Has any link been shown between any personality characteristics (I’m most interested in intelligence but anything else would be interesting) and taste in music? Similarly has any link been shown to be unlikely with respect to any personality characteristics? Extend the above question to anything about the human, e.g. do men or women, or brown or blue eyed people, have different predictable tastes that can be shown to be not to do with culture?
(Question inspired cause I think metalheads are far more intelligent than your average pop fan, but I want to hear about more general research)
I don’t think it’s so easy to separate cultural and personal influences. When I consider my own taste(s) in music, I can trace it down to many different influences. The combination of these influences may be unique.
There’s clearly some substantive difference between people who just listen to whatever’s on the radio and people who actively seek out other music, but I kinda doubt there’s any other strong association.
:dubious: Not a very widely shared opinion, I think. (I doubt whether even most metalheads believe it. I doubt whether anybody who is not a metalhead believes it. Headbanging and intelligence don’t really seem likely to be positively correlated.)
To be honest, all of the truly intelligent people who I know listen to a genre of music that was recorded between say 1965 and 1978 (ish). I really doubt that new university graduate engineers are listening to Pink Floyd or The Beatles much.
I doubt that a preference for Taylor Swift versus The Doors correlates well with intelligence quotients.
I doubt you’d see much difference with the tastes defined so broadly as by genre. I do wonder what you would see if you got more specific. Like, say, if you compared Rush fans to AC/DC fans. I have this nagging feeling there might be some difference.
Some people are not fans of anyone specific genre. Their typical playlist may contain everything from Kanye West to Philip Glass. Perhaps such people were not as plentiful back in the olden days before internet downloads. But now it is possible to be a fan of just about anything.
I wonder if there’s something to be said for the diversity of one’s music library. Someone who has a little bit of knowledge about a lot of different genres would be more impressive to me than someone who is fixated exclusively on one genre. But this would correlate more with degree of cultural exposure than intelligence. An innately inquisitive person will tend to have high exposure, but a dullard with a big social circle can have this too.
Why wouldn’t I be serious? I can’t see how there wouldn’t be significant differences between those 2 groups in the aggregate. You don’t think there would be?
No. I like them both. In fact, as embarrassing as it is to admit for a Canadian, I probably like AC/DC more. Well, that is if you’re talking about Bon Scott AC/DC. Brian Johnson AC/DC was really good, but I prefer the original.
Anyway, I like Rush too. Your point was, if I’m not mistaken, is that there may be an intelligence correlation between Rush fans and AC/DC fans? I can’t support that theory.
That wasn’t quite what I meant, but if I had to guess…I’d guess there probably is. I’m not going to claim it would be a huge difference, but I’m a fan of both, too, and have seen their crowds. Sure, there’s some overlap, but I think there’s a noticeable difference.
What I really meant, was a difference in the number of introverts vs. extroverts. Surely you can agree that Rush fans are more introverted than AC/DC fans.
I’ve come across people who are quite proud of the diversity of their musical library. However, once I hang out with these people a bit more, I usually discover that even if they own music of several different genres, they tend to listen to a certain genre the most.
That’s certainly my personal experience. (I mean, I don’t have a huge variety of music, but I certainly listen to more than one genre.) My favorite genre is country music, but I have a bit of rock, pop, techno, hip hop, etc. for the times when I just get tired of listening to country.
I also imagine most people like different music for different circumstances, e.g., having a different type of music in the background while relaxing than would be playing during an intense workout.
I do think that alot of extremely technical heavy metal is more appealing to left-brained people. Its very unsentimental and not emotionally satisfying. The connection is more through the intellect than through the “heart.”
So if you are going by current music scenes, I agree to some extent.
Personality characteristics linked to music? Sure, I think there are links out there which exist, but one has to be very careful with prejudices. Music has strong links to culture, and so in a number of situations, you can understand some collective traits of certain people. But, again, care must be taken to avoid generalizations…interestingly enough, assumptions about music can lead to a lot of unintelligent discussion, lol.
That said, I don’t believe there is any strong or direct link between intelligence and musical preference. Both are highly subjective, and as alluded to above, a lot of it is tied to culture, and by extension, exposure.
Also, where would a line be drawn, between, say, someone who appreciates a given sound, but doesn’t actively seek out and listen to the music? In a nutshell, while some music may be more complex than others, understanding it demonstrates one level of intelligence, but actively liking it, doesn’t necessarily say much.
