What do music preferences reveal about personality
Are They Related? ? Psych Central
Do you enjoy relaxing to classical music, or bopping along to hard rock? The music you love might say something about your personality, and vice versa.
We have all different tastes in music. Some people believe that the genres you’re most drawn to might say a lot about your personality.
Instead of turning to the zodiac to see if you’re compatible with someone, could your music preferences determine if your personality matches up with someone else’s?
Have you ever noticed that you enjoy listening to the same type of music as your friends? Evidence suggests it’s not a coincidence.
You may be able to look at someone’s Spotify favorites and get a glimpse of their personality. Or, you might be able to figure out what music they’re into based on their personality traits.
What does the research say?
A 2018 study looked at people’s music-related Facebook likes and music listening habits. The researchers found that the participants’ musical preferences predicted some personality traits.
The researchers looked at how people’s musical tastes compared with their personality based on the Big Five personality traits:
- openness to experience
- conscientiousness, or how responsible, reliable, and self-controlled you are
- extraversion, ranging from outgoing to introverted
- agreeableness, or how friendly you are
- neuroticism, a measure of how nervous or sensitive you are
The researchers showed that people with higher openness were more likely to enjoy sophisticated music (complex, dynamic genres like classical, opera, and jazz), and to dislike mellow music (slow, relaxing genres like R&B and soft rock) and contemporary music (rap, electronic, dance, Europop and Latin).
This suggests that people whose personalities make them more open to new experiences are more likely to enjoy classical music and jazz, but less likely to enjoy R&B and electronic music.
People who scored higher in trait extraversion were more likely to have a preference for “unpretentious” music.
This included relaxing acoustic music, like country and folk genres.
Meanwhile, higher agreeableness was linked with a general liking of music.
Further to this, a 2022 study analyzed the musical preferences of over 350,000 people in more than 50 countries and six continents and found the link between musical preference and personality to be universal. That means music and personality are intertwined, no matter where you live.
The researchers found that people with higher extraversion had stronger reactions to upbeat, rhythmic, and electronic music. They also found that people with higher openness preferred sophisticated music, such as improvisational and instrumental tracks.
In 2011, researchers developed a five-factor model to explain musical preferences. They say that people may fall into one of the following “MUSIC” categories based on their musical preferences:
- Mellow: smooth and relaxing music.
-
Urban: rhythm and percussion music, such as rap and funk.
- Sophisticated: complex and inspirational music, such as classical and jazz.
- Intense: loud, energetic music, including heavy metal and punk.
- Campestral: a mix of styles, including country and singer-songwriter music .
Personality traits alone don’t account for musical preferences, though. An older 2010 study involving data from over 36,000 participants suggests other factors also play a role in musical taste, including:
- gender
- age
- social class and income
- cultural background
- self-esteem
Which of these main types would you fit into? Does your personality type match up with your favorite genre of music?
Do you feel like your personality matches the type of music you listen to? Several studies suggest there may be an association between music preferences and personality.
But, your personality isn’t the only thing that influences your music choice.
Your age, gender, self-esteem, and even how much your earn may also play a role in influencing your musical tastes.
If you want to find out about your personality type, consider Psych Central’s Personality Test.
Are They Related? ? Psych Central
Do you enjoy relaxing to classical music, or bopping along to hard rock? The music you love might say something about your personality, and vice versa.
We have all different tastes in music. Some people believe that the genres you’re most drawn to might say a lot about your personality.
Instead of turning to the zodiac to see if you’re compatible with someone, could your music preferences determine if your personality matches up with someone else’s?
Have you ever noticed that you enjoy listening to the same type of music as your friends? Evidence suggests it’s not a coincidence.
You may be able to look at someone’s Spotify favorites and get a glimpse of their personality. Or, you might be able to figure out what music they’re into based on their personality traits.
What does the research say?
A 2018 study looked at people’s music-related Facebook likes and music listening habits. The researchers found that the participants’ musical preferences predicted some personality traits.
The researchers looked at how people’s musical tastes compared with their personality based on the Big Five personality traits:
- openness to experience
- conscientiousness, or how responsible, reliable, and self-controlled you are
- extraversion, ranging from outgoing to introverted
- agreeableness, or how friendly you are
- neuroticism, a measure of how nervous or sensitive you are
The researchers showed that people with higher openness were more likely to enjoy sophisticated music (complex, dynamic genres like classical, opera, and jazz), and to dislike mellow music (slow, relaxing genres like R&B and soft rock) and contemporary music (rap, electronic, dance, Europop and Latin).
