Effects of favorite music on task performance in offices

Nhung Vuong Thi Information System Design Department University of Central Lancashire Hanoi Campus, Vietnam +84904838712 vt_nhung@mic.gov.vn

ABSTRACT

This paper describes a pair of experiments that was used to investigate the effect of music listening on task performance in an ICT office. The result of this study intends to serve as a reference for the Executive Board of National Center of Digital Signature to make final decision whether music should be banned during office hours. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods was used to discuss findings. In the experiment, fifteen participants took part in and had to get through two tasks (one is monotonous and the other is problem-solving) in music and non-music condition. The study found that music significantly distracted participants from their task. In non-music condition, most of participants performed better than in music background.
Keywords

Effect of music, task performance, music psychology, music listening in office settings.
INTRODUCTION

In the 1970s and 80s researchers began to concern effect of music on not only productivity, but also mood of workers. During this period, music for workers defined as the functional music was heavily criticized especially by German and Danish musicologists [13].The musicologists critiqued functional (popular) music created for workers as its aesthetics was seen as inferior to real music- classical music. Adorno [1] also considered popular music as a source of negative distraction and it was merely viewed as wallpaper for entertainment in factories as he argued that it did not have enough potential to leverage workers consciousness. This controversial topic also became an interest for a larger research project Background Music at Work and at Leisure carried out in the late 1980s. Huge data were collected from Volvo factory and found that music provided stimulation from tiresome tasks, bred a creative atmosphere, provided happy memories of leisure time, formed a topic of conversation and triggered nostalgia [7]. Later researches looked at differences in music effects on various types of work and different genres of music. Darrow and his colleagues [3], examined music majors and non-music majors and found that higher scores were achieved under the music condition than the no music condition and results were significantly higher for music majors. In an interesting experimental study by Christine Phillips [11], where seventy-two students completed the moon task in pairs while listening to either classical music, punk music, or no music, results indicate that classical music condition helped students perform better on the problem solving tasks than other conditions. However, another study [9] showed a opposite result. The research tested 56 employees doing software tasks in music condition and no music condition and found that productivity improved without music. Other researchers [4], [5] shared the same results that music listening had a negative impact on (complex) task performance and was perceived as unprofessional looking. A sample of U.S. 1,613 employees interviewed by Spherion Corporation [12] showed that 82 percent of male adults who listen to a personal music device while working report that it improves their job satisfaction and/or productivity, compared to 76 percent of female adults.

National Center of Digitial Signature Authentication (NCDSA) is going to ban playing music during working hours because of recent distraction from work and low job performance. However, Google and Facebook, the two Internet giants of the world, have aimed at boosting officers work performance by setting up a friendly environment with much entertainment available for officers, and it is guessed that they have reached an ever increasing proportion of their Internet user community with a hand of entertaining environment, where music is a part. Therefore, a second thought is that music may be wrongly to be blame; it may improve work performance other than distracting attention in office environments as thought. This research study is conducted to test this hypothesis, the result will be sent to the Executive Board as a reference to make final decision. For long, a large number of researches on various effects of music on humans, and whether there is a positive or negative effect of music on a persons performance of a task has been conducted. Traced back to the 1940s, relation of music and labor work has drawn attention of many researchers. Music was found to increase productivity for monotonous work ([17],[2],[8], [14], [16] ). These studies often analyzed data collected from researchers or managers, rather than employees.

