Music
Popular Science
Psychology
What Does Your Music Preference Say About You?
29.11.15
Photo Credit: Hilary Clarcq
Could you go a day
without listening to music? I’m talking nothing; no singing along to Taylor
Swift in the car, no electronica at the gym, absolutely nothing. Realistically,
probably not, if only because we encounter music unintentionally almost every time
we leave the house. While we are all aware that music is a large part of life
for many of us, perhaps it plays an even bigger role than we
realize. We may even feel defined by our music preferences; seeing
elements of the songs we listen to manifested in our attitudes, energy levels,
and fashion choices. It turns out that not only are we influenced in
some way by the music we listen to (or perhaps our personalities define the
music we prefer), but also we actually use music preference as a social cue for
assessing personalities of others. As a lover of both music and psychology, I
am absolutely fascinated by the idea that our personalities and even neural
pathways are measurably tied to music preference. As you may know if
you are all caught up on your music psychology literature (…), there are
various studies focused on making and understanding the correlations between
music and the brain/mind. In one such example, researchers have found that
music preference can reliably predict personality traits such as tendency
towards extraversion or political leanings. What’s more, we are actually
intrinsically aware of this link, and as such tend to use music to (correctly!)
assess personality when meeting and getting to know new people. This
link between brain and music can even be extended to neurological pathways that
are selectively activated based on degree of preference for a certain song,
leading to different brain responses for liked vs. disliked music that can be
linked to the mind-wandering conscious experiences we have while listening to a
particularly well-loved song.
What
your Music Preference Says about You: The Link Between Music Taste and
Personality
If
you’re anything like me, you might find all types of personality quizzes oddly
compelling (highly addictive, more like). Despite the fact that I am well aware
of the traits that make up my personality (I mean, I’ve done so many quizzes at
this point…), I am still a sucker for any online quiz promising to reveal my
innermost workings at the click of a button. As it turns out, I’d
probably be better off leaving the Buzzfeed quizzes behind and scrolling
through the music saved on my iPhone. Researchers at the University of
Texas have proposed and showed a statistically significant correlation between
music preference and personality traits. Rentfrow and Gosling published results
of several studies in 2003, whereby they asked groups of participants about
music preference and compared these choices to various personality traits and
self-reported attributes such as athleticism or intelligence. The results of
their work were rather compelling, revealing a link between a subject’s choice
in music and his/her personality traits, self-views and cognitive
abilities. With music genres grouped according to an earlier study, the
broad music categories of Reflective and Complex (encompassing the genres
classical, jazz, blues, and folk), Intense and Rebellious (alternative, rock,
and heavy metal), Upbeat and Conventional (country, pop, religious,
soundtracks) and Energetic and Rhythmic (rap/hip-hop, soul/funk, and
electronica/dance) were compared to traits including extraversion,
agreeableness, emotional stability, openness, political views, athleticism, and
intelligence. For example, if you’re a major fan of blues, you are likely to be
an introvert who is inventive, open to new experiences, has high emotional
stability, and is politically liberal. Conversely, hip-hop lovers tend to be
high-energy extroverts who are athletic, agreeable, and see themselves as
physically attractive. For simplicity, I’ve outlined some of the results
in the graphic below:
In a related study,
the same researchers were interested in how we might use this information in
everyday life. For instance, do we inherently use music preference as a social
cue for personality determination? It turns out that it is not only the
case that people DO infer traits based on reported music preference, but we actively
seek out the music taste of someone we might want to get to know.
Researchers observed that when strangers were left to their own devices,
music was the most talked-about subject in almost all instances.
Basically, not only is music preference a reliable measure of personality, but
also we somewhat unknowingly use it as such when getting to know others! This
is great news for me, as it means I can choose whether or not I’d like to get
to know someone without actually having to go to all the trouble of actually
talking to them…(assuming I can gain access to their iPod).
Your Brain on Music:
How Music Preference Affects Brain Response
Ok, so as we might
expect, music preference is indeed closely related to a number of personal
attributes and we seem to have the ability to learn which music preferences
relate to which attributes and, what’s more, actively use this as a way to get
to know someone. This does not, however, tell us explicitly why we might prefer
one genre of music over the other (although in the study discussed above the
researchers do propose some theories) nor does it tell us how our brains react
to listening to different genres of music. Last year, the research team
of Wilkins et al. sought to understand the effect of listening to a certain
music genre on brain activity and also relate brain connectivity patterns to
reported self-referential thoughts and memories experienced while listening to
music.
Interestingly, the
results of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies indicated that
genre actually had little effect on functional connectivity, and it was instead
the degree of preference for music that seemed to dictate differences in brain
response. Moreover, when listening to preferred music, networks
corresponding to brain functions related to self-awareness, self-referential
thoughts and empathy were selectively activated compared to non-preferred music
listening. These patterns were observed regardless of the genre of music and
whether or not lyrics were present. The authors go on to hypothesize that
the activation of this neural network could be responsible for the anecdotal
feelings of introspection that we feel when listening to a favourite song or
genre, and could explain why we selectively have these mind-wandering feelings
when listening to music that we actually enjoy. Evidently, these findings
have major implications for neurorehabilitation, and could even be helpful in
music treatment of anxiety and depression through the use of preferred vs.
non-preferred music.
As it turns out,
music is much more to us than just a pastime. It plays a major role in our
social interactions, as well as activates important neural pathways that lead
to therapeutic experiences. So, could you go a day without listening to
music? No! Why would you? It’s too important!
Oh, and for those of
you wondering, my music taste lies somewhere between folk and rock. So there
you go, I guess we’re not strangers anymore.
What is your
favourite genre of music? Do the personality traits typically associated with
your preferred music style apply to you?
References:
Rentfrow, P.J., &
Gosling, S.D. (2003). The Do Re Mi’s of Everyday Life: The Structure and
Personality Correlates of Music Preferences. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology. 84, 1236-1256
Rentfrow, P.J., &
Gosling, S.D. (2006). Message in a Ballad: The Role of Music Preferences in
Interpersonal Perception. Psychological Science. 17, 236-242
Wilkins, R.W.,
Hodges, D.A., Laurienti, P.J., Steen, M., & Burdette, J.H. (2014). Network
Science and the Effects of Music Preference. Scientific Reports.
4, 6130
And this gem for all
the ‘selfie’-lovers out there:
Qui,
L., Lu, J., Yang, S., Qu, W., & Zhu, T. (2015). What does your selfie say
about you? Computers in Human Behavior. 52, 443-449
0 comments