Every day before I leave my room, I put on my headphones and play the song that was stuck in my head from the night before. Between classes, while doing work, and getting ready, I listen to music. Music is always in my head. Since I’m always listening to music, it may make sense that music gets “stuck” in my head. But I wondered why these songs keep repeating in my head when I try to sleep or get work done silently.
This is a playlist of my most repeated songs that are usually stuck in my head.
These repeating songs have been termed “earworms” or manifestations of Involuntary Musical Imagery (INMI). Involuntary musical imagery is formally defined as a spontaneous and unintentional replaying of music or song in the mind and is usually categorized as an intrusive thought, disruptive, or unwanted. Involuntary musical imagery is theorized to manifest as a result of the Zeigarnik Effect. The Zeigarnik Effect is a phenomenon where unfinished or interrupted tasks are more easily remembered in comparison to completed tasks. You might find yourself looping a 10-second part of a song rather than the full 3-minute song. This is because your brain treats hearing only part of a song as an incomplete or interrupted task. When you don’t finish the song, your brain keeps bringing it back and looping.
A study was conducted that took a survey of 293 participants and had them recall their most recent experience with an earworm. Participants rated how much they liked or knew the song, how long the song stayed stuck in their head, how distracting the song was, and whether they tried to stop it. The study was attempting to understand when and why people experience earworms and how individual traits relate to the frequency of earworms. Results demonstrated that most people liked the songs from which their earworms were manifested. Participants could identify what song, and how it got there, alongside a sense of enjoyment from the experience of the earworm. Those who attempted to suppress their earworms tended to have more frequent earworms and a higher White Bear Suppression Inventory (WBSI), a measure of how often people try to suppress unwanted thoughts. This demonstrated that people who suppress thoughts in general experience more involuntary thoughts overall, which includes those earworms, looping music in their heads.
Additionally, the study found that earworms usually manifest when you’re doing tasks that are low in cognitive demand. People reported that they most frequently experienced earworms when walking, driving, doing chores, showering, or folding laundry. This is because a central tenet of earworms and recalling music is working memory. Music evokes strong emotions, making them more memorable. Melodies and rhythms are easily recalled through the memories of associated events through the perceptual memory system. When our attention networks aren’t fully engaged, our brains fall into a default mode where they pull spontaneous content from memory. This is how these earworms manifest.
Another study found the same findings. Participants reported the same, idle states that their brains were in when their earworms formed. About 90% of participants reported that their earworms formed when doing school work, followed by walking and doing daily routines.
Figure 1: Activities Reported When Intrusive Songs Returned (Hyman et al.)
Research demonstrates how earworms aren’t necessarily random but are manifested as a result of recent exposures and the idle state of the brain. When we are executing routine and repeated tasks, we aren’t exhausting our brain and our attention networks aren’t engaged. This allows for those songs we may have heard while eating breakfast or waiting for coffee to be repeated. Maybe my earworms aren’t necessarily a result of my love for my music but rather my consistent engagement with music has strengthened my musical working memory, leading me to resort to those songs when my brain is an idle state.
References:
Hyman, I.E., Burland, N.K., Duskin, H.M., Cook, M.C., Roy, C.M., McGrath, J.C., & Roundhill, R.F. (2013). Going Gaga: Investigating, Creating, and Manipulating the Song Stuck in My Head. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 27, 204-215.
Hyman, I. E., Jr., Cutshaw, K. I., Hall, C. M., Snyders, M. E., Masters, S. A., Au, V. S. K., & Graham, J. M. (2015). Involuntary to intrusive: Using involuntary musical imagery to explore individual differences and the nature of intrusive thoughts. Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain, 25(1), 14–27.
Jäncke L. (2008). Music, memory and emotion. Journal of biology, 7(6), 21. https://doi.org/10.1186/jbiol82