Similarly, 24 percent of female workers who listen to a personal music device while working indicate that it improves neither job satisfaction nor productivity, compared to 18 percent of adult males. This vast investigation has collected employees opinions rather than experiment findings. During 2004-2010, Dr Haake, who was attracted by this debate, spent her PhD carrying out extensive research into the effect of music in office environments and has collected a wealth of data on the subject. The research involves 295 participants in computer-based office environments listening to a wide variety of music styles and artists for a third of their working week reported that music helped them to both engage in and escape from work. If employees are allowed to select favorite music in office settings, they can benefit from the use of their preferred music. In this study, it was noted that music listening in shared office was not always viewed as appropriate, but that rules on appropriateness appeared fluid and subjective [7]. In general, effect of music on work has been an interest for researchers and music psychologists for a long time. The role of music has been examined in many aspects such as: types of work (in monotonous work, in problem-solving task), genre of music (classical, punk, rock), or devices used (MP3, headphones, or radios,...). However, until now, the debate on whether music affects positively or negatively in working environment has not seen an end with several defenders standing on both sides. This paper aims at testing the influence of music listening in the NCDSA office where both (easy) monotonous and (difficult and attentive) problem solving tasks coexist in a shared environment for all employees. Music radio played for the whole center in this case is not appropriate according to Haake [7]. In addition, each person has their own style of music and tends to listen to their favorite rhythms. Therefore, it makes more sense if officers use headphones for their entertainment, which can avoid bothering others and may help them proactively choose what songs to play, when to play and whether escape from or engage in work. Therefore, this study aims at investigating effects of playing preferred music when solving tasks in an ICT office. METHOD 15 officers of National Center of e-Government, an government IT agency, which are located in the same building, sharing the same environment and functionality, were randomly invited to NCDSA to take part in this experiment to ensure veracity and exactness of sample, including 7 males and 8 females aged from 25 to 55 (2 administration officer, 1 accountant, 2 coordinators and 10 IT officers) (mean =32, variance=52). This sample is quite similar to the real population of National Center of Digital Signature (mean = 33, variance =54).The study lasted for 5 week days with 3 persons tested per day. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected to have better understanding of phenomenon.

An x201i laptop, a Logitech headphone and a projector were used for all testers to ensure the same condition, which helped avoid bias in performance. Participants were asked to prepare their favorite piece of music copied to the laptop and set as repeated playing so that music can be played without end in the music condition. To mimic monotonous work, two different paragraphs with exact 354 words in English displayed in a projector for participants to type until they finished. Paragraphs in Vietnamese are easier for participants, however, Vietnamese characters cannot be exactly counted because of encoding, for example, an in Vietnamese, when typing it is combined of U and W to constitute . Some participants might have difficulty in typing English, but the results aims at comparing performance of each person in different states, not comparing results among participants. Therefore, paragraphs in English will not an influential condition. Different contents in easy tasks might help avoid the familiarity that affects the result. Results were based on time to complete tasks and the accuracy of typed paragraphs. This typing task requires each participant to exchange paragraphs in each condition. It means that each participant has to type paragraph 1 (Pa1) two times, and paragraph 2 (Pa2) two times in two conditions (With music WM and Without music- WoM) to ensure fairness because each paragraph may get different difficulty levels.
Turn Turn 1 Turn 2 Turn 3 Turn 4 x x X WoM x x WM Pa1 X X X Pa2

Table 1: Turn order that participants followed in task 1 Time (t1- t4) to finish typing in four turns is recorded by the examiner. Correct words (CW) are also counted (CW1, CW2, CW3, CW4 respectively) regardless of auto checking spelling and grammars enabled by Word Processor 2003. The average values (time t and corrected words- CW) of
Participan t Time Dung (i.e)

WoM CW (CW1 +CW3)/2

WM Time (t2 +t4)/2 CW (CW2 +CW4)/ 2

(t1+t3)/2

each condition will be recorded as in the data table: Table 2: Formula to produce data table in task 1 Finally, the efficiency of participants (e) in this task is calculated: e(i) = CW[i]/t[i] (words/minute). The problem-solving task requires participants to concentrate on what items are appearing to them on the computer screen for some seconds and then pick them up in the picture with a bundle of items via the URL http://neutralx0.net/home/mini04.html. This experiment challenges level 1- 5 for participants to get through. Each level allows 2 turns at most, and 1 minute per each turn.

The examiner used stopwatch to record the complete time of participants in each level and in each condition. Each person is measured performance (P) after finishing the task: P = Sum(S[i]) /Sum(F[i]) S[i]: Score of each level (i: level 1->5) F[i]: Finish Time of each level (minute, F[i] <=1 minute)

If participants finish stage at the first time, a score for each level is:
Level Score Level 1 1 Level 2 2 Level 3 3 Level 4 4 Level 5 5

Table 3: Score table for each level If a participant fails at the first time and succeeds at the second time of a level: Si = Si-1; If a participant fails two times per level i, task is over, then S[i]= (Completed Items/ Total Items) and F[i]=1 minute. For levels that participants cannot reach because they finish game at a lower level, all values are set to default 0. Overall, there are 4 scenarios that participants have to experience: monotonous work with preferred music, monotonous work without music, complicated task with preferred music, and complicated task without music. There are 5 minute break between each session. All participants will use the same computer and the same headphones to ensure fairness. Before solving tasks, each participant was instructed for a couple of minutes, and even demonstrated for some participants. After the test, each participant was asked about the selection of genres of music, volume and feelings when working with background music compared to non-music environment.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Table 5: Performance calculated from task 2 The table 5 showed the difference in participants performance calculated from sum of scores and completion time in task 2 in different conditions. It can be seen clearly from the graph 1, to monotonous work, there is a trivial difference in music and non-music environment.

