Skip to main content

Personality and Music

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

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