Pitch Perfect 2: How to Get an Earworm

I remember the first time I watched Pitch Perfect 2. When the optimistic freshman Emily started crooning the lyrics to her self-composed song “Flashlight”, I cringed. I just plain hated it, especially it’s repetitive used of the word “Flashlight”. When (spoiler alert!) they start singing the song along with past bellas and confetti fluttering everywhere for the

You're my Flashlight-light-liSHHHHHHUSHH YOU

championship (end of spoiler), I still loathed it. Even when I found out that Jessie J composed the song, I still couldn’t bring myself to care for it. But as fate (and any musically-inspired and popular movie) would have it, the song seemed almost omnipresent on the radio, television, and in any local mall or department store near you. For a time, it almost seemed impossible to avoid it so I just had to learn to live with “Flashlight”. One day, I found myself just strolling about minding my own business, when I started absentmindedly humming the lyrics.

got all I need when I got you and I
I look around me, and see sweet life
I'm stuck in the dark but you're my flashlight
You're gettin’ me, gettin’ me through the night

I stopped in my tracks. For a moment, I was totally mortified. When I got over my initial shock, I began a period of self-loathing. How could I, started humming along to its deplorable tune? As I engaged in a battle between hating the song, Pitch Perfect 2, Jessie J, and myself, the song “Flashlight” continued to loop in the background of my mind.

We’ve all had our own experiences of a song abruptly popping into our head and constantly repeating itself like a broken record, but what is this particular phenomenon called? In Germany, the phenomenon was coined Ohrwurm (Williams, 2015). From this point, different names were spawnedsuch as Korvamato (Finnish), Oorworm (Dutch), and amusingly enough, Canzone tormente (Italian) which- if I had to guess- means song of torment.

It’s currently  known as “earworm” in English, but has also been called a brainworm and stuck song syndrome, among others. An earworm happens when a person experiences a short melody which gets stuck in the mind and just keeps repeating beyond a person’s control. However, just because you are experiencing an earworm doesn’t mean that you have a psychological disorder. Earworms are different from hallucinations, since hallucinations are seen as coming from outside and not within your mind. Current research links it to the term ‘Involuntary Musical Imagery’ (INMI). Depending on who you ask, it is synonymous  to INMI(Floridou, Williamson, & Mullensiefen, 2015) or is seen as a type of INMI (Williams, 2015). The INMI has been coined as the process of accessing perceptual information from memory, which brings about involuntary hearing of a song in the ‘mind’s ear’. Seeing the two definitions alongside each other, I can see why current researchers are in an epic struggle to differentiate the two (if that was ever really necessary).

Not really sure if you’ve experienced an earworm? Let’s try describing some general conditions for you, dear reader. Earworms usually last minutes to hours, but don’t usually last beyond 24 hours (Halpern & Bartlett, 2011).It also usually isn’t on constant repeat. Much like a dog who enjoys running away and coming home to eat every day, the song sometimes leaves one’s conscious awareness, only to come back later. Sometimes, one earworm would replace another and continue to co-exist in such a manner. Unless you are just plain crazy for that song, this is a good thing; having one song replay for the rest of my life sounds like a real nightmare. Another notable manifestation of an earworm is the fact that only a small part of the song repeats in a person’s mind, with the brain often favoring a certain part of the song (Beaman & Williams, 2010; Hyman et al.,2015). Puzzled? Take a look at my story again, specifically the lyrics. These lyrics are a part of the song called the chorus, and it is these lines that often repeat over and over again. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still possible to have a full song mentally replaying, but most people find themselves unable to complete it. This is because we often find it difficult remembering the next lines following the chorus, so we ending up with a chorus that just keeps on looping.

Research looking into earworms and INMI is relatively young and the causes of earworms are still pretty unclear, although some researchers have tried giving some possible causes. Floridou, Williamson, & Mullensiefen (2015) narrowed it down into three factors: the music, the situation, and the person. Let’s try scrutinizing some movie scenes and my own “earworm” experience and see if they check out.

Certain song qualities increase the chances of turning the latest pop song into an ear worm. Let’s look back at the earlier example. According to Kellaris (2001; as cited by Floridou, Williamson, & Mullensiefen, 2015), INMI is kind of like a cognitive itch that happens when the “music mosquito” with the right qualities comes along- namely repetition, musical simplicity, and incongruity. Repetition is certainly straightforward, if you repeat a phrase or motif often enough, it becomes a lot easier to remember. The song “Flashlight” is a perfect example, they pretty much repeat the song title several times in the chorus. For Pete’s sake, the chorus ends with the phrase “You're my flash light, you're my flash light” repeating over and over again. Musical simplicity ( a quality that many children’s songs have), is pretty much a staple of pop music. In the end, “Flashlight” possesses all the right ingredients- enough of a unique flavor in terms of rhythm (incongruity), repetition of words, especially flashlight, and musical simplicity- to create the perfect earworm. On to the next step!

