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As mid-year exams commence, many university and high school students will be studying and revising. Some will play music as they do so, to motivate them or block out other distractions. While some students swear listening to music helps them focus, others insist it is distracting and prefer to study in silence.
Our new study set out to understand whether listening to background music while reading for study is helpful or not.
Our research
We surveyed 226 university students about whether they listen to music when performing different types of tasks. This included reading for study, reading for work, reading for leisure and during tasks such as, driving cleaning, cooking. Then we asked their opinion on its helpfulness or their reasons for avoiding it.
We also asked about the types of music they listened to and measured: students' level of engagement with music in daily life via a self-report scale, their working memory capacity (the ability to temporarily hold and manipulate information in your head) via an online task, and their tendency to mind-wander, measured via a five-item scale.
We wanted to work out if certain people were more likely to experience music listening as helpful or distracting while reading. The students in our study were undergraduate psychology students, who participated as part of the requirements of their course.
What we found
About half (54 per cent) of the student sample often listened to music while reading for study, the remaining 46 per cent said they avoided it.
Avoiders overwhelmingly reported music was too distracting, with 86 per cent of avoiders saying music interferes with their concentration.
But for the listener, the story was very different.
They reported music helps them focus, boosts motivation, masks environmental noise, and improves their mood. Many described using music as a tool for emotional regulation and stress management. For example, “to calm my nervous system when I’m stressed or anxious".
Interestingly, only 22 per cent of students preferred music with lyrics while they read, indicating the presence of lyrics may be particularly distracting for some. Slow instrumental styles were preferred, and classical was the most used genre.
However, the second most used genre while reading was Rock. Given this is a musical style that contains lyrics, it suggests lyrics may not be distracting for everyone.
Students said they preferred slower music for reading for study. This was opposed to other types of tasks. Students said they preferred faster music for easier, monotonous tasks, like cleaning or driving.
In our study, we found students' working memory capacity and tendency for mind wandering were not related to the choice to listen to or avoid music.
There was no universal approach about whether listening to music will help or hinder studying. It seemed to depend on the individual students' preferences. But students who were more engaged with music in general and tended to use it more often in their broader lives were more likely to listen to music while they read.
This makes sense – if you love music, you may want to play it as much as you can or see it as useful in many aspects of life.
What this means for students
Despite decades of mixed findings about whether background music helps or hinders comprehension, this research suggests a more nuanced picture.
For some students, music is a study tool they feel genuinely supports their focus. For others, it competes with their mental processes needed for reading and feels distracting.
Therefore, rather than one-sized fits all guidelines about "effective conditions for study" – our study suggests the most effective approach would be to continue doing what works for you.
What's next?
One limitation of this study was we relied on students' self-reports. These can reflect biased beliefs around music listening. For example, a student may think it is helpful, but they are more distracted than they think. But collecting this data suggests wide individual differences exist when it comes to music and study.
In our future, not yet published research, we test if different kinds of music of help students focus when they are reading for study.
