Was there a time when you find yourself stuck with a particular song and can't simply get it out of your head? The experience can be maddening, but you can stop it.
What Is an Earworm?
Songs that keep playing repeatedly in your head are known as earworms and may be extremely annoying. They could be jingles for businesses or snatches from popular tunes. It may occasionally be a tune we genuinely like, but more frequently, it is a portion of a song we detest.
This peculiar mental occurrence shows how little conscious control we have over our own brains and internal processes. After all, we cannot get our brains to stop singing because it is inside our minds.
A 2012 study examined whether it was feasible to manufacture earworms purposefully and, if so, how to do so. Nearly 300 participated in the research and listened to different songs while performing various mental exercises, and they reported after 24 hours if they remembered any of the tunes.
According to Philip Beaman, an experimental psychology professor at the University of Reading, earworms are personal; what sticks in one person's head might not stick in another's.
Another study from Western Washington University claimed that annoying repeated jingles are not the only source of earworms. Even "good" music, like the Beatles' songs, has the power to produce them.
The Zeigarnik Effect, in which our thoughts become stuck on unfinished mental processes, is thought to be the cause of earworms, and researchers discovered some evidence in favor of this notion. According to it, when we hear an incomplete song that we are unfamiliar with, our brains may become "hung up." Because our mind cannot "put the song away" and finish it, it becomes stuck, or as in "Groundhog Day," continuously plays the same incomplete clip.
Both complete and partial songs produced earworms in the 2012 study, and persons with more musical aptitude were more likely to do so.
Finally, earworms were less likely to form when a participant was engaged in a more demanding mental activity after or while listening to the song. Therefore, earworms could be compared to mind viruses that infect our free mental RAM and continue operating in the background. However, those earworms can't sneak in if your cognitive capacity is fully utilized.
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How To Get a Song Out of Your Head?
If you are trying to get rid of a song that seems invading your system, don't worry; you have the power over it. You can start by identifying the song and finding a complete version.
1. Listen to another song.
Listen to the song and focus on it. Kelly Jakubowski, the lead author of the 2016 study, said some people can "get out of the loop" by listening to the song because it gives them closure.
Individuals frequently regard the repetitive looping of the music as the most annoying feature of earworms. The unpleasant trait can be lessened by singing or repeating a song throughout.
2. Engage in other activities
You can also engage in a cognitively engrossed activity like sudoku or puzzles. Word games or any activity that absorbs your attention and makes you think can help.
3. Converse With Others
People can also eliminate their earworms by striking up a conversation. She argued that it is very difficult for an earworm to survive if the mind is engaged with other musical or linguistic content.
4. Fade Away Technique
Jakubowski also advised the "fade away" technique, which involves letting the melody leave your head without actively resisting it. It's a trick from other brain science that says trying to stop thinking can make you feel more.
According to her, the earworm phenomena may be comparable in that efforts to eliminate earworms deliberately can occasionally backfire and lengthen the episodes.
5. Chew a gum
In a 2014 study, Beaman discovered that chewing gum reduces the frequency of uncontrollable musical thoughts and impacts the musical listening experience. The investigation was motivated by earlier studies that showed chewing gum interfered with short-term memory recall and made it more difficult to picture music and noises.
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