16/11/2020 You are what you listen to

You are what you listen to

July/August 2003, Vol 34, No. 7
Print version: page 33
2 min read

Most people's music preferences fall into one of four broad categories, according to a
new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (/pubs/journals/psp) (Vol.
84, No. 6).

What's more, preferences for those categories correlate with traits such as personality,
political orientation, verbal ability and athleticism.

"We can learn a lot about personality by looking at everyday life, and music preference
is just one facet of everyday life," says Jason Rentfrow, a graduate student at The
University of Texas at Austin who co-authored the study with his adviser, psychologist
Samuel Gosling, PhD.

Rentfrow and Gosling collected data on the music preferences of several thousand
undergraduates at The University of Texas using a new scale--the Short Test of Music
Preferences (STOMP). They also analyzed the music collections of people who use
Internet file-sharing services.

In both samples, music preferences tended to clump into one of four categories, which
Rentfrow and Gosling dubbed "reflective and complex," "intense and rebellious,"
"upbeat and conventional" and "energetic and rhythmic." Each category included several
kinds of music. "Reflective and complex," for example, covered classical, jazz, blues and
folk, while "upbeat and conventional" covered country, religious, soundtrack and pop.

Those categories turn out to be significantly correlated with a variety of personal traits,
including "Big Five" personality measures.

People who listen to "reflective and complex" music, for example, score highly on
openness to new experiences, verbal ability, self-perceived intelligence and political
liberalism, while people who listen to "upbeat and conventional" music score highly on

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extraversion, self-perceived physical attractiveness, athleticism and political

conservatism.

Two factors appear to drive the connection between music preferences and personal
characteristics, say Rentfrow and Gosling. First, people choose to listen to music that
suits their moods and activities. "People who enjoy spending time with others, people
who enjoy talking and socializing, tend to enjoy music that is also extraverted--in some
ways, party music," says Rentfrow.

People also use music to inform others about themselves. "Adolescents, in particular,
use music as a way to fit into groups, as a way to manage people's impressions of
them," says Rentfrow. "It's a badge, if you will, of their identity."

This study is part of a broader effort to understand the relationship between personality
and everyday life--an area overly neglected by psychologists, says Gosling.

"If we try to partition up our day, we listen to music, we pray, we tend to our gardens, we
cook, we eat food," he says. "It's amazing how little many of these things that really
occupy our days are studied by psychologists."

--E. BENSON

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