In 2022, a study, carried out by Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, sought to answer the following question: are there universal standards for people’s musical preferences? A question that is much analyzed and asked, not only by scholars, is whether there is a relationship between personality and musical tastes.
The study developed a large body of theory research on personality, culture and music psychology to map the musical preferences of participants from 53 different countries across six continents.
Researchers studied preferences by dividing musical genres in categories – smooth (soft rock and R&B), unpretentious (country), sophisticated (jazz), intense (rock) and contemporary (rap and hip hop), among others.
At the same time, each person’s personality was grouped into types, according to psychology, openness (inventive people), conscientiousness (diligent people), extroversion (outgoing people), agreeableness (friendly people) and neuroticism (nervous people).
In this research, two studies with different methods were applied. In one of them, almost 285 thousand individuals from 53 different countries were analyzed. Using an online questionnaire, participants revealed their preference for different musical genres, receiving feedback about their personalities.
In the second, more than 71 thousand people from 36 countries received a questionnaire and evaluated audios of sounds from different genres, in a way that they would not be familiar with any of them so as not to affect the research with prejudice.
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Does our personality dictate our musical tastes?
Scholars realized that individual musical preferences could be organized into five factors that did not vary and were universal across the countries included in the research.
The patterns of correlation between personality traits and musical tastes were consistent regardless of country and assessment method. Those who identified with extroversion had stronger reactions to contemporary songswith more rhythmic, lively characteristics and electronic elements.
On the other hand, people who fit the Openness trait had more intense reactions to more sophisticated styles of music, with more complex characteristics that can be seen in instrumental music.
Correlations between preferences, music and genres, ethnicities and other sociodemographic metrics also did not vary. In other words, what a European introvert likes, an Asian introvert will also like.
The research result suggests that there are, indeed, universal patterns for musical preferences, thus opening up the possibility of developing research into the interaction between music, psychology, biology and culture.
