Skip to main content

Personality and Music

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences
  • 125 Accesses

Introduction

Music is culturally ubiquitous (Blacking 1995). Today, people in the Western world spend between 15% and 44% of their waking lives listening to it (Bonneville-Roussy et al. 2013; Juslin et al. 2008; Motion Picture Association of America 2007; North et al. 2004; Sloboda et al. 2001). Research from neuroscience, social science, and the music sciences (i.e., music psychology, music cognition, and music perception) has shown that varied aspects of musical behavior is rooted in both biology and culture (Levitin 2006; Rentfrow 2012). There are individual differences in how people perceive music, the music that is preferred, and the ways in which people perform it. This chapter discusses how individual differences in musical perception, preferences, and performance are differentiated by personality traits. Though theory and research has investigated how musical behavior is linked to personality using a variety of models (e.g., Jungian types, dark triad of personality) and...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Benedek, M., Borovnjak, B., Neubauer, A. C., & Kruse-Weber, S. (2014). Creativity and personality in classical, jazz and folk musicians. Personality and Individual Differences, 63, 117–121.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blacking, J. (1995). Music, culture & experience. Selected papers of John Blacking. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boer, D., Fischer, R., Strack, M., Bond, M. H., Lo, E., & Lam, J. (2011). How shared preferences in music create bonds between people: Values as the missing link. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37, 1159–1171.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bonneville-Roussy, A., Rentfrow, P. J., Xu, M. K., & Potter, J. (2013). Music through the ages: Trends in musical engagement and preferences from adolescence through middle adulthood. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105, 703.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bouchard, T. J., & McGue, M. (2003). Genetic and environmental influences on human psychological differences. Journal of Neurobiology, 54, 4–45.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buss, D. M. (2009). An evolutionary formulation of person-situation interactions. Journal of Research in Personality, 43, 241–242.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cameron, J. E., Duffy, M., & Glenwright, B. (2015). Singers take center stage! Personality traits and stereotypes of popular musicians. Psychology of Music, 43, 818–830.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cattell, R. B., & Anderson, J. C. (1953). The measurement of personality and behavior disorders by the I. P. A. T. Music Preference Test. Journal of Applied Psychology, 37, 446.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cattell, R. B., & Saunders, D. R. (1954). Musical preferences and personality diagnosis: I. A factorization of one hundred and twenty themes. Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 3–24.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Digman, J. M. (1990). Personality structure: Emergence of the Five-Factor Model. Annual Review of Psychology, 41, 417–440.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Doi, H., Basadonne, I., Venuti, P., & Shinohara, K. (2018). Negative correlation between salivary testosterone concentration and preference for sophisticated music in males. Personality and Individual Differences, 125, 106–111.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Drayna, D., Manichaikul, A., De Lange, M., Snieder, H., & Spector, T. (2001). Genetic correlates of musical pitch recognition in humans. Science, 291, 1969–1972.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fricke, K. R., & Herzberg, P. Y. (2017). Personality and self-reported preference for music genres and attributes in a German-speaking sample. Journal of Research in Personality, 68, 114–123.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fricke, K. R., Greenberg, D. M., Rentfrow, P. J., & Herzberg, P. Y. (2018). Computer-based music feature analysis mirrors human perception and can be used to measure individual music preference. Journal of Research in Personality, 75, 98–102.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gillespie, W., & Myors, B. (2000). Personality of rock musicians. Psychology of Music, 28, 154–165.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goldberg, L. R. (1992). The development of markers for the Big-Five Factor structure. Psychological Assessment, 4, 26–42.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Greenberg, D. M., & Rentfrow, P. J. (2017). Music and big data: A new frontier. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 18, 50–56.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Greenberg, D. M., Baron-Cohen, S., Stillwell, D. J., Kosinski, M., & Rentfrow, P. J. (2015a). Musical preferences are linked to cognitive styles. PLoS ONE, 10, e0131151.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Greenberg, D. M., Müllensiefen, D., Lamb, M. E., & Rentfrow, P. J. (2015b). Personality predicts musical sophistication. Journal of Research in Personality, 58, 154–158.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Greenberg, D. M., Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D. J., Monteiro, B. L., Levitin, D. J., & Rentfrow, P. J. (2016). The song is you: Preferences for musical attribute dimensions reflect personality. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7, 597–605.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gregersen, P. K., Kowalsky, E., Kohn, N., & Marvin, E. W. (1999). Absolute pitch: Prevalence, ethnic variation, and estimation of the genetic component. American Journal of Human Genetics, 65, 911.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hogan, J., & Hogan, R. (1993). Ambiguities of conscientiousness. Paper presented at the annual conference of the society for industrial and organizational psychology. San Francisco.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jang, K. L., Livesley, W. J., Riemann, R., Vernon, P. A., Hu, S., Angleitner, A., … Hamer, D. H. (2001). Covariance structure of neuroticism and agreeableness: A twin and molecular genetic analysis of the role of the serotonin transporter gene. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 295–304.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Juslin, P. N., Liljeström, S., Västfjäll, D., Barradas, G., & Silva, A. (2008). An experience sampling study of emotional reactions to music: Listener, music, and situation. Emotion, 8, 668–683.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kemp, A. (1981a). The personality structure of the musician: I. Identifying a profile of traits for the performer. Psychology of Music, 9, 3–14.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kemp, A. E. (1981b). Personality differences between the players of string, woodwind, brass and keyboard instruments, and singers. Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, 66–67, 33–38.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kemp, A. E. (1996). The musical temperament: Psychology and personality of musicians. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Levitin, D. J. (2006). This is your brain on music: The science of a human obsession. New York: Dutton Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Limb, C. J., & Braun, A. R. (2008). Neural substrates of spontaneous musical performance: An fMRI study of jazz improvisation. PLoS ONE, 3, e1679.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCrae, R. R., & Greenberg, D. M. (2014). Openness to experience. In D. K. Simonton (Ed.), The Wiley-Blackwell handbook of genius (pp. 222–243). Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • McDermott, J. H., Schultz, A. F., Undurraga, E. A., & Godoy, R. A. (2016). Indifference to dissonance in native Amazonians reveals cultural variation in music perception. Nature, 535, 547.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Motion Picture Association of America. (2007). Entertainment industry market statistics. Retrieved from http://www.mpaa.org/USEntertainmentIndustryMarketStats.pdf

