Blog Topics, Relationships - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 9:00 - 88983 Commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.success.com%2Fwhy-we-are-like-earworms-and-what-to-do-about-it%2FWhy+We+Are+Like+Earworms%2C+and+What+to+Do+About+It.2013-04-16+14%3A00%3A42Alison+Lesterhttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.success.com%2F%3Fp%3D8898

Why We Are Like Earworms, and What to Do About It.

Earworms are the songs you can’t get out of your head. They crawl in when you hear them, or when you see a word or hear a phrase that makes you think of them, or in a moment of stress, or when you’re happy. The threat is constant.

For me it’s Everybody Dance Now by C & C Music Factory. (If you don’t know the song, do not do a search for it. You’ve been warned.) I heard a guy on the radio talk about how he rode his bike to work past a hospital every day, and there were two reserved parking spaces along the road, each with a sign saying ‘doctor’. Even though he tried to avoid the earworm, every day he arrived at work with Doctor Doctor by the Thompson Twins bopping in his head. Music psychologist Dr. Vicky Williamson talked in a BBC article last year about a woman who got the song Nathan Jones by Bananarama stuck in her head during a big exam when she was 16, and for whom it now resurfaces during every single stressful moment of her life.

So why are we like earworms? Because even when we try to avoid the behavioral patterns that drive us crazy, we still end up singing that same old tune.

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