Abstract
The vast majority of people experience involuntary musical imagery (INMI) or ‘earworms’; perceptions of spontaneous, repetitive musical sound in the absence of an external source. The majority of INMI episodes are not bothersome, while some cause disruption ranging from distraction to anxiety and distress. To date, little is known about how the majority of people react to INMI, in particular whether evaluation of the experience impacts on chosen response behaviours or if attempts at controlling INMI are successful or not. The present study classified 1046 reports of how people react to INMI episodes. Two laboratories in Finland and the UK conducted an identical qualitative analysis protocol on reports of INMI reactions and derived visual descriptive models of the outcomes using grounded theory techniques. Combined analysis carried out across the two studies confirmed that many INMI episodes were considered neutral or pleasant, with passive acceptance and enjoyment being among the most popular response behaviours. A significant number of people, however, reported on attempts to cope with unwanted INMI. The most popular and effective behaviours in response to INMI were seeking out the tune in question, and musical or verbal distraction. The outcomes of this study contribute to our understanding of the aetiology of INMI, in particular within the framework of memory theory, and present testable hypotheses for future research on successful INMI coping strategies.
Highlights
Many everyday thoughts are spontaneous, meaning they appear to be unrelated to the task at hand and that their instigation is not under conscious voluntary control [1], [2]
The main involuntary musical imagery (INMI) behaviour theme that emerged from negative INMI evaluations was termed ‘Cope’, and referred to activities aimed at removing the INMI including many forms of music distraction (e.g. ‘Imagine’, ‘Sing’ and ‘Listen’), non-musical activities (‘Talk’), and activities related to engaging with the INMI tune (‘Saturate’ and ‘Seek closure’)
Participants were given an introduction to the concept of INMI and provided with a choice of seven Yes/No responses preceded with the prompt: ‘‘Have you ever done any of the following because of the music that is playing in your head?’’ The list of response options can be seen in Table 1; participants could select ‘Yes’ to as many items as they felt appropriate
Summary
Many everyday thoughts are spontaneous, meaning they appear to be unrelated to the task at hand and that their instigation is not under conscious voluntary control [1], [2]. It is estimated that up to 40% of everyday thoughts fall into the category of spontaneous cognitions [3]. This form of mental activity is exemplified by phenomena such as mind wandering [4], [5] and involuntary autobiographical and semantic memories or ‘mind pops’ [6], [7]. One of the most commonly reported forms of everyday spontaneous cognition is involuntary musical imagery (INMI) or, colloquially, ‘earworms’. These terms describe the spontaneous recall and replay of musical imagery within the mind’s ear [8] that goes on to repeat on an involuntary loop. INMI is a ubiquitous phenomenon that over 90% of people report experiencing at least once a week [9] with higher prevalence among individuals who play and sing music regularly and who see music as an important part of their daily lives [9,10,11,12]
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