The Psychology of Music

[rhythmaning]

I heard about about this piece of research on the radio yesterday morning.

Scientists from Heriot-Watt are looking at personality traits and musical preference.

Apparently liking classical music indicates "high self-esteem, creative, introvert and at ease" whilst jazz indicates "high self-esteem, creative, outgoing and at ease.

And if you like opera, you are "gentle".

You can take part in the research by completing the questionnaire here.

Comments

[parthenia14.livejournal.com]

I couldn't answer parts of the questionnaire at all, and the attitudinal stuff comes across as though it's been translated from the Norwegian.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I had to make some of the answers up - and I don't like "eiter/or" questions, because at different times I might feel like different options.

I thought the ideas were interesting, though.

[parthenia14.livejournal.com]

I couldn't do the parent questions. Both my parents are dead and I honestly don't have a replacement-figure to answer those questions in any meaningful way, so I couldn't complete it. Mehhh.

[kittenexploring.livejournal.com]

It's odd that they have such different questionnaire's for 16-23 and 24+. It might have been interesting to see the differences depending on when people were first indoctrinated into their culture.

They don't seem to try to make any distinction between a link between personality traits and music types vs personality traits and cultural attitudes to what sort of people like which music types, which is a shame. It's quite feasible that particular moods better match particular music regardless of upbringing rather than due to stereotype but they don't try to distinguish it. Probably due to impracticality as much as they didn't consider it.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I agree - I thought it ewas quite flawed - but interesting!