This suggests that people whose personalities make them more open to new experiences are more likely to enjoy classical music and jazz, but less likely to enjoy R&B and electronic music.
People who scored higher in trait extraversion were more likely to have a preference for “unpretentious” music. This included relaxing acoustic music, like country and folk genres.
Meanwhile, higher agreeableness was linked with a general liking of music.
Further to this, a 2022 study analyzed the musical preferences of over 350,000 people in more than 50 countries and six continents and found the link between musical preference and personality to be universal. That means music and personality are intertwined, no matter where you live.
The researchers found that people with higher extraversion had stronger reactions to upbeat, rhythmic, and electronic music. They also found that people with higher openness preferred sophisticated music, such as improvisational and instrumental tracks.
In 2011, researchers developed a five-factor model to explain musical preferences. They say that people may fall into one of the following “MUSIC” categories based on their musical preferences:
- Mellow: smooth and relaxing music.
- Urban: rhythm and percussion music, such as rap and funk.
- Sophisticated: complex and inspirational music, such as classical and jazz.
- Intense: loud, energetic music, including heavy metal and punk.
- Campestral: a mix of styles, including country and singer-songwriter music .
Personality traits alone don’t account for musical preferences, though. An older 2010 study involving data from over 36,000 participants suggests other factors also play a role in musical taste, including:
- gender
- age
- social class and income
- cultural background
- self-esteem
Which of these main types would you fit into? Does your personality type match up with your favorite genre of music?
Do you feel like your personality matches the type of music you listen to? Several studies suggest there may be an association between music preferences and personality.
But, your personality isn’t the only thing that influences your music choice. Your age, gender, self-esteem, and even how much your earn may also play a role in influencing your musical tastes.
If you want to find out about your personality type, consider Psych Central’s Personality Test.
What can tell about the character of a person his playlist
June 1, 2022 Life
According to scientists, quite a lot.
How musical taste is formed
For the first time people get acquainted with music in early childhood, when adults sing lullabies and lisp, stretching vowels and making accents in words. This is how the ability to perceive harmony and melody develops.
Between the ages of 10 and 16, the areas of the brain responsible for communication with society and emotions are fully formed. Then music becomes a way of self-determination. With its help, teenagers are looking for their place in society. For example, they listen to certain artists in order to become part of a company.
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The search for your favorite tunes never ends. Stopping at a single song does not give the reward system located in the brain: dopamine ceases to be released in the absence of new experiences. However, the preferences laid down in childhood and adolescence fix a certain standard in our head with which people compare melodies. Therefore, as a rule, they are looking for diversity within the framework of a predictable structure, and do not hit experiments.
And although with age people often begin to prefer genres that are more complex in terms of musical structure, preferences do not change radically. For example, instead of punk, they listen to indie or progressive rock, and instead of pop, they listen to funk. nine0003
What musical preferences say about a person's character
In 2003, a study was published that showed the relationship between musical preferences and character. The scientists offered the participants of the experiment to listen and evaluate several short fragments of various genres.
In total, 3,500 people around the world were interviewed. Then the obtained data were compared with the questionnaires and the results of personality tests.
It turned out that people with similar musical preferences had almost the same personality traits within the Big Five. The researchers found the most distinct relationship with openness to new experience, extraversion and goodwill, less with emotional stability and conscientiousness. The results of the study were then repeated several times. For example, in Japan, Germany and Brazil. nine0003
Here is how the researchers describe the relationship between preferred music and personality.
Classical and folk music, jazz and blues
Those who preferred fragments of these genres showed a high tendency to reflection in personality tests. They are also open to new experiences and prefer to think systematically. On the other hand, such people turned out to be rather neurotic.
Rock and metal
Studies show that fans of these genres are open to new experiences, not very conservative and like systems thinking.
They are not always conscious and responsible, but emotionally stable. nine0003
Pop, country and other upbeat music
Light music is preferred by sociable and responsible people. They are conscientious and hardworking, emotionally stable. However, they are often conservative and avoid new experiences.
Rap, hip-hop, electronic and dance music
Extroverts also like these genres, only more open to new things and less conscientious.
