rewrite music and personality

Some of the studies done ran over a longer period of time. The study by Jane Collingwood was done over a course of 3 years, and the Study conducted by Delsing, Engels, and Meeus was done of a period of four years. This was done to see if a person’s music preference would change over time. While this is a good way to see how personality and music choice relate to one another it wouldn’t be practical for my study since I only have a short period to collect data.

The research that has been done concerning this topic of interest have almost all concluded that personality does relate to music preference. In the article “Music Preferences and Personality Among Japanese University Students” they concluded that “the present findings support the hypothesis that musical preferences are related to aspects of personality, and specifically that preferences for general musical “dimensions” (in Rentfrow and Gosling’s 2003 conceptualization) are related to some of the five (or six) broad bands of personality (openness, emotionality, conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion, and possibly honest-humility.)” (Brown, 2012). It also was concluded that “personality exist that have effect on preferences regarding certain elements in works of music.” (Kopacz, 2005.) A few of the studies concluded that certain music types were linked to specific personality types.

According to Collingwood, “Blues fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, gentle and at ease, Jazz fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing and at ease, Classical music fans have high self-esteem, are creative, introvert and at ease, Rap fans have high self-esteem and are outgoing, Opera fans have high self-esteem, are creative and gentle, Country and western fans are hardworking and outgoing, Reggae fans have high self-esteem, are creative, not hardworking, outgoing, gentle and at ease, Dance fans are creative and outgoing but not gentle, Indie fans have low self-esteem, are creative, not hard working, and not gentle, Bollywood fans are creative and outgoing, Rock/heavy metal fans have low self-esteem, are creative, not hard-working, not outgoing, gentle, and at ease, Chart pop fans have high self-esteem, are hardworking, outgoing and gentle, but are not creative and not at ease, and Soul fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, gentle, and at ease.” (Collingwood, 2013). This coincides with the research done by Delsing, Engels and Meeus which concluded “Across different types of analyses, a consistent pattern of contemporary associations between music preferences and personality characteristics emerged. Adolescents who enjoy Rock tend to be relatively low on conscientiousness and relatively high on openness to experience. Adolescents who enjoy Elite tend to be relatively high on agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience and relatively low on emotional stability. Adolescents who enjoy Urban tend to be relatively high on extraversion and agreeableness, as are adolescents who enjoy Pop/Dance.” (Delsing, 2008, p. 125).

Some of studies focused on specific personality traits. The most commonly used were what is called the Big 5 personality factors. These include openness, emotionality, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and extraversion. These traits are some of the most common to define and they were able to use a personality test to differentiate the traits of the participants. This made it easier to see how the most prominent personality traits related to the music preferences and also limited the number of personality traits used so that the data was easy to analyze.

When it came to collecting the data all of the studies used some sort of survey or questionnaire. Whether it was a personality test, or Likert scale rating music preference, it seemed to be the most effective way to collect the information needed for the studies. Using surveys would be the most convenient, time saving method to use, even though you can’t get as in depth as you might want to when they are just answering questions on a piece of paper. Some of the studies had the participants listen to music and then rate the specific songs. This method would be beneficial because you would get an immediate response from the participant and you could experience their emotion from each song. This could also be beneficial since they might hear a song outside of their preferred genre that they like and this would show more of their personality. Another study had them make a personal top ten list. This method would beneficial because their top ten could consist of songs from many different genres of music, which could show how complex some people personalities are. A downfall of this method would also be the complexity added. If a person had multiple different types of music on their top ten list, the this could make the whole experiment a lot more complex and time consuming.

The participants’ physical well beings were not really in any danger of being harmed throughout the studies since they were only doing surveys and/or listening to music. While, there may have been some ethical issues with the way some of the studies were done. The study done by Vuoskoski and Eerola aimed to “compare the applicability of music-specific and general emotion models – namely the Geneva Emotional Music Scale (GEMS), and the discrete and dimensional emotion models – in the assessment of music-induced emotions. A related aim was to explore the role of individual difference variables (such as personality and mood) in music-induced emotions, and to discover whether some emotion models reflect these individual differences more strongly than others.” (Vuoskoski, 2011, p. 159.) Drawing emotional reactions for the purpose of their studies could prove to be an ethical issue since it could have a bad reaction on the participants’ emotional well beings. The study by Rentfrow and Gosling, “Message in a Ballad,” wanted to show that “that individuals’ music preferences convey consistent and accurate messages about their personalities. Additionally, the results suggest that specific attributes of individuals’ music preferences and music-genre stereotypes differentially influenced observers’ impressions of targets’ traits, values, and affect.” (Rentfrow, 2006, p. 241) This study is basically asking people to stereotype the other participants by judging them based off of their top ten music lists. This could make some of the participants uncomfortable since they would have to go against their morals to do this.

My research will focus on how music preference describes a person’s personality traits. My goal is to be able to describe a person’s personality traits by them saying their music preferences. My hypothesis is that a person’s music preference can describe their personality. I aim to prove this by conducting a research study. With this study I will find the commonalities between people who listen to the same genre of music. I aim to set a certain group of personality traits to each genre and therefore will be able to use this information to satisfy my goal of describing a person base off of their music preferences.

