RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MUSIC PREFERENCE AND PERSONALITY 3 Relationship Between Music Preference and Personality in a College Student Sample

The purpose of this study was to examine if music genre preference, personality, and individual differences are correlated. This study used a 73 question survey with questions from the Big Five Inventory-44 (John, 1999) and the Depression, Anxiety, Stress Scale-21 (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995). It was predicted that individuals who preferred rock music would score higher in the openness to experience section of the survey as well as high on the depressive thoughts scale. It was also predicted that those who indicated they preferred pop music would score high in extraversion. This study had 324 participants; 235 (72.5%) identified as females, while 80 (24.7%) of them identified as males. It was found that there was a significant correlation between music preference and anxiety, stress, and openness to experience. There were also several significant differences between genres for mean scores in neuroticism, openness to experience, agreeableness, extraversion, and depression. This data implies that there is a correlation between music genre preference, certain personality traits, and individual differences. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MUSIC PREFERENCE AND PERSONALITY 3 Relationship Between Music Preference and Personality in a College Student Sample Music appears to be an important element in most societies. In the United States, music is played almost everywhere; from grocery stores to sporting events. Additionally, people opt to listen to music on their own by purchasing albums, streaming music online, and downloading songs off the internet. Studies have shown that each individual has their own unique taste for music and preference for certain music genres (Corrigall & Schellenberg, 2015). However, since the study of music preferences is still relatively new there are still several questions left unanswered; including “how are individual differences related to music preference? ” There were a few scientists who think that a person’s individual differences, including personality, can correlate with what type of music they like. In this study’s case, one set of individual differences being looked at was the “Big Five” personality traits: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. There were also some scientists who have examined other individual differences that have a relationship with preferred music genre. For this study, the second set of individual differences included participants’ levels of stress, anxiety, and depression along with their demographics: age and race. There has been little research done on music’s relationship with personality and other individual differences, but the studies that have been done yielded similar results; there is a correlation between music genre preference and certain Big Five personality traits. The personality traits that have had consistent associations are openness to experience and extraversion. Specifically, rock music and openness to experience have had consistent associations as well as extraversion with pop and rap/hip-hop (Corrigall & Schellenberg, 2015; Langmeyer, 2012; Swami, 2013; Brown, 2012). Correlations with agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism have not been as consistent. For example, a study done by Alexandra Langmeyer (2012) found a corRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MUSIC PREFERENCE AND PERSONALITY 4 relation between individuals who preferred classical and rock music and individuals who scored high in openness to experience; these same individuals were found to dislike pop music. This study classified music genres into groups like “upbeat”, “reflective”, and “rebellious” and each group contained more than one music genre. This was considered a problem because each genre contains a wide variety of songs that can be upbeat, reflective, depressing, etc. so it was inaccurate of them to group genres in that way. Langmeyer also had participants listen to short audio clips and rate them to determine music preference. This is an additional problem for the same reason the grouping is a problem; music genres are too diverse to only have one song represent them. Langmeyer used the Big Five Inventory to measure personality traits, which was chosen for the present study. Another study’s results showed that a strong preference for heavy metal music (a sub-genre of rock music) was correlated with openness to experience as well as depressive thoughts (Swami, 2013). Swami’s study looked at Big Five personality traits as well as personality facets outside of the Big Five; however, they only focused on heavy metal alone by having participants listen to and rate 10 different heavy metal audio samples. Shafron and Karno’s study indicated that heavy metal listeners displayed higher anxiety and depression levels than non-listeners (2013). Their study followed a similar model to Swami’s study. In another study done by R.A. Brown, the focus was on music preferences and personality in Japan (2012). This study found that openness to experience and “aesthetic appreciation” were correlated with a preference for jazz, classical, opera, gospel, and enka, which are referred to as reflective genres. Another finding from the same study was that extraversion, or sociability, was associated with pop music (Brown, 2012). This study served as a model for which genres to include in the preference choices. In Zweigenhaft’s 2008 study women gave higher ratings to pop music than men did. Women also gave higher ratings to international, gospel, and punk. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MUSIC PREFERENCE AND PERSONALITY 5 This study examined whether or not music preference, personality, and individual differences were correlated. This is significant because of the lack of research regarding music, personality, and individual differences together as well as the lack of research on a wide variety of music genres. Previous research done differs from this study because they rely on participant’s to listen to audio clips and rating them as opposed to self-reporting their favorite genre. It is important to examine multiple music genres because it helps make the data more generalizable, strengthen external validity, and it allows the subject pool to be larger. Based on previous research, it was predicted that individuals who reported a preference for rock music would score higher in the openness to experience section of the survey than the other genres as well as high on the depressive thoughts scale. Also based on the previous literature, it was predicted that the participants who indicated they preferred pop music would score high in extraversion. Methods Participants The participants that were included in this study were students at a university in the state of Michigan. All participants were required to be over the age of 18 and had to report listening to music at least once or twice a week. These participants were recruited using email and took the survey online via Qualtrics. The participation in this study was completely voluntary and the participants’ identities remained confidential. There was no way for the researcher to trace any data back to any of the participants.