If there's one thing I'm always good and finding, it's new and interesting ways to kill time on the internet. So when I ran into an online story with the header, "Musical Preferences Unite Personalities Across the Globe," it caught my eye.
It turns out there's a new study recently published by the University of Cambridge that finds a definitive link between a person's music preferences and their personality type. More to the point, this link appears universal across many different cultures.
For example, Ed Sheeran's song "Shivers" is just as likely to appeal to extroverts living in the UK as those who live in Argentina or India. Americans with self-defined neurotic traits gravitate to Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" just as frequently as neurotic personalities in South Africa or Denmark. Agreeable people all over the world seem to like Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On." Conscientious people all over the world hate Rage Against the Machine.
Without much variation, the researchers found positive correlations between extroverts and contemporary music, conscientiousness and unpretentious music, agreeableness and mellow music, and between openness and intense music.
Fascinating. And, also, DUH.
No offense to the hard-working researchers at the University of Cambridge, but you could learn as much from spending an hour hanging out at Co-Op Records in Moline. It doesnt seem like much of a newsflash to me that conscientious people don't often rage against machines. And what exactly defines "unpretentious music" anyways? (Theory: perhaps a banjo.)
I'm still trying to wrap my head around the point of this study. I guess it proves different cultures can maybe find common musical ground, but only if you're hanging out with like-minded people in those different cultures. I'm not quite sure what they were expecting to find. Did they think there's a magical foreign land where conscientious folks all sit around listening to death metal while neurotics prefer smooth jazz? Personally, I'm pretty sure smooth jazz CAUSES neurosis (make me listen to Kenny G. and I promise I'll be neurotic by nightfall.)
Supposedly these are the most widely accepted traits today for classifying personalities, but I don't consider myself to be especially extroverted, conscientious, agreeable, stable, OR open. Maybe that's why my list of favorite bands tends to be met by blank stares from anyone who's not a complete weirdo.
I was curious, though, so I followed the link that allows you to replicate the study in the privacy of your home. The website plays snippets of 25 songs, and you have to choose whether you extremely, very much, moderately, or slightly like or dislike each song clip.
Spoiler alert: I disliked all 25 of them -- a lot. Some were classical, and that's just not my bag. Others sounded like bad Nickelback knock-offs. One was just a laughably corny guitar solo. Another was a country song with the lyric, "somebody shot my neighbor today." There was a clip that sounded like the demo on a Casio keyboard. Another was a bland beat with someone yelling "ungh!" over it like your uncle doing James Brown karaoke. They were all dreadful.
Needless to say, the survey didn't reveal much about me. My preference for "contemporary" music was highest of all, likely because I only "moderately hated" those, as opposed to everything else which I "very much hated." Clearly, this survey needs to include one more personality trait: "snobby elitist dork who used to work at a record store and now thinks everything sucks except some band that only seven people in the world have ever heard of."
Maybe you can define someone's personality by their musical taste, but there's sure exceptions to the rule. One of my friends is very much an agreeable conscientious introvert. He also listens to nothing but Black Sabbath and 70s prog rock -- explain THAT, Cambridge. I own a lot of pretentious Radiohead records, but I also own just as many records by Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam. Musical tastes can be unique as snowflakes, and that's a GOOD thing in my book.
One thing about this study, though, is a success: It certainly helped me kill time on the internet. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go listen to some mellow contemporary music because I'm so gosh-darn agreeable.
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