Chewing Gum May Hold The Key To Getting Earworms Out Of Your Head

New research conducted by England's University Of Reading has determined that chewing gum can be an effective measure to aid in ridding your brain of songs that worm their way in there through your ears and refuse to leave — "affectionately" known as earworms.

As with all other terminology used to refer to popular songs ("catchy", "infectious"), earworms sound pretty bad but are ultimately harmless, but only if you consider being subjected to music by artists such as David Guetta "harmless". Still, that's exactly what participants in the study, titled "Want To Block Earworms From Conscious Awareness? B(u)y Gum!" and led by Dr Phil Beaman of the university's School of Psychology and Clinical Language Studies, did recently in what is billed as the first scientific effort to specifically examine the effect of chewing gum on earworms. 

Researchers played participants two songs perceived to be particularly catchy, Guetta's Play Hard and Maroon 5's Payphone, then tested recall levels between respondent groups — a total of 98 people all up — with the results showing that those who were partially distracted by their own chewing function were less likely, by one-third, to repeatedly think of the song to which they had just listened than those who did not have the gum to help.

"The earworm phenomenon stretches back at least to the 19th century," Beaman said in a statement.

"The majority of us experience them for only short periods — perhaps just a few minutes — but others can experience them for two or three days, which can be extremely frustrating and debilitating," he continued. "We wanted to explore whether a simple act like chewing gum could help.

"We invited 98 volunteers to take part in our study. After playing them the catchy tunes Play Hard by David Guetta and Payphone by Maroon 5, we asked them to try not to think of the songs they had just heard over the next three minutes but to hit a key each time they did.

"In the chewing gum condition, volunteers reported thinking of and 'hearing' the song less often than in no-activity and finger-tapping control conditions."

Although the implications for the research, which was published in full in the Quarterly Journal Of Experimental Psychology, are a boon for any victim of unexpected pop fodder clogging up your cranial channels, there are more serious psychological benefits in play as a result of the study's findings — namely, that chewing gum may not only help block infectious songs from taking root in the brain, but may also pave the way for higher-level research to help sufferers of obsessive compulsive disorder and other such conditions.

"Interfering with our own 'inner speech' through a more sophisticated version of the gum-chewing approach may work more widely," Beaman said. "However, more research is needed to see whether this will help counter symptoms of obsessive-compulsive and similar disorders."

Back on the music front, though, there's more good news amid the findings: a previous study by Reading University found that people are more likely to spontaneously think of a catchy or popular song if they are familiar with it — which sounds like it means that you shouldn't be being taken unaware by any unwelcome Top 40 hit if you're not at least a little soft on it in the first place.

"It's possible that popular songs are particularly difficult to suppress," Beaman said. "Our previous research found that people only spontaneously report earworms of songs that they know well — we hope to examine this further in future studies. In the meantime, however, the results of this study should be music to the ears for many."