Preferred Music Genre: The Influence of Major Personality Factors

Abstract

Personality traits and musical preferences were obtained and analyzed using the IPIP Five Factor Inventory from Buchanan (2001) and questions regarding preferred musical characteristics similar to those used in a study by Schwartz (2004). The goal was to see if certain types of people (in regard to personality) prefer certain types of music. In addition, Sensation Seeking as defined by Zuckerman (1979) was used as another facet of personality and as a second independent variable. There were 170 students surveyed. Significant main effects were found for Sensation Seeking and Openness to experience, meaning that participants higher in these characteristics tended to prefer harder forms of music.

Social Influence in Rating Music

“…PSYCHOLOGICAL TOPICS, 32 (2023), 1, 163-178 In the reciprocal feedback model of responses to music, Hargreaves and North (2011) proposed that aesthetic responses to music depend on the characteristics of the listener, the music, and the listening situation. For example, listener's characteristics such as age (LeBlanc et al, 2006), personality (Higdon & Stephens, 2008;Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003;Schwartz & Fouts, 2003), and expertise (Lundy & Smith, 2017) were found to affect musical preferences. The liking of a certain musical piece is affected by familiarity (Pereira et al, 2011;Schubert, 2007) and subjective complexity of the piece (Güçlütürk & van Lier, 2019).…”