Music and personality: what connection do they have?

All Urban Tribe or youth ideological movement are established on the basis of certain characteristic signs: aesthetics, some more or less outlined ethical principles, but mainly some well-defined musical tastes.

The beat generation danced to the rhythm of jazz, the hippie movement listened to folk and sixties rock at festivals such as Woodstock, the yuppies with Love over gold by Dire Straits. Goths and emos shudder with dark songs. And these are just a few examples. Music that marked a generation, or music that a youth social movement made its own.

Music and personality: a real pairing?

Despite what we usually believe, music does not explain our way of beingWe use music to identify ourselves with the vital and political positions that we consider most valid, but there is no close link between that identification and our actions.

Dismantling cliches

Let's take an example: the harsh aesthetic and violence that surrounds heavy metal does not correspond to the personality of its followers: a large part of them are kind, peaceful people and even with a tendency towards

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 how he narrates it Christopher Drösser in his book The seduction of music:

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

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 do so, we would be playing on a terrain of cheap demagoguery and we would use the prejudices imposed by the mass media and youth television series.

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

From the survey designed by North and Hargreaves, it could be noted that lhe personality of heavy metal fans is very similar to classical music fans, although their study does clarify that the latter have a higher self-esteem than the former, on average. So, despite the fact that musical styles differ greatly, not to mention the costumes that each musical style proposes, the classics and the long-haired ones could be categorized within the same profile psychological.

Other research carried out at the University of Queensland, Australia, led by F. Baker and W. Bor (2008), support the previous conclusions, thus 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

The North and Hargreaves study yielded the following data:

• Music lovers Blues have high self-esteem, are creative, kind and outgoing
• Those who prefer music Jazz and the Soul they get the same adjectives as blues lovers
• Those who prefer the Rap and the Opera
• Subjects who prefer classical music are the same as the above, except that they are introvert
• Lovers of Country they are hardworking and extroverts
• Those who enjoy it Reggae were reported as somewhat lazy, and also creative, kind, extroverted and with high self-esteem
• Those who like to listen to music Dance they are creative and outgoing, but not overly friendly
• The crazy ones of the music Indie have low self-esteem, are creative, unkind and not very hardworking
• The followers of music Rock Y Heavy metal have low self-esteem, are creative, not very hard-working, introverted, and kind

It should be remembered that these data were obtained by crossing data from tests of personality and musical preferences, and only indicate statistically significant trends; correlations. Obviously, this does not mean that listening to certain musical styles "transforms" our personality.

Personality: a complex and multi-causal concept

Consequently, the psychic state is a priori, and from this point on, each individual allows himself to be conquered by that music that fits his personality. Sometimes listening to music with depressing melodies or lyrics in someone's ears does not mean that it is a trigger. to depress many of their listeners, but, on the contrary, sometimes this type of music helps to overcome low moments of cheer up.

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

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