Personality, Uses of Music, and Music Preference

What is it about?

This paper examines the intersection between personality and music preference, in addition to how personalities may use music for different purposes when listening to their preferred styles. A focus is provided on the personality traits of openness to experience (intellectually curious/sensitivity to beauty and art) and extroversion (outgoing/sociable) and the links to music preferences characterized as reflective/complex (e.g., jazz/blues) and energetic/rhythmic (e.g., R&B/hip-hop). Further, people rating high in openness were found to employ cognitive uses of music (attending to composition and instrumentation) when listening to jazz/blues and emotional uses of music (listening to alter or strengthen emotional experience) when listening to music characterized as intense/rebellious (e.g, rock/metal). Finally, gender differences were noted, whereby women were more likely to prefer upbeat/conventional music (e.g., pop), whereas men were more likely to prefer rock/metal.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Previous research has focused on personality and music preference OR uses of music and music preference, but has not combined the two areas of focus simultaneously. This paper synthesizes previous research to examine personality in concert with uses of music in relation to musical preference and as such represents a comprehensive contribution to the existing research on the topics.

Perspectives