  • Müllensiefen, D., Gingras, B., Musil, J., & Stewart, L. (2014). The musicality of non-musicians: An index for assessing musical sophistication in the general population. PLoS ONE, 9, e89642.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nave, G., Minxha, J., Greenberg, D. M., Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D., & Rentfrow, J. (2018). Musical preferences predict personality: Evidence from active listening and facebook likes. Psychological Science, 29, 1145–1158.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • North, A. C., Hargreaves, D. J., & Hargreaves, J. J. (2004). Uses of music in everyday life. Music Perception, 22, 41–77.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oikkonen, J., Huang, Y., Onkamo, P., Ukkola-Vuoti, L., Raijas, P., Karma, K., … Järvelä, I. (2015). A genome-wide linkage and association study of musical aptitude identifies loci containing genes related to inner ear development and neurocognitive functions. Molecular Psychiatry, 20, 275–282.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Power, R. A., & Pluess, M. (2015). Heritability estimates of the Big Five personality traits based on common genetic variants. Translational Psychiatry, 5, e604.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pulli, K., Karma, K., Norio, R., Sistonen, P., Göring, H. H. H., & Järvelä, I. (2008). Genome-wide linkage scan for loci of musical aptitude in Finnish families: Evidence for a major locus at 4q22. Journal of Medical Genetics, 45, 451–456.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rentfrow, P. J. (2012). The role of music in everyday life: Current directions in the social psychology of music. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 6, 402–416.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sandgren, M. (2018). Exploring personality and musical self-perceptions among vocalists and instrumentalists at music colleges. Psychology of Music, 0305735618761572.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schäfer, T., & Mehlhorn, C. (2017). Can personality traits predict musical style preferences? A meta-analysis. Personality and Individual Differences, 116, 265–273.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sloboda, J. A., O’neill, S. A., & Ivaldi, A. (2001). Functions of music in everyday life: An exploratory study using the experience sampling method. Musicae Scientiae, 5, 9–32.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Swaminathan, S., & Schellenberg, E. G. (2018). Musical competence is predicted by music training, cognitive abilities, and personality. Scientific Reports, 8, 9223.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Swann, W. B., Jr., Rentfrow, P. J., & Guinn, J. S. (2003). Self-verification: The search for coherence. In M. R. Leary & J. P. Tangney (Eds.), Handbook of self and identity (pp. 367–383). New York: Guildford Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Theusch, E., Basu, A., & Gitschier, J. (2009). Genome-wide study of families with absolute pitch reveals linkage to 8q24.21 and locus heterogeneity. American Journal of Human Genetics, 85, 112–119.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ullén, F., Mosing, M. A., Holm, L., Eriksson, H., & Madison, G. (2014). Psychometric properties and heritability of a new online test for musicality, the Swedish Musical Discrimination Test. Personality and Individual Differences, 63, 87–93.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vernon, P. A., Martin, R. A., Schermer, J. A., & Mackie, A. (2008). A behavioral genetic investigation of humor styles and their correlations with the Big-5 personality dimensions. Personality and Individual Differences, 44, 1116–1125.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vuoskoski, J. K., & Eerola, T. (2011). The role of mood and personality in the perception of emotions represented by music. Cortex, 47, 1099–1106.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vuoskoski, J. K., & Eerola, T. (2017). The pleasure evoked by sad music is mediated by feelings of being moved. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 439.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vuoskoski, J. K., & Thompson, W. F. (2012). Who enjoys listening to sad music and why? Music Perception, 29, 311–317.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wallmark, Z., Deblieck, C., & Iacoboni, M. (2018). Neurophysiological effects of trait empathy in music listening. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 12, 66.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilkins, R. W., Hodges, D. A., Laurienti, P. J., Steen, M., & Burdette, J. H. (2014). Network science and the effects of music preference on functional brain connectivity: From Beethoven to Eminem. Scientific Reports, 4, 6130.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to David M. Greenberg .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Section Editor information

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Greenberg, D.M. (2019). Personality and Music. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_2325-1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_2325-1

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

Publish with us

Policies and ethics