How to learn more about your character through musical preferences
To find out your profile, you can take a test within the Musical Universe project. It was created by psychologist David Greenberg of the University of Cambridge. The methodology is based on scientific research, and the algorithms are developed in collaboration with scientists.
The site asks you to answer a few personality questions, listen to 25 short pieces of music and rate them on a scale from "very much" to "not at all." True, the survey is available only in English, and only an abbreviated version is free, which will describe the correspondence of preferences to character traits.
For a complete one with an interactive report and recommendations, you will have to pay $ 25. nine0003
Why not only the genre is important
Of course, it is not worth determining the character of people only by their favorite music, because the classification will turn out to be rather conditional. The boundaries of the genres themselves are blurred, and not only they matter.
For example, the way you listen will say a lot. So, people who are open to new things listen to music consciously, their goal is to enjoy the work. And those who are prone to anxiety, withdrawn or not very responsible, turn on the player for emotional regulation, in other words, to change or improve their mood. Finally, sociable people, unlike introverts, are more likely to listen to music in the background. nine0003
Read also 🎧🎼😍
- 9 streaming services that keep music close at hand
- How classical music affects mood and mental activity
- 16 sites where you can find free music for your projects
- 6 scientific evidence that music is good for health
Music preferences and personality
Why the same music inspires one person and annoying someone else? What influences our musical tastes? These questions were asked by scientists from the University of Cambridge and found that musical preferences do not not an accident, but reflect certain features of our personalities correlated with the division into "empathists", "systematists" and "balanced".
According to this classification, the former are more interested in the emotions and thoughts of others, the latter in the rules and laws that govern our world, the interests of a third group describes its name. nine0068
Studies over the past ten years have shown that 95% of people can confidently attributed to one of these types, and they are good predictors of a variety of behavioral manifestations. This time scientists decided to correlate these types with musical preferences and came to interesting conclusions. Participated in the research about 4000 people. First, psychologists tested for the type personality, and then offered each of the participants in the experiment listen to about 50 musical excerpts of various genres. nine0003
It turned out that "empathics" prefer soft, pleasant music with low energy level, the predominance of sad notes, emotionally deep. Usually it was soft rock, art song or R&B.
The authors of the article give one of the typical compositions, which appealed to people with an empathic personality. it the song "Hallelujah" performed by Jeff Buckley, we offer our the reader to listen to it (imagine yourself as a participant experiment). nine0003
As for the "systematists", they prefer more energetic, intense music. It could be hard rock, punk metal - but not only. People of this temperament choose music that is intellectually deep and complex, so that it There may have been some classics as well. As a typical example, the authors of the article cite the work of Alexander Scriabin "Etude opus 65 number 3", which is also offered to the attention of readers. nine0003
Psychologists note that people related to the third, "balanced", personality type, demonstrated consistently a wider range of preferences, they might like excerpts works of completely different genres, some general trend not found for them.
The same team of scientists conducted another study on the relationship of musical preferences. and personality traits. More than 7,000 volunteers took part in it. Everybody they were tested for the level of expression of the five main character traits: openness, extraversion, compliance, conscientiousness and emotional stability. And then they performed a number of tasks and answered questions related to music. nine0003
Among these features associated with the perception of music was only openness. It turned out that open people have a wider musical horizons and interests, ready to perceive new and unusual in music, they are also more likely to listen to complex music (jazz, classic, etc.). Whereas closed people, on the contrary, are closed to certain styles and performers. And in another study, this time by Canadian scientists, it was also shown that closed people usually get pleasure from music when listening to it not for the first time, from music they are accustomed to, while those who are open, on the contrary, appreciate in music novelty.
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Differences in musical preferences were also found among extroverts and introverts - the first are focused on the outside world and communication, the second to their inner world. Research by psychologists from University of London found that extroverts are expected prefer positive and social music (for example, dancing), introverts - sad, intellectually saturated. And it also turned out that extroverts are more likely to listen music as background.
Thus, psychologists conclude that musical preferences of a person can be fairly reliable to judge his personal characteristics. Scientists also hope to use these data for the development of such a method of psychotherapy as music therapy, in particular, to work with psychological injuries. nine0003
Interestingly, some people cannot be attributed to any of the categories identified by scientists from Cambridge, since they generally do not have any preferences in music - it does not bring them no emotion, regardless of genre.