"I know that song-Santa's Super Sleigh!"
kid Spock-like Nicholas Hoult> "heartthrob" Nicholas Hoult

As always, context is important. What we might be experiencing or environmental events may be enough to trigger an earworm. In fact, Beaman & Williams (2010), claimed that recent musical exposure carried more weight than the qualities of musical structure like repetition. In fact, recent exposure can be used to explain why people often report playing Christmas songs in their heads during the holidays (Halpern & Bartlett, 2011). Let’s use About A Boy as an example for this case. In the movie, Will is able to live off royalties to his father’s jingle Santa’s Super Sleigh due to its ubiquitous presence in every supermarket, mall, or any random store playing it during the holiday season. In fact, Will just mentioning that Christmas jingle was enough to set Marcus and his mum on a jolly singing frenzy , serenading Will with Santa’s Super Sleigh.  Thus, just hearing more Christmas songs as the Yuletide comes close is enough to increase the chances of a Christmas-related earworm.

The amount of thinking you’re doing is important too. Most people report experiencing earworms while walking, driving, and doing household chores- think we tend to do automatically and without thinking (Hyman, et al., 2013; as cited by Hyman, et al., 2015). On the opposite end of the spectrum, people also experience earworms when doing an especially difficult task which requires a lot of thinking. This may be a case of mind wandering, which depends on cognitive load. So if you want to avoid having an earworm, do an appropriately difficult task- not too hard or too easy- this way, the song won’t have any space to creep back into you consciousness.

Neuroticism=me everyday

The list of situations that can trigger an earworm is actually quite extensive. These include how often you are exposed to the song, or music exposure, which was seen in the case of “Flashlight” being played virtually everywhere. Just being able to relate the song to something in your environment (holding a flashlight-light-light), a memory (remembering Pitch Perfect 2), or event (again, like Christmas) may also cause an earworm.  How you are feeling or affective state may also influence the likelihood of getting an earworm.

The type of person you are can also increase your susceptibility for earworms. In a study conducted by Floridou, Williamson, & Mullensiefen (2015) conducted a study on how personality and musicality affects contracting an earworm. They found that there was a strong positive relationship between musical engagement (which can be exemplified in emotional response to music and creativity) and neuroticism (or how susceptible a person is to anxiety, stress, and other negative moods). In fact, neuroticism also influenced other characteristics related to earworm, such as degree of concert, length, and controllability.

So it looks like my story checks out. While I am not exactly “musically engaged”, I tend to score high on the Neuroticism portion of personality tests. I was engaged in an activity that is automatic to most people (walking), and I remembered a “catchy” pop song from a movie that was just newly released and being played virtually everywhere (Flashlight). I didn’t even stand a chance.

TripleDent Gum, will make you smile!
TripleDent Gum, it lasts a while!

Before I end this article, I want to go back to one of Inside Out’s scenes (yes, we are going back to that movie) wherein Riley recalls the Triple Dent Gum jingle. As soon as it plays, Anger, Fear, and Disgust react with, well, disgust to the constantly reoccurring song.   Contrary to popular belief, aren’t as obnoxious as most people think. In fact, while disliked songs sometimes get stuck, most people report actually liking the songs stuck in their heads and finding it quite pleasant (Beaty et al., 2013 as cited by Hyman, 2015). However, when songs are disliked, they are usually due to constant exposure to it in the environment- something that is beyond their control. An example would be hearing music over the department store sound system while shopping. Lesson here is: avoid the department store unless you want to form bad memories of a song and make it feel intrusive. Or not. It really depends on how you feel about the song in the end, it may just as well elicit feelings of nostalgia or happiness depending on the associations you make with the song.

References:

Floridou, G. A., Williamson, V. J., & Müllensiefen, D. (2012). Contracting earworms: The roles of personality and musicality. Proceedings of ICMPC-ESCOM, 12, 302-310.

Beaman,C.P.,&Williams,T.I.(2010).Earworms (stuck song syndrome): Towards a natural history of intrusive thoughts. British Journal of Psychology, 101, 637–653. http://dx.doi.org/10.1348/000712609X479636

Beaty, R. E., Burgin, C. J., Nusbaum, E. C., Kwapil, T. R., Hodges, D. A., & Silvia, P. J. (2013). Music to the inner ears: Exploring individual differences in musical imagery. Consciousness and Cognition: An International Journal, 22, 1163–1173. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.concog .2013.07.006

Halpern, A. R., & Bartlett, J. C. (2011). The persistence of musical memories: A descriptive study of earworms. Music Perception, 28, 425–432. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/mp.2011.28.4.425.

Hyman, I. E., Jr., 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. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/acp.2897

Hyman Jr, I. E., Cutshaw, K. I., Hall, C. M., Snyders, M. E., Masters, S. A., Au, V. S., & Graham, J. M. (2015). Involuntary to Intrusive: Using Involuntary Musical Imagery to Explore Individual Differences and the Nature of Intrusive Thoughts.

Kellaris, J. J. (2001). Identifying properties of tunes that get ‘stuck-in-your-head’: Toward a theory of cognitive itch. Proceedings of the Society for Consumer Psychology Winter 2001 Conference, 66-67. Scottsdale, AZ: American Psychological Society

Williams, T. I. (2015). The classification of involuntary musical imagery: The case for earworms. Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain, 25(1), 5.