Background and objectives With a few exceptions, musical taste has been researched via likes or preferences of certain types of music. The present study focuses on disliked music and takes a broad approach to cover explanatory strategies related to personal dislikes. Methods In-depth interviews were conducted with 21 participants in five age groups. Interviewees were asked to prepare a list of their disliked music, and for each item they were asked about the reasons for the dislike. To ensure that the complexity and range of the participants’ dislikes and rationales were captured in the analysis, a structuring content analysis as a mostly theory-driven approach was combined with inductive category creation out of the interview data. Results The most often mentioned type of dislike was musical style, followed by artist and genre. Five main reference points were identified for describing musical dislikes: the music itself, lyrics, performance, artist, and the people who listen to it. The identified rationales for disliked music were assigned to three larger categories: object-related reasons, such as music-compositional aspects, aesthetic dichotomies or lyrics; subject-related reasons, such as emotional or bodily effects, or discrepancies with the self-image; social reasons, which refer to one’s social environment and the taste judgments common to it (in-group) or to other groups of which the participants do not feel part of (out-group). Apart from the rationales for disliked music, the participants described specific reactions when they are confronted with their disliked music, such as emotional, physical, and social reactions. Conclusions While musical dislikes have already been shown to fulfill important social functions, the current study extends the rationales to music-related and self-related reasons. Musical dislikes fulfill similar functions to liked music, such as preservation of a good mood, identity expression and construction, strengthening of group cohesion as well as social distinction.

All studies for the present paper involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of the Max Planck Society; the participants provided their written informed consent to participate in these studies. The questionnaire data for these studies will be made available via a repository. I declare that there are no conflicts of interest.We would like to thank Sandro Wiesmann for help with data collection in the interview and group testing sessions, Freya Materne und Claudia Lehr for managing the participants and Ines Schindler for critical feedback on an earlier version of the manuscript.

The current study explored the structure of rationales for musical dislikes. In an online survey, participants (N = 627) evaluated self-selected styles and artists in a slight and strong degree of dislike condition with respect to 41 reasons for musical dislikes distilled from a previous interview study. After constructing nine subscales of reasons, a latent profile analysis identified two profiles of explanatory strategies for disliked music. The highbrow profile included reasons such as the music being Too Simple, or Not Authentic, having No Impact on the listener, and a perceived Social Incongruence, and was mainly associated with a dislike of German schlager, traditional music, and pop. The lowbrow profile included reasons such as the music being Too Niche and Too Complex and was associated with a dislike of jazz, classical music, heavy metal, and techno. A correlational network revealed that Displeasure can occur in relation to Social Incongruence, or in relation to Too Niche music. No Impact occurs in response to music regarded as Too Simple or Not Authentic. A strong dislike is consistently characterized by higher Displeasure, while Social Incongruence and Not Authentic were reasons to strongly dislike artists from mainstream styles. Hence, investigating fundamental musical value judgments, the current study shows that musical dislikes are a complex, multidimensional component of musical taste. The results have implications for the psychology and sociology of music, widening our understanding of people's attitudes toward music and its role in everyday life.

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