Music and personality: how are they linked?

How does your favorite music relate to your personality?

Every urban tribe or ideological youth movement is established on the basis of certain characteristic signs: aesthetics, some more or less sketched ethical principles, but mainly well-defined musical tastes. well-defined musical tastes.

The beat generation danced to jazz rhythms, the hippie movement listened to folk and sixties rock at festivals like Woodstockthe yuppies with Love Over Gold by Dire Straits. The goths and emos shudder with dark songs. And these are just a few examples. Music that marked a generation, or music that a social youth movement made its own.

Music and personality: a real pairing?

Contrary to what we tend to believe, music does not explain the way we areWe use music to identify ourselves with the vital and political positions we consider most valid, but there is no close link between this identification and our actions.

Dismantling clichés

Let's take an example: the harsh aesthetics and violence that surrounds heavy metal does not correspond to the personality of its followers: a large part of them are kind, peaceful and even with a tendency towards introversion, as one study shows. introversion, as pointed out by a study carried out at the University of Heriot-Watt, through a survey that was answered by 37,000 people worldwide through the Internet (North, A.C. & Hargreaves, D.J., 2005).

This is recounted by Christopher Drösser in his book The Seduction of Music:

"Respondents defined their preferences with respect to more than 100 musical styles (from classical music to soul) that theoretically reflected their personality traits. Those traits were, for example: low or high self-esteem, creative/non-creative, introvert/extrovert, docile/aggressive, hardworking or lazy."

Whether we grant a greater or lesser degree of credibility to the study, the truth is that by linking musical style with personality we fall into generalizations and inaccuracies. If we were to do so, we would be playing in a field of cheap demagogy and we would be using the prejudices imposed by the media and youth TV series.

Curious coincidences: 'heavies' and 'classics' are alike

Based on the survey designed by North and Hargreaves, it could be highlighted that the personalities of heavy metal fans are very similar to those of classical music fans, although their study does qualify the fact thatalthough their study does note that the latter have a higher self-esteem than the former, on average. Thus, although musical styles differ to a great degree, not to mention the clothing that each musical style proposes, classical and melenudos could be categorized within the same psychological profile.

Another research carried out at the University of Queensland, Australia, led by F. Baker and W. Bor (2008)support the above conclusionsthus ruling out that music or musical style plays a causal role in antisocial behavior, for example. They do suggest, however, that identification with a musical style is an indicator of emotional vulnerability.

Preference for musical styles and personality

North and Hargreaves' study yielded the following data:

• Music lovers Blues have high self-esteem, are creative, friendly and extraverted.
• Those who prefer Jazz and Soul get the same adjectives as Blues lovers.
• Similar results to the above are obtained by those who prefer the Rap and Opera
• Subjects who prefer classical music are the same as the previous ones, except that they are introverted.
• The lovers of Country are hard-working and extraverted
• Those who enjoy Reggae were reported to be somewhat lazy, and also creative, kind, extraverted and with high self-esteem.
• Those who like to listen to Dance are creative and extraverted, but not too friendly.
• Music freaks Indie have low self-esteem, are creative, unfriendly and not very hard-working.
• Followers of Rock music Rock y Heavy Metal have low self-esteem, are creative, not very hard-working, introverted and friendly.

It is worth remembering that these data were obtained by cross-referencing data from personality tests and musical preferences, and only indicate statistically significant trendscorrelations. Obviously, this does not mean that listening to certain musical styles "transforms" our personality".

Personality: a complex and multicausal concept

Therefore, the psychic state is aprioristic, and from this each individual is conquered by the music that fits his or her personality. Sometimes, listening to music with depressing melodies or lyrics to someone's ears does not mean that it is a triggering factor to depress many of its listeners, but on the contrary, sometimes this type of music helps to overcome low moments of mood.

Most people remain faithful to the musical styles they listened to between the ages of 14 and 26.This happens because youth marks our identities, which will no longer be so plastic for the rest of our lives.

• We recommend you to read: "What music do intelligent people listen to?"