This Is Why You Turn Your Car Music Down When You’re Lost Or Parking

If you drive a car on a regular basis, then chances are good that you’ve found yourself in this scenario at least once: you’re driving along, blasting your favorite songs on the radio, when you suddenly realize you missed a turn and now have no idea how to get to your destination. While trying to think it through, you automatically reach over and turn your music down. Even though you know that lowering the volume has nothing to do with directions, it seems right in the moment.

You’ve probably also noticed yourself doing the same thing when parking, especially if you’re pulling into a tight spot. You likely lower your music as you focus on parking your car without hitting anything. At this point, it feels like an instinct, and you’re probably not the only person who has wondered why you turn your music down in these situations. Fortunately, the explanation actually makes sense.

While research hasn’t been conducted on this particular behavior, it has been done on something similar: using your cell phone while driving.

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In a study published in The Journal of Neuroscience, researchers looked at what happens when people multitask when driving. In this case, using their cell phones while driving a car.

Steven Yantis, a professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, said, “Directing attention to listening effectively ‘turns down the volume’ on input to the visual parts of the brain. The evidence we have right now strongly suggests that attention is strictly limited… When attention is deployed to one modality — say, in this case, talking on a cell phone — it necessarily extracts a cost on another modality — in this case, the visual task of driving.”

In other words, listening to music actually does take up more of your attention and focus than you realize.

When you’re listening to music, it’s pulling your attention from other things, like seeing. So if you’re listening to music, you might have trouble doing something visual, like figuring out where to go or getting into a parking space. You might not realize it, but when you’re listening to music, you’re paying attention to that music. And if you’re doing that, then you’re going to have a harder time devoting attention to another task. You’re essentially lowering the music so you can focus better on the more important task at hand — according to that research, at least.Other research, however, has shown that listening to music has little to no effect on driving.

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A 2013 study in Science Daily found that experienced drivers between the ages of 25 and 35 are “perfectly capable of focusing on the road while listening to music or the radio, even when driving in busy urban traffic.”

It makes sense that the studies seem to differ. After all, the one about multitasking when driving was about using a cell phone, not listening to music, which is quite different. Still, that conclusion makes sense if you’re a person who generally finds multitasking to be difficult. Of course you would find it hard to listen to really loud music while trying to figure out directions!

In the end, this is something that probably varies from person to person. And if lowering the music helps you focus better, by all means, go for it.