What your taste in music says about your personality

According to the study, which personality trait is associated with upbeat, danceable music? Credit: Prostock-studio/Shutterstock

This splashy heading from Inc.com reads:

Here's what your taste in music says about your personality, according to a huge new study. whether you like Mozart or metal really does reveal something about your personality, new research finds

 

This was a correlational study, and provides a good chance to practice concepts from Chapter 3 and 8. Here is how the journalist summarized the methods and results:

...researchers from University of Cambridge and Israel's Bar-Ilan University used an online quiz to extract information on the musical preferences and personalities of more than 285,000 study subjects from 53 countries (you can try the quiz yourself here). They also set up a website where 71,000 visitors from 34 countries rated music clips and took a personality quiz. 

The team used well-known, scientifically validated frameworks for categorizing both music and personality. The aptly named "Music" framework categorizes music using five dimensions: mellow, unpretentious, sophisticated, intense, and contemporary. The familiar Big 5 personality framework categorizes people according to openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, neuroticism, and agreeableness. 

Did the research team find any correlations between the type of music someone enjoyed and their personality type? Yup, reported the researchers recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 

a) You could think of this study as having two big variables or ten smaller variables. What would be the two "big" variables? What would be the ten smaller variables? 

b) What makes this a correlational study? 

c) Here is a description of one of their results:

Extroverts the world over tend to like upbeat, danceable contemporary music. 

Sketch a well-labelled scatterplot of this correlation. 

d) Here is another result: 

The study found fans of the Nirvana classic "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and other intense music are higher in neuroticism on average.

Sketch a well-labelled scatterplot of this correlation. 

e) Here is a third result:

Those high in conscientiousness tended to avoid more intense music...

Sketch a well-labelled scatterplot of this correlation. 

f) And here's one more:

Looking for an agreeable type? Then put on some Marvin Gaye and see how they react. The researchers found a strong correlation between liking mellow music and being high in agreeableness.

 

g) Now, here are two quotes from the journalist's article. For each quote decide which of the four big validities this point is addressing.

 

1. The team used well-known, scientifically validated frameworks for categorizing both music and personality. 

2. They ... set up a website where 71,000 visitors from 34 countries rated music clips and took a personality quiz. 

 

h) What is a question you could ask about this study's statistical validity?

 

i) Inc.com is a business magazine, so they framed the study in terms of job hiring:

 

Despite its sometimes dubious scientific basis, the personality testing industry rakes in around $2 billion annually telling companies their new hire is an INFJ or revealing her Hexaco type. [This] study suggests your business might be able to save some money and just ask candidates about their taste in music instead. 

What do you think? Does the research study support the idea that we could use music preferences in job interviews to select certain personality traits? Why or why not?  (to read the Inc.com take on this question, read the full article).