James is masculine, the type of person many would point to as a leader. In his free time, he usually listens to Beethoven’s or Chopin’s. While Tom—whose every inch of his arms are covered in tattoos, loves to lose himself in smooth jazz songs. In contrast, that one calm, very reserved young lady Aisha, can spend the whole day listening to Metallica.
You, like many of us, may think that ‘intelligent’ people prefer more complex music such as classical or jazz, and that aggressive personality is usually correlated to upbeat music. However, the above cases are often found at random in our society. Truth is, you can’t really guess ones’ music taste just by looking at their traits, yet on the other hand, your musical preference can reveal a lot about who you truly are.
Studies Linking Music Preference to Personality Traits
Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, an organizational psychologist who works mostly in the areas of personality profiling, people analytics, tells us why our favourite music can actually tell us more about our personalities. He claims that there are three actual reasons why people listen to music:
1. We listen to music to escape boredom especially when we need to pay intense attention in doing certain tasks.
2. We also need music to increase the level of concentration and therefore (at the same time) intensifying our intellectual curiosity.
3. We can achieve our desired mood or emotional states by listening to music.
Base on these three reasons, he believes that music-listening activity is an emotional experience, thus closely related to our personality. He also said that music can be depicted as the window to our inner soul.
Further readings on the matter reveals that listening to music is not merely an emotional experience; it can also be associated to our thinking style. Multiple number of studies have been made on the correlation between musical preference, and cognitive factor.
In another study, participants were asked to listen to 50 musical snippets from a wide range of music genres and their thinking styles were recorded during each session.
The study reveals that those who are ‘empathizers’—people who easily understand feelings and emotions of others—tend to enjoy mellow and softer songs, than those who are more inclined to ‘systemizer’ traits. ‘Systemizers’ are people who prefer to analyze facts and construct ideas. These people have a tendency to listen to hard rock, metal, and punk genres.
So, if your thinking style is somewhere between the ‘emphatizer’ and ‘systemizer’, your musical preferences would most probably be wider than skewed towards either one of the two.
Another study by psychologists Jason Rentfrow and Sam Glosing, divides musical preferences into big 4 dimensions, namely: Reflective and Complex music such as classical and jazz; Intense and Rebellious music that cover heavy metal, rock, and the likes; Upbeat and Conventional music like pop and soundtracks; and Energetic and Rhythmic music such as hip-hop, funk, and dance.
The research findings point out that people who love classical and jazz music tends to be those who are liberal, imaginative, and open-minded. Highly-extraverted kind of people tend to listen to intense and rebellious music. People who enjoys listening to upbeat, easy-listening kind of music are usually those who are friendly, helpful, and exuberant. Those who prefer energetic and rhythmic music are considered extraverted and flirty.
In sample cases of James, Tom, and Aisha listed above, this study recognizes it as the covariance of personality traits.
Apparently, the amount of time you spend listening to music also matters - it determines the level of introversion and extraversion you have in your whole personality.
According to a study by Sheila Ann Smith (Western Michigan University), those who are highly involved in music tend to have an extraverted personality. The level of involvement refers to the frequency and intensity of a person, when they dedicate their time listening to music daily. It points to the level of importance music has in their daily lives. She also finds that a more turbulent personality needs a higher involvement in music-listening activity.
So now that we have some studies to back us up, what type of person are you, base on the kind of music you like?