Personality Secrets in Your Mp3 Player
Once past saying 'hello' and 'how are you?' to someone you've just met, what is next? How do we make friends and get to know other people? Psychologists have talked about the importance of body language, physical appearance and clothing but they've not been so keen on what we actually talk about. A recent study put participants in same-sex and opposite-sex pairings and told them to get to know each other over 6 weeks (Rentfrow & Gosling, 2006). Analysing the results, they found the most popular topic of conversation was music. What is it about music that's so useful when we first meet someone and what kind of information can we extract from the music another person likes?
The number of people who talked about music was surprisingly high. In the first week on average 58% of the pairs discussed music compared to 37% of all the other categories of conversation combined. Other categories included books, movies, TV, football and clothes.
Why then do we use music as a first port of call in getting to know another person? We probably think that music is indirectly telling us something about the other person's personality. For this reason, the second question this study tried to answer was: how good is music as a measure of personality?
Top 10 personalities
To measure this, participants were asked to judge people's personality solely on their top 10 list of songs.
This was compared to participants results on a standard type of personality test measuring the big five personality traits: openness to experience, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability. Overall the results showed that music preferences were reasonably accurate in conveying aspects of personality. Of the five traits, it was a person's openness to experience that was best communicated by their top 10 list of songs, followed by extraversion and emotional stability. On the other hand, music preferences didn't say much about whether a person was conscientious or not.
What some music preferences mean for personality:
- Likes vocals: extraverted
- Likes country: emotionally stable. On the face of it, this is bizarre really because country music is all about heartache. Either the emotionally stable are attracted to country music or it has a calming effect on the unstable!
- Likes jazz: intellectual
This raises the question of why people listen to particular types of music. One theory is that people simply find some music more pleasant for aesthetic or cognitive reasons. Another is that people use music to regulate their mood: I want to get hyper for a night out so I put on some dance music. Another is that music is related to identity; people listen to music that expresses they way they see themselves. It seems likely that a combination of all these theories is probably true.
One really important caveat for this study was that the average age of the participants was around 18 so this finding might not hold in different age-groups. My experience is young people talk about music much more than older people. This raises the question of what, for example, might be the most common topic of conversations for other age-groups getting acquainted. Any suggestions?
Despite this limitation it seems that talking about music might be a very powerful way to make a connection with another person.
» This post is part of a series on the psychology of relationships.
References
Rentfrow, P.J., & Gosling, S.D. (2006). Message in a Ballad. The Role of Music Preferences in Interpersonal Perception. Psychological Science, 17(3), 236-242.
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Wasn't that a sitcom joke a few years ago? "My TiVo thinks I am a gay, black man."
You can't tell everything about a person ( I know plenty of Republicans who listen to NPR stations for the music - because it's just better - but you can't extract their politics from that ) but you can tell a lot.
It may not be a litmus test but it's at least a broad indicator.
i think there are other factors to be considered, such as surroundings, times, family, and even the situation of body.
time is a important factors. a girl loves a pop super star's songs just because others love. all girls think the star is cool.
about family, take me for instance, my dad loves Beijing opera, and now i too. so,what that is mean.
ok,that is my thoughts.
Interesting topic. Personally, my preference in genre changes depending on my mood at the time. I have such diverse and varied taste in music... I'm sure I don't have a multiple personality disorder...
Nigel, yes, the idea that mood will affect preferences is a good criticism. In previous research, however, they found that people were pretty reliable when it came to indicating the genres they preferred. In other words, they reported the same interests at different time-points.
You're right, though, there's going to be some effect for mood. Still, it seems people generally know what they like, whatever mood they're in.
A possible reason this might be most accurate for younger people is that after about age 40, people start to lose the ability to experiment with what music they listen to, and they become limited mostly to listening to what they always have enjoyed.
I found the article really interesting but I'm not completely convinced you can judge a persons personality on what music they listen to. People may say they listen to something for social acceptance and it may not reflect their true feelings.
I realise this shows they "follow the crowd" but it dosen't give us an accurate interpretation of their personality.
I must say that whenever I meet someone new, the first topic of conversation is almost always music. It is something that everyone can relate to, unless they do not listen to music, in which case I seem to be unable to relate to them at first. Music shapes peoples lives and you can tell a lot from a person and how they are feeling at a particular time, because obviously a person isn't always listening to the same song/artist/band/genre of music. I like this study, I'd like to recreate it to see if the results are similar in Essex, England to that of Texas. Also to see if people of my generation have varying results (17 years).
Hello to you three anonymouses and thanks for your comments!
A question for the study is that if all of the partipants come from USA?If the answer is yes,the findinds may not hold in different area group.
Letiantu, I carried out some follow-up work myself which found similar results in a sample from the US, the UK and other countries - reported here
I carried out a study in the UK in 1982 "Popular Music and Personality" as my honours dissertation, apart from using the Eysenck Pesonality Inventory I also used the Machiavellian Scale -for measure of conservatism and I also looked at music preferences with a sample of all ages from 18 - 65.
Not surprisingly the older a person was the more'conservative' they were in their personality profile, but what was really interesting was you really can effectively make a sound judgement about someone's pesonality based on their record collection(sorry they are big round plastic discs with grooves which reporduce recorded music).
As Shakespeare's Orsinio (12th Night) observes -"if music be the food of love, play on" Its defintiely the case that music seems to meet an important psychological need in all of us. And represents something which can be effectively read and understood by another.
So next time you get taken home for a night of blissful passion - run your fingers through the CD collection first, just to make sure!!!
Likes country: emotionally stable. On the face of it, this is bizarre really because country music is all about heartache. Either the emotionally stable are attracted to country music or it has a calming effect on the unstable
I found this comment, condescending and stereotypical as I personally like country music that tells an up beat stories. Also I happen to like most music that conveys a neutral or upbeat message.
I am some what of an introvert, as I can get along quite nicely with out seeing any people for a week or so.
Such methods are for finding an average value. Personally I can live well for weeks without any music. I like opera and feel bad when forced to hear modern crap in public places. I believe that I'm not an emotionally stable person.
Current personal experience: When I had a job and things were going well for me I'd listen to minimalist techno in the morning to relax. Now that I'm job seeking and facing a cold winter with empty pockets I find minimalist techno heightens my anxiety. Fascinating subject would love to know more.
Well, music helps some people to meet each other. It's a pleasant form of attentions.