Effects of music advertised to support focus on mood and processing speed

While music’s effects on emotion are widely appreciated, its effects on cognition are less understood. As mobile devices continue to afford new opportunities to engage with music during work, it is important to understand associated effects on how we feel and perform. Capitalizing on potential benefits, many commercial music platforms advertise content specifically to support attentional focus and concentration. Although already in wide-spread use, the effects of such content remain largely untested. In this online behavioral study, we tested the effects of music advertised to support “work flow” and “deep focus” on mood and performance during a cognitively demanding psychological test (the flanker task). We additionally included a sample of popular hit music representing mainstream musical stimulation and a sample of office noise representing typical background stimulation in a social working environment. Our findings show that, despite similar marketing, only the work flow music gave rise to significant and positively correlated improvements in mood and performance (i.e., faster responses over time, with similar accuracy). Analyses of objective and perceived musical features indicate consistency with the “arousal-mood theory” of music’s cognitive impact and provide new insights into how music can be structured to regulate mood and cognition in the general population.