Ladies, if you want to beat a man during a Monopoly game, play rock music.  A recent study shows men, board games, and rock music is not a likely team.

Rock Music Is Too Distracting For Men

Scientists from the Imperial College and the Royal College of Music asked 352 visitors at the Imperial Festival to play "Operation" - a game which involves removing various parts of the body from a pretend patient whose nose flashes and buzzes if tweezers touch the metal sides of the body. 

For the study, participants were given headphones that played three tracks - Andante from Sonata for Two Pianos by Mozart, Thunderstruck by AC/DC, or the sound of an operating theatre.  They were then timed to see how long it took for them to remove three body parts. 

Results show that men who listened to AC/DC were slower and made more mistakes compared to men who listened to either Mozart or the sound of an operating theatre.  Men triggered an average of 32 mistakes when rock music was played, and 28 when Sonata and operating theatre were played.

Music Made No Difference In How Women Did

The researchers noted that how women participants performed was the same, regardless of the type of music that they are listening to.  Study lead author, Dr Daisy Fancourt of Imperial College London, said that the result of this study shows that men and women respond differently to music. 

"Interestingly women performed better than men in the study but that could be just because it was a fun, public engagement experiment. However the music they were listening to made no difference to how they did," Fancourt told Newsletter.

The researchers do not have a clear explanation as to why women are less affected, but suggest that this could mean a greater susceptibility among men to "auditory stress" - where perception is affected by "loud or discordant music".