Read Online You Are the Music: How Music Reveals What it Means to be Human by Victoria Williamson - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Victoria Williamson
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term from now on. Let’s blow a few false assumptions out of the water first.
Fact 1: Earworms are not always annoying. When you first ask people about their earworms they will often tell you aboutthe experiences or episodes that get on their nerves. However, if you look at large population surveys or take diary studies of people’s reactions at the time of each episode, you find that the majority of earworms are actually not bothersome (rated as ‘neutral’) or are even enjoyable. 34
In my own research I ask people how they control or try to cure their earworms. I have a sizeable number of responses that say something akin to ‘Why would I want to control my earworms? They don’t bother me and sometimes they keep me company.’
Fact 2: Earworms are not always pop songs or jingles. As much as the advertising industry would like to believe that we only get short, catchy tunes stuck in our heads, I can give you hundreds of examples of people who get complex music stuck in their heads, including classical works, modern jazz and new age music. It is true to say that the majority of earworms that I have been told about to date are melodic, vocal and simple, but to deny the existence of other kinds of earworms would be to ignore important information about the possible causes of the experience.
Fact 3: Musicians do not get them more often. This is not a closed issue but present research suggests that it is not those with the most musical training who experience the most frequent and/or longest episodes of earworms. In fact musicians with the highest levels of training (more than fifteen years) often report fewer earworms than people with less training. 35
Our research has found that people who enjoy music every day, in particular those who like to sing along, report the most habitual and recurring earworms. 36 A nice side effect of this pattern in the data is that those people who like a good singsong are also more likely to enjoy their earworms.
A number of studies have tried to identify traits that predict higher risk of frequent or more disturbing earworm experiences. An interesting concept in this area is ‘transliminality’. Ifyou are the kind of person who measures high on transliminality then you are more sensitive to recognising thoughts and feelings that originate in the non-conscious mind. Another way to put it is to imagine that a layer or barrier exists between our conscious and non-conscious mental life. This barrier is more permeable in people who have high transliminality.
Mike Wammes and Imants Barušs reported that individuals who were high in transliminality were more likely to report persistent and distracting earworms compared to those who scored low on the same dimension. 37
Other studies have reported a link between earworms and neuroticism, 38 and between earworms and nonclinical obsessive-compulsive traits. 39 No doubt other individual factors will emerge over time but it is interesting that at present most of the traits identified are marked by a tendency towards rumination, being more likely to focus on and worry about past or present events.
Studying the type of people who get earworms is one way of trying to get at the question of why they happen. Another way is to explore the circumstances under which they appear in daily life. That was the aim of a study of mine in which I analysed hundreds of earworm stories about why tunes got stuck in people’s heads. 40 To be clear, only about a quarter of people in the study claimed to have any idea why a tune was stuck in their head, which leaves us a lot of unaccounted for earworm episodes.
What triggers earworms?
When people were able to describe the circumstances of their earworm they most often described recent and repeated exposure to the tune that was stuck in their head. This finding aligns with Oliver Sacks’ idea that the preponderance of easily accessible music in the modern world is at least partly to blame for the frequency of
Fact 1: Earworms are not always annoying. When you first ask people about their earworms they will often tell you aboutthe experiences or episodes that get on their nerves. However, if you look at large population surveys or take diary studies of people’s reactions at the time of each episode, you find that the majority of earworms are actually not bothersome (rated as ‘neutral’) or are even enjoyable. 34
In my own research I ask people how they control or try to cure their earworms. I have a sizeable number of responses that say something akin to ‘Why would I want to control my earworms? They don’t bother me and sometimes they keep me company.’
Fact 2: Earworms are not always pop songs or jingles. As much as the advertising industry would like to believe that we only get short, catchy tunes stuck in our heads, I can give you hundreds of examples of people who get complex music stuck in their heads, including classical works, modern jazz and new age music. It is true to say that the majority of earworms that I have been told about to date are melodic, vocal and simple, but to deny the existence of other kinds of earworms would be to ignore important information about the possible causes of the experience.
Fact 3: Musicians do not get them more often. This is not a closed issue but present research suggests that it is not those with the most musical training who experience the most frequent and/or longest episodes of earworms. In fact musicians with the highest levels of training (more than fifteen years) often report fewer earworms than people with less training. 35
Our research has found that people who enjoy music every day, in particular those who like to sing along, report the most habitual and recurring earworms. 36 A nice side effect of this pattern in the data is that those people who like a good singsong are also more likely to enjoy their earworms.
A number of studies have tried to identify traits that predict higher risk of frequent or more disturbing earworm experiences. An interesting concept in this area is ‘transliminality’. Ifyou are the kind of person who measures high on transliminality then you are more sensitive to recognising thoughts and feelings that originate in the non-conscious mind. Another way to put it is to imagine that a layer or barrier exists between our conscious and non-conscious mental life. This barrier is more permeable in people who have high transliminality.
Mike Wammes and Imants Barušs reported that individuals who were high in transliminality were more likely to report persistent and distracting earworms compared to those who scored low on the same dimension. 37
Other studies have reported a link between earworms and neuroticism, 38 and between earworms and nonclinical obsessive-compulsive traits. 39 No doubt other individual factors will emerge over time but it is interesting that at present most of the traits identified are marked by a tendency towards rumination, being more likely to focus on and worry about past or present events.
Studying the type of people who get earworms is one way of trying to get at the question of why they happen. Another way is to explore the circumstances under which they appear in daily life. That was the aim of a study of mine in which I analysed hundreds of earworm stories about why tunes got stuck in people’s heads. 40 To be clear, only about a quarter of people in the study claimed to have any idea why a tune was stuck in their head, which leaves us a lot of unaccounted for earworm episodes.
What triggers earworms?
When people were able to describe the circumstances of their earworm they most often described recent and repeated exposure to the tune that was stuck in their head. This finding aligns with Oliver Sacks’ idea that the preponderance of easily accessible music in the modern world is at least partly to blame for the frequency of
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