Listening To 'Happy' Music May Boost Creativity, study Says

灵感枯竭？听会儿音乐吧

Most people know intuitively that music can be a good way to pump yourself up or get the creative juices flowing — and a new study brings some scientific evidence to the connection.

大多数人都直觉性地认为音乐可以使人精神振奋，也能使人文思如泉涌。而最近的一项研究也证明了二者间的联系。

It finds that people asked to listen to positive-sounding music had a measurable boost in creativity compared with people listening to other types of music.

该研究发现，同那些听其它类型歌曲的人相比，听快节奏歌曲的人的创造力有明显的提升。

The phenomenon¹ might be a good one to keep in mind when you’re feeling blocked or in a creative cul-de-sac.

因此，当你灵感枯竭或走入死胡同时，不妨试着听一些欢快的音乐。

To test the role music may play, they had participants come into the lab and listen to one of four types of music.

为了检验音乐在激发创造性中的作用，实验人员让被试者进入实验室听四种不同的音乐。

The music had either a positive or negative valence, and was either high or low in arousal.

这些音乐有积极的有消极的，有令人振奋的也有令人萎靡的。

The participants heard their respective selections and then took tests to gauge² their creativity, or divergent thinking—the ability to generate novel ideas and conjure³ up multiple solutions to a problem.

被试者要求在分别欣赏不同类型的音乐后进行创造力测试或称分化性思维测试，测试他们产生新想法的能力，以及面对问题是否能提出多种解决办法。

People who listened to happy music scored higher on the tests for divergent thinking, but not on convergent⁴ thinking. People listening to other types of music didn’t show the same difference.

那些听欢快歌曲的人在测试分化思想时得分很高，但在聚合思想测试中则无突出表现。听其他音乐的人则没有表现出上述特征。

The results aren’t entirely⁵ surprising, but why would the connection between happy, upbeat music and creativity exist, neurologically? The authors suggest that the music might affect flexibility⁶ of thought: One model of creativity, for instance, suggests that creativity comes from two traits—persistence⁷ and flexibility. And, they write, “situational variables can influence creativity either through their effects on persistence, on flexibility, or on both.”

这个结果并不出乎人们意料，但是快乐，快节奏的音乐以及创造性，这三者在神经学上怎么会产生联系呢？笔者认为音乐可以激发思维的灵活性，而有模型表明，创造力有两个来源：一个是持续性，另一个便是灵活性。