The aim of this research was to examine the relationship between music preferences of different mode and tempo and personality traits. The survey included 323 students who had to fill out the following tests: questionnaire of music preferences, scale of optimism and pessimism and International Personality Item Pool for measuring Big Five personality traits. Results showed that female in comparison to male students reported a higher degree of music preferences, regardless of tempo and mode, while the male and female showed a higher degree of preference for musical fragments in the fast tempo and major key. Results of hierarchical regression analysis showed that emotional stability and optimism were significant predictors of preferences for music in fast tempo and major key, while openness to experiences, introversion and gender were significant predictors of preferences for the slow tempo and music in minor key. The authors suggest the importance of applying these results in creating the curriculum of music teaching.
IntroductionMusical preferences are the simplest form of affective response to music, and the result of many factors. There are several theoretical efforts defining musical preferences that have provoked great research interest. LeBlanc's model of musical preferences (LeBlanc 1982) is an interactive and hierarchical model, which assumes several levels of interactive factors that affect individual's musical preferences. Model includes variables which are related to musical and cultural characteristics (friends, family, teachers), and some of them are related to the listener (gender, personality traits, musical abilities, etc.). The characteristics of the listener filter input variables and then the listener decides whether they like certain music or not.According to the theory of music preferences (Rentfrow and Gosling 2003), personality traits, cognitive abilities and self-concept are three important factors involved in creating the musical preferences of the individual. Trying to identify the underlying patterns of listening, Rentfrow and Gosling (2003) singled out, by means of factor analysis of the data on the degree of liking different music examples, four dimensions of musical preference: a reflective-complex (blues, jazz, classical and folk music), intense-rebellious (rock, alternative, heavy metal music),