The Effect of Background Music and Noise on the Cognitive Test Performance of
Introverts and Extraverts
STACEY DOBBS, ADRIAN FURNHAM* , y and ALASTAIR McCLELLAND
Studies show that irrelevant noise that has abrupt
changes in frequency and pitch is particularly disruptive, but
that sound intensity has less effect.
Under-stimulated extraverts are predis-
posed to pursue high stimulation through arousal inducing
behaviours; while over-stimulated introverts are inclined to
avoid strong stimulation and arousal.
Furnham and Strabc
(2002) provided evidence to suggest that introverts are more
negatively affected by background noise than extraverts,
whilst noting a trend for a lower level of performance in both
introverts and extraverts in the presence of music.
Music, particularly high arousal music
produced distraction and reduced performance most, followed
by noise, then low arousal music and finally silence. They also
found a personality (introversion/extraversion) effect for
immediate and delayed recall and a sound personality effect
for the stroop task: Introverts were significantly poorer than
extraverts in the presence of high arousing music.
Vysledky pruzkumu:
Sample: One hundred and eighteen female school children aged 11–
18 took part in the study.
The degree of extraversion of the participants was
ascertained using the Eysenck Personality Inventory
(napr. tady
http://similarminds.com/personality_tests.html)
The correlation matrix presented in Table 1 shows that there
was a positive correlation between performance on the three
tests—and between the tests and the MidYIS scores—our
proxy for IQ. However, there was also an unexpected positive
correlation between extraversion, performance on the three
tests and MidYIS. It was thus clear that we needed to control
for IQ (i.e. use the MidYIS scores as a covariate) when
assessing the influence of extraversion on task performance
under the three noise conditions.
