studying is an activity that requires lots of focus, and music sometimes retracts our attention from studying.  

Thus, one may wonder: should you listen to music when studying? While some claim that music helps them focus, others believe it serves as more of a distraction when studying. Research suggests that music can do both. But how could that be? It’s paradoxical, and yet, it works. Though, does it all come down to the genre of music one listens to?

General Study: Effects of music on studying

Pop, Classical, Jazz, Hip Hop, Rock and Country are all common genres of music that students listen to while studying. Often, Classical and Jazz prove to be the most relaxing genres of music, attributed to the fact that they contain few or no lyrics at all, allowing students to focus on studying while having ambient background music. Catchier songs with beats such as Pop or Hip-Hop songs are usually more distracting, with students finding themselves jamming to tunes, distracting them from their studies.  

Anecdotally, I’ve found music to be highly distracting when studying, regardless of genre and intensity of the music. It’s part of the reason why I find myself unable to study in cafés. However, my peers beg to differ. Many of them have sparked claims that seem incredulous to me; that they are only able to study with music. But what does the data say?

Using a survey I created, I was able to collect the responses of 30 students in the school, each with varying subject streams and combinations. Altogether, I collated some intriguing statistics.

The response to the first question, “Do you usually listen to music while studying?”, presented an overwhelming majority — 4 in every 5 students preferred to study with music than without. When I asked my friends before this, most of them had actually agreed that they wouldn’t study with music as it distracted them. The survey however, showed otherwise.

The second question was more confusing than anything. Sifting through the survey responses, it stood out that some students thought that music made them study worse, yet still listened to it when studying. Why study with music when it just makes it more difficult?

Expectations vs Reality

Comparing the second question to this last one is where we see the difference between perception and reality. The majority of students (73.3%) thought that music helps students study better, but based on responses in the second question, only half the student population felt that they studied better with music. So next time you put on music when studying, maybe think twice about whether you’re really focusing better, or just about to have another makeshift karaoke session.

Oh, and in case you were wondering what kind of music other students were listening to, here’s a chart showing the most listened-to genres while studying.

A majority of students actually listen to Pop music, followed by Hip-Hop, Rock & Soft Rock, and Instrumentals —- not quite what scientific research has backed.

Based on various sources online, calming music with few or no lyrics such as classical, instrumental, jazz, as well as electronic music often worked best when studying. However, more importantly, the music must regulate one’s mood effectively, and be played at a moderate volume to avoid overpowering one’s train of thought. Music can also play an important role in memorisation of content when studying, as associations can be drawn between study content and music, making it easier to recall information when listening to or remembering specific music.

Experiment

After the survey came the experiments. “Why experiment on top of the survey?”, you may ask? Well, the experiment is simply a means to cross check the survey with some concrete and tested evidence.

To test the different effects of varying genres of music, I decided to use a mathematics tutorial as a gauge. Every two questions, I would listen to a different music genre. Here’s the list of music genres I listened to, and the effects of each genre on my focus levels:

• Classical music- 22 minutes (calming, nice ambience)
• Pop music- 38 minutes (slightly catchy lyrics)
• Rock music- 51 minutes and 29 seconds (overly loud instruments)
• Hip-hop- 77 minutes (significantly distracting, especially since vocals sound like a conversation happening in the background)
• Instrumental music- 52 minutes (no lyrics, comparatively the best for studying (in my opinion) ) 

What did I learn from this experiment? Music sometimes did actually help with my studies, but often only specific genres were actually helpful. But the results of one person are not representative of the student population’s reaction to musical stimulus when studying, hence I decided to carry out yet another experiment.

I enlisted the help of 5 students to carry out the experiment. Firstly, after they familiarised themselves with a selected math topic, they were tasked with completing the tutorial for the topic while listening to a specific genre of music or no music.  

No music

Student A – 3 hours, normally studies with music, normally finds no effect from music when studying

Student B – 2 hours 45 minutes, does not normally study with music, normally studies worse with music

Classical Music

Student C – 2 hours 45 minutes, normally studies with music, found classical music to be helpful when doing the tutorial

Student D – 4 hours, does not normally study with music, found classical music too distracting when doing the tutorial – to the point where the student could not concentrate during the tutorial even slightly

Pop Music

Student E – 4 hours 20 minutes, normally studies with music, found pop music had little to no effect on completion of the tutorial

Analysis

Upon tabulation of the experiment results as well as interviews with the students, I concluded that whether music helped a student study better did not depend on if the music helped calm them or if the music genre was scientifically backed in their effectiveness. Rather, the student’s prior preferences to studying with music, such as genre of music and even the volume they played music at, was the deciding factor in the student’s overall productivity when studying with music. 

In all of the experiments, the number of mistakes each student made was spread pretty evenly, regardless of whether the student listened to a specific genre of music or did not listen to music at all. This could be due to the habituality of using music while studying, where some groups of students have always studied with music, hence they would almost always study better with music.

Some students simply want a means to fill in the empty silence of study sessions, enlivening otherwise dull and mundane assignments. Interestingly, many of those who study with music even though they perceive their performance to be worse when doing so often do so purely to relieve boredom when studying. From personal experience, boredom is often more agonising than a slower pace of studying, which is why I too, sometimes study with music, even though I know that it probably hinders my thinking to some degree. 

To conclude, do music and studying go together? They absolutely could. Come up with your own curated playlists of your favourite tunes, feel free to have a jam while studying. As long as you are able to focus with music when studying, why not?