From Mozart to Metallica, tons of people enjoy listening to various types of music while they paint, write, or draw. Many believe that music helps boost creativity, but an international study conducted by English and Swedish researchers is challenging that notion.

从莫扎特到金属乐队，无数人在写作或绘画时喜欢听各种音乐。许多人认为音乐有助于激发创造力，但一项由英国和瑞典研究人员进行的国际研究正在否定这一观点。

Psychologists from Lancaster University, The University of G?vle, and The University of Central Lancashire say that their findings indicate music actually stymies¹ creativity.

兰卡斯特大学、耶夫勒大学和中央兰开夏大学的心理学家表示，他们的发现表明音乐实际上阻碍了创造力。

To come to their conclusions, researchers had participants complete verbal insight problems designed to inspire creativity while sitting in a quiet room, and then again while music played in the background. They found that background music "significantly impaired²" the participants' ability to complete tasks associated with verbal creativity.

研究人员让参与者在安静的房间里完成了一些旨在激发创造力的语言洞察问题，然后让他们在播放背景音乐时再做一次，从而得出了这一结论。研究人员发现，背景音乐“显著地削弱”了参与者完成与语言创造力有关的任务的能力。

The research team also tested background noises such as those commonly heard in a library, but found that such noises had no impact on subjects' creativity.

研究小组还测试了背景噪音，比如图书馆里经常听到的噪音，但发现这些噪音对受试者的创造力没有影响。

The tasks were simple word games. For example, participants were given three words, such as dress, dial, and flower. Then, they were asked to find a single word associated with all three that could be combined to form a common phrase or word. The single word, in this case, would be "sun" (sundress, sunflower, etc).

参与者需要完成的任务是一些简单的文字游戏。例如，给参与者三个单词，如dress（裙子）、dial（表盘）和flower（花）。然后，他们被要求找到一个与所有三个词相关的单词，这三个词都可以与其组合成一个常见短语或单词。而在这个例题里，这个单词应该是sun（太阳），可以组成sundress（太阳裙）、sunflower（向日葵）等词。

Participants completed the tasks in either a quiet room, or while exposed to three different types of music; music with unfamiliar³ lyrics⁴, instrumental music, or music with familiar lyrics.

参与者要么在一个安静的房间里完成任务，要么一边做题一边听三种不同类型的音乐：歌词不熟悉的音乐、器乐演奏或歌词熟悉的音乐。

"We found strong evidence of impaired performance when playing background music in comparison to quiet background conditions," says co-author Dr. Neil McLatchie of Lancaster University.

这项研究的合著者、兰卡斯特大学的尼尔·麦克拉奇博士表示：“我们发现了强有力的证据来证明这一事实：与安静的背景条件相比，播放背景音乐会使人们的表现受到不利的影响。”

Dr. McLatchie and his colleagues theorize that music interferes⁵ with the verbal working memory processes of the brain, hindering creativity. Also, as far as the library background noises having seemingly no effect, the study's authors believe that was the case because library noises create a "steady state" environment that doesn't disrupt concentration.

麦克拉奇博士和他的同事认为，音乐干扰了大脑的语言工作记忆过程，阻碍了创造力。至于为什么图书馆的背景噪音似乎没有影响，该研究的作者认为，这是因为图书馆噪音创造了一个“稳定状态”的环境，不会干扰注意力。

It's worth mentioning that even familiar music with well known lyrics impaired participants' creativity, regardless of whether or not it elicited⁶ a positive reaction, or whether participants typically studied or created while listening to music.

值得一提的是，即使是参与者熟知歌词的音乐也会削弱其创造力，不管它是否引起了积极的反应，也不管参与者是否在听音乐时学习或创作。

"To conclude, the findings here challenge the popular view that music enhances creativity, and instead demonstrate that music, regardless of the presence of semantic content (no lyrics, familiar lyrics or unfamiliar lyrics), consistently disrupts creative performance in insight problem solving," the study reads.

研究报告写道：“总而言之，这些研究结果挑战了人们普遍认为音乐能够增强创造力的观点，反而证明了无论音乐的内容是什么（有没有歌词、歌词熟不熟悉），音乐总是会干扰人们解决洞察力问题的创造性表现。”

The study is published in the journal Applied⁷ Cognitive⁸ Psychology⁹.

该研究发表在《应用认知心理学》期刊上。