4 ms·
From Peopleware, which many C-level folks should be beaten over the head with: During the 1960s, researchers at Cornell University conducted a series o
by kps 11y ago
From Peopleware, which many C-level folks should be beaten over the head with:
During the 1960s, researchers at Cornell University conducted a series
of tests on the effects of working with music. They polled a group of
computer science students and divided the students into two groups, those
who liked to have music in the background while they worked (studied) and
those who did not. Then they put half of each group together in a silent
room, and the other half of each group in a different room equipped with
earphones and a musical selection. Participants in both rooms were given
a Fortran programming problem to work out from specification. To no
one's surprise, participants in the two rooms performed about the same
in speed and accuracy of programming. As any kid who does his arithmetic
homework with the music on knows, the part of the brain required for
arithmetic and related logic is unbothered by music—there's another
brain center that listens to the music.
The Cornell experiment, however, contained a hidden wild card. The
specification required that an output data stream be formed through a
series of manipulations on numbers in the input data stream. For example,
participants had to shift each number two digits to the left and then
divide by one hundred and so on, perhaps completing a dozen operations
in total. Although the specification never said it, the net effect of
all the operations was that each output number was necessarily equal to
its input number. Some people realized this and others did not. Of those
who figured it out, the overwhelming majority came from the quiet room.
- tinha 11y agoCan you link to the source?
- robbyking 11y agoThis was the source cited the last time this quote was posted here: http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-Second/dp/0932633439 http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-S...
- eCa 11y ago> half of each group ... in a silent room For many, the alternative to music is not a silent room. Would be interesting to have that study done in an open office situation with the typical background noice and interuptions.
- saulrh 11y agoYep. For me, the alternative to music is an open office. And I sit right on the edge of the dev area, next to a major thoroughfare. In an office with hardwood floors. I bought a pair of really nice insulating headphones and I still hear things.
- loudmax 11y agoAnecdotally, that sounds about right to me. I typically like to program while listening to music. This is fine as long as the logic flow is straightforward. If it's something simple I can listen to anything. If it's moderately complicated, I'll switch to something without lyrics. If I get to something really challenging, like having to reason about race conditions or how the program is going to recover from a sudden power outage, then the music needs to stop entirely so I can focus.
- sethbannon 11y agoMaybe I'm misunderstanding the study, but it seems like they took half the group that preferred music and combined them with half the group that preferred silence and put that group in either a silent of musical room. It would be interesting to look at the breakdown of performance for each group, in each room. It's possible that those who had a preference for music in the silent room had a -20% hit in performance while those who had a preference for silence in silent room had a +20% boost in performance. What I'd like to know is if someone with a preference for music performs better/worse/equivalent in a room with/without music.
- Terr_ 11y agoAh, but did they control for whether the music had vocals or spoken words in it? My personal theory is that humans are wired to be interrupted by words spoken by other people. Even when you realize they aren't talking to you, a portion of your brain is stuck on monitoring duty.