Method

Participants

The participants will be 10 graduate students from the Southern New Hampshire University. The students will consist of those enrolled in the Psy-510 class of the psychology graduate program. These students will participate on a completely volunteer basis during a period of one week. They will be from places all over the United States, and could be any age, 18 and over.

Materials

For this study the materials being used will be a computer with internet access and the Qualtrics website, in which the survey will be created on and also taken on. Qualtrics is a company that helps anyone create and conduct research surveys for any topic. The website allows for easy survey making and also makes it easy for the participants to take your survey. These materials are appropriate for this study because it is based on a survey which each participant will take. The website is needed to create the survey as well as for the participants to compete the survey and collect the data. A computer with internet access is important for this study because without this the participants would not have access to the survey.

Procedures

For my research I will be using surveys, as I believe these to be the most convenient and effective methods to collect the data I need. I will have two different surveys, one asking about personality and the other about music preference. I do believe that a person could like more than one genre of music and therefore, I will use a Likert scale for the music preference survey so that the participants have the option to rate exactly how much they like or dislike a certain genre of music. The personality test will measure basics areas of personality. Using the big five personality factors was a commonality between a lot of the studies that I referenced. This method seems to be very useful. I think that these five factors are a good starting point but would like to broaden them as to accommodate the participants who do like more than on genre of music. The survey will consist of a series of questions that will help determine the personality traits and music preferences of each of the participants. Each participant will answer the questions based on their personal beliefs and preferences. The surveys will be conducted though the Qualtrics website. This site will also collect the data given by the participants. The survey will be split into two sections, music preference and personality traits. The questions on music preference will consist of questions asking the participant to rate each type of music on a scale from 1-10 with 1 being least preferred and 10 being most preferred, as was done in the study “Music preferences and personality among Japanese university students.” The music types will be split into these different categories; Reggae, Country, Electronic, Hip Hop / Rap, Jazz, Pop, R&B, Rock, and Heavy Metal. The questions for personality traits will also be answered using a Likert scale. This scale will be a 1-5 scale where 1 is not at all and 5 is very much. The personality traits will be based off of the big 5 personality traits, openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. These procedures will address the research study because they will get the information needed from each participant that will help to prove my hypothesis.

Ethical Considerations

While there are no ethical issues that could result in any physical harm or damage to the participants, there may be some other types of ethical issues involved when collecting the data from the participants. Some of the participants may feel uneasy about truthfully answering questions about certain personal traits. They could lie and then throw the data off in order to try and put themselves in a different category of either music preference or personality trait. In order to keep this from happening and to prevent any ethical issues the surveys will be answered anonymously by the participant so that they are not known to the researcher or other participants.

Data Analysis Plan

Prepare Raw Data

In order to analyze the data, I will take the data collected from the survey and turn it into data that can be used to make an analysis of the results. I will utilize SPSS to input all of the data retrieved from the survey completed by the participants. I will use multiple variables. There will be one variable for each personality trait and also one variable for each type of music. I will compare the results of the personality trait questions with those of the music preference questions to see if there are any notable similarities between the participants’ preferences.

Analytic Procedures

After gathering all of the information into SPSS I will calculate the correlation coefficients to see if there are any correlations between the data to prove that music preference is related to personality. This will help to obtain valid and reliable results because it will compare the data and will calculate the similarities between different factors. I will also make use of scatterplots to visually show how the data is correlated. Another procedure I will use is the t-test to compare the variables to one another. I want to see if any of the test results show a significance.

Descriptive Statistics

Since I will be comparing the results of each student, I won’t be making any use of the standard descriptive statistics to analyze the data specific to my hypothesis. I am not interested in the mean, median or mode of any of the results. I am only interested in the actual results given by each participant and finding the correlation between them. The mean will come into play when determining the amount of males vs. females and also the average age of the participants in the study so that I can show the population a little more clearly.

Principles and Standards

The proposed data analysis methods are ethical, as outlined by the APA. Each participant is giving their consent when they volunteer to take part in the research study. No personal information will be shared. The data retrieved will only be used for informational purposes. Each participant’s personality will be evaluated based off of the answers they give in the survey. Only then will an opinion be formed about their personality traits, in order to compare them to their music preference.

Results

I predict that the results of this study will prove my hypothesis and show that a person’s music preference is related to their personality traits. I expect each of the 9 music categories will be representative of similar personality traits of the participants who like them. I believe that the results will show that those that listen to Rap music to be more outgoing and have high self-esteem. Those who listen to country will be outgoing. Reggae fans will be very laid back and have high self-esteem. Electronic/Dance music fans will be very outgoing. Rock music listeners will be less outgoing and have lower self-esteem. Pop music fans will be outgoing and have high self-esteem. R&B music fans will be relaxed with high self-esteem. Jazz music fans will be outgoing and have high self-esteem. These results will complement the articles in my references because they conclude that personality is linked to music preference, so I anticipate that my research will also prove this.

References

Brown, R. A. (2012). Music preferences and personality among Japanese university students. International Journal of Psychology, 47(4), 259-268. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate .net/publication/221750522_Music_preferences_and_personality_among_Japanese_university_students.

Chamorro-Premuzic, T., & Furnham, A. (2007). Personality and music: Can traits explain how people use music in everyday life?. British Journal of Psychology, 98(2), 175-185. doi:10.1348/000712606X111177.