What Your Taste in Music Says About You

Passion 06-15-2003

Whether you're a little bit country or a little bit rock and roll, the type of music you listen to may say a lot about your personality.

A new study shows there's a good reason why the question, "So, what kind of music do you listen to?" comes up often during first dates -- the answer may speak volumes about another person's personality traits, interests, and outlook on life. And it turns out that classical music aficionados may have a lot in common with die-hard heavy metal fans.

The study, published in the June issue of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, analyzed the musical tastes of more than 3,500 individuals and found the musical styles people favor are closely linked to their personalities.

It showed that musical preferences could be organized into the following four general dimensions according to the level of complexity, emotion, and energy found in each musical style:

Reflective and complex - classical, jazz, blues, and folk
Intense and rebellious - alternative, rock, and heavy metal
Upbeat and conventional - pop, religious, country, and soundtracks
Energetic and rhythmic - rap/hip-hop, soul/funk, and electronica/dance

Researchers say each of these broad categories of musical preferences was also closely linked to an individual's personality traits, self-perception, and cognitive ability or intelligence.

For example, people who preferred classical music or other types of music classified as reflective and complex were likely to be open to new experiences, intelligent, politically liberal, and less athletic.

Heavy metal fans who liked intense and rebellious music also tended to be open to new experiences and consider themselves intelligent, but they were also curious about different things, enjoy taking risks, and physically active.

Researchers say their analysis suggests that people who enjoy upbeat and conventional music styles like popular and religious music are cheerful, socially outgoing, reliable, enjoy helping others, view themselves as physically attractive, and be relatively conventional.

But rap fans and others classified as listening to musical styles considered as energetic and rhythmic literally followed the beat of a different drummer. The study showed these people tend to be talkative, full of energy, forgiving, and eschew conservative ideals.

The participants believed that musical preferences revealed as much about their personalities as their hobbies did. And when it came to sizing up others, musical preferences ranked second only to hobbies in terms of what the participants felt revealed the most about others' personalities -- more than what kinds of books or magazines they read.

Researchers Peter J. Rentfrow and Samuel D. Gosling of the University of Texas at Austin say many questions remain before any concrete theories on musical preferences can be made. But their results show that, "It is clear to us that music can contribute much to the understanding of many psychological phenomena."

Wyntre

This is really cool. I had read something about this a long time ago, but it wasn't as elaborate as this.

Hsoolien

They should elaborate on the punk as their are two types of people that listen to punk, those like me that are into the poltics and beliefs of punk, and then those that are into the culture and fasion

Cause those into the politics are generally informed, thougtfull people who are dispondant with todays governements, and those into the fasion, are mostly anarchists who are against authority of any type, and are looking for an outlet of anger

Nina

Hsoolien I agree with you on the types of punk but I think the article was more talking about the music beat wise. Not the words in the song.