Figure 1: Graph of participants typing efficiency in 2 conditions However, in the problem-solving task, the gasp is wider between performance in music condition and non-music condition.

Table 4: Data collected from task 1 The table 4 summarized key findings after analyzing results collected when participants finished typing task in music condition and non-music condition

Figure 2: Graph of participants performance of task 2 in two-states Using paired two sample test, below is the statistical result of two tasks:
Without Music With Music

Mean Variance Observations Pearson Correlation Hypothesized Mean Difference df t Stat P(T<=t) one-tail t Critical one-tail P(T<=t) two-tail t Critical two-tail

31.462 31.32427 15 0.939319 0 14 1.478059 0.080767 1.76131 0.161535 2.144787

30.722 30.56516 15

Otherwise, two respondents argued that they did not performed well in no-music condition than in music condition, because this condition came first and it was the first time they solved this task, and they underestimated the difficult of task 2:
Mai: A little subjective, actually. I did not think it that hard to recall items I had seen some seconds before. At first time, I think it was very easy. But its not

Table 6: Statistics for Task 1

Without Music Mean Variance Observations Pearson Correlation Hypothesized Mean Difference df t Stat P(T<=t) one-tail t Critical one-tail P(T<=t) two-tail t Critical two-tail 15.0635 8.23608 15 0.452685 0 14 2.443142 0.014208 1.76131 0.028416 2.144787 With Music 12.65309 17.11326 15

The most popular music genre participants selected as background music was classical music, other genre of music seemed to be inferior to classical, some preferred rock, a few chose jazz There is a little difference in music choice between males and females, result was similar as findings by Gregory Young [6]. However, all older people (>35 year olds) selected classical music, while choices of younger ones were more varied (classical, rock, jazz, pop). Participants were also asked about their listening frequency, some of them (20%) always played music during office hours to engage in work, escape from work or stimulate work mood, which shares same findings with Haake[7]), some (33%) sometimes listened to music and the other (47%) did not listened to music during office hours because of several reasons: no headphones, noisiness of music, unprofessional image in office,. Yet all of them agreed that music listening in break time was appropriate and should be encouraged.
CONCLUSION

Table 7: Statistic Table for Task 2 It can be concluded that music has distracted participants from job attention, depending on type of work, the impact of music varies. While doing easy tasks, music listening cannot see much impact on performance reduction. Yet, to headache tasks, music listening distracts people from work attention. Compared to other research, this study showed the similar findings with [4], [5], [9], but opposite to [7], [11]. To examine reasons of phenomenon, participants answered questions given by the investigator. Based on the statistics and participants feedback, some further findings are discussed. Overall, most participants expressed that music is so noisy and makes them not able to concentrate on work, especially difficult task, for example:
Dung: music is so noisy, I cannot help falling into music rhythms rather than doing task.

The study examined whether music has positive or negative effect on a persons performance of a task. The experiment found out that music significantly badly impact on officers task attention and performance and distracts them from concentrate on work. However, findings from the study also showed that to those who frequently listen to music during office hours, task performance increases while who sometimes or seldom listen to music, generally has worse result in music condition. Therefore, it is likely that high frequency of music listening in office can result in positive outcome, which will be examined in further study.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Two other participants, although feeling that music is so pleasant, the result still showed that they performed worse in music condition than normal condition. They explained that they wanted to sleep at once when listening to their favorite rhythm; the only feeling at that time was to be free from work and just forgot the task. The minority of participants shows positive effect of music in task performance, to those participants, music was considered as a part of their office life, and without music, they did not have any mood for work.

I would like to express my gratitude to all those who gave me the possibility to complete this paper. I am grateful to 15 participants who enthusiastically helped in the study. I am deeply indebted to my lecturer from the University of Lancashire whose help, knowledge and encouragement helped me in writing of this paper. Especially, I would like to give special thanks to my honey whose patient love enabled me to complete this work.
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