The influence of chronic- and background noise on a motivation task as an indicator of learned helplessness, a laboratory experiment

Exposure to uncontrollable stressors, whether in our social or physical environment, can impact our perception of control, daily functioning, and ultimately our mental health. Feeling a lack of control can affect our motivation to persist in challenging tasks and can generalize into learned helplessness. Some research suggests that chronic noise exposure may increase vulnerability to helplessness and its effects on motivation, although the findings are inconsistent. Studies conducted in laboratory settings have demonstrated the (after)effects of short-term noise exposure on motivation. These experiments were however conducted with extremely loud noise levels, which would be considered unethical to reproduce today. Some field studies argue that the impact of noise on motivation is due to cognitive fatigue and is influenced by factors such as age and coping mechanisms, rather than learned helplessness. This study aims to further explore the relationship between chronic noise exposure, cognitive fatigue, and motivation as an indicator of learned helplessness. The study involves a laboratory experiment where participants conduct cognitive tasks with or without background noise (real-life multi-talker babble), creating different levels of cognitive fatigue, followed by a motivation task in silence to measure the aftereffects. The performance on these tasks is evaluated taking into account the participant's chronic noise exposure, their current mental health (strengths and difficulties questionnaire), their noise sensitivity and their perception (locus) of control. The first results show no significant impact of higher chronic noise exposure or any aftereffects of experimental condition on motivation. The lack of effect of chronic noise can be attributed to the small proportion of the sample (20%) with high noise exposure at home (>55dB(A)). The lack of effect of experimental condition may be attributed to failed manipulation of cognitive fatigue (no differences in task performance) possibly caused by the used background noise not being loud (60dB(A)) or distracting enough.