Jake Kinzel

-In today’s society music has become an overwhelming aspect in our modern day culture. With advancements in

technology including; ipods, smart phones, laptops and Xm/Fm/Am radio, people are now able to listen to music

virtually anywhere they go.

- Music can be classified into over 1000 different genres which range from; country to dubstep to hip-hop to even

hardcore punk. With such a diverse collection of musical genres how do we choose which genre is right for us?

HOW DO WE CHOOSE OUR MUSIC?

1.Do we choose what music based on what others think aka what is “sociably acceptable”

2.Do we construct our music library around certain emotions that we seek?

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and Adrian Furnham developed an experiment that would measure whether or not IQ

and/or certain personality traits correlated to why a person listens to

-In recent studies Psychologists have tried to link certain personality aspects to why a person engages in listening to

music

- Extraverts are believed to listen to music in order to increase their arousal. For example, an extravert will listen to

music during certain dull activities including hw, studying, chores etc in order to increase their arousal.

-This tends not to be the case for introverts because studies have been done stating that background music interferes

with cognitive processing more in introverts than extraverts.

- It is believed that music is used to regulate emotions in neurotic people.

-People with the personality trait of conscientiousness tend to experience music in a more rational way.

-Therefore Tomas-Chamorro-Premuzic and Furnhams hypothesis was

-only 3 major different uses in music; emotional (mood manipulation), cognitive (intellectual processing of music),

and background (used during social events).

-randomly selected 341 (241 females 100 males) participants from American and British Universities

Different Tests:

-Wonderlic Personnel Test. The WPT measures general intelligence and has a rating scale of 0-50.

- 60question untimed questionnaire that evaluated the participants Big Five Personality factors.

- TIE test. During this test you gave a rating of either 1-6 (6 being the highest likelihood and 1 being the

lowest) of the likelihood of engaging in certain intellectual activities.

- “Use of music inventory” which was a self-report questionnaire that asked 15 questions 1-5; 1being

strongly disagree and 5 being strongly agree. 1-5, whenever I’m happy I listen to a happy song 1-5 and I

feel very lonely if I don’t listen to music 1-5

Results

- After experiment only definitive correlatin results were that people with high IQs listen to music for the

intellectual processing

-Professor Adrian North of Heriot-Wattt University in 2008 where he surveyed 36,000 people from all over the

world. The survey asked the participants to rank 103 different genres and also answer several questions which would

create a personality profile of each participant.

Results:

-(Rap – High self-esteem, outgoing),

-(Dance- creative, outgoing, not gentle),

- (Jazz - High self-esteem, creative, outgoing and at ease).

-The general public has held a stereotype of heavy metal fans being suicidally depressed and of
being a danger to themselves and society in general. HEAVY METAL ( quite delicate things.
-Low self-esteem, creative, not hard-working, not outgoing, gentle, at ease )

-All classical music lovers are arrogant snobs CLASSICAL (High self-esteem, creative, introvert and at
ease)

-All people who listen to punk music are drug addicts PUNKS (Low self-esteem, creative, not hard
working, not gentle)

-Country music is for “rednecks” COUNTRY (Hardworking, outgoing)

I believe that a major influence of what we listen to is based on what is sociably acceptable. I believe
that we use music in a way to project our self image. Everyone has that one artist and or song on their
ipod that their embarrassed to show their friends.