The present study examined the relationship between music preferences, values, and musical identities in a sample of 606 Greek college students. Students indicated the importance of music in defining and evaluating themselves and their values on an abbreviated version of the Schwartz Value Survey (Schwartz, 1992). A typology of music preferences was revealed, with five factors: sophisticated and complex (e.g., jazz); native-Greek traditional (e.g., ‘rebetika’); sentimental and sensational (e.g., pop); established rebellious (e.g., rock); and non-mainstream dissonant (e.g., punk). Hierarchical regression analyses showed that values and perceived importance of music to self-definition (i.e., musical identities) contribute differentially in predicting the music preference structures, for example self-transcendence predicted established rebellious and conservation predicted sentimental and sensational; also musical identity was positively related to established rebellious and negatively to sentimental and sensational. These findings are discussed and interpreted within a psychological, as well as an interdisciplinary, theoretical framework.
Considerable research on music psychology indicates correlations between musical preferences and individual differences in personality, between the various uses of music and personality traits, and between musical preferences and personal values. However, the association between personal values and the multiple ways in which music is used has not been considered yet. To investigate this issue, 400 participants completed a self-report questionnaire comprising the uses of music, personality traits, and personal values, as well as provided their demographic details. The hierarchical regression analyses revealed that both personality and personal values along with gender contribute differentially to predicting the different ways in which music is used. Overall, these findings suggest that the understanding of the ways in which listeners experience music can be improved by contemplating various individual difference variables.
Although there is a robust research framework describing several motivational factors explaining cultural consumption behavior, most of these research endeavors do not rely on specific theories. Therefore, based on three psychological approaches and previous research, this study aims to identify the main motives of people consuming various cultural goods (i.e., books, recorded music, historical monuments, and festivals). To further extend current studies, this research suggests a hierarchical structure of consumer needs and investigates the motivational differences between cultural consumption behavior and demographic variables (gender and age). A structural equation modeling was employed to confirm the structure of the consumers' drives indicating that six motives (entertainment, escapism, cultural exploration, learning/curiosity, family togetherness, and socialization) can sufficiently describe individuals' needs. The above dimensions can be sorted into three higher‐order types of motivation, which are the emotional, cognitive, and social ones. The results also revealed that there are significant differences in motivation depending on cultural participation as well as demographic variables. The current findings are important not only for academics, but also for art practitioners, who need to develop effective marketing strategies, increase consumer satisfaction, and meet their economic objectives.
Given the ubiquity of art in almost all human societies, why is it that participation in the arts is so diverse? To address this question, the present study examined demographic and motivational variables as predictors of arts attendance in a sample of 480 participants, and whether any significant differences appear among attendees at different venues. The ordinal logistic regression identified income, entertainment, and art interest as predictors of arts attendance, with income leading to greater attendance at several art forms. Subsequent analyses also unveiled significant differences in demographic and behavioral characteristics among concert hall attendees, museum visitors, cinema goers, and theater audiences. Taken together, these findings illustrate that audience behavior is selective and incited by conscious awareness of a person’s unique needs. From an applied perspective, adequate knowledge of human functioning will enable arts managers to attract new audiences, without neglecting their responsibility towards art, culture, and education.
Ample evidence suggests that people prefer types of music that allow them to portray an image to others, yet less is known about the process through which listeners’ characteristics influence musical preferences. This study, therefore, examined the association between values and musical preferences, and whether uses of music mediate, at least in part, this association in a sample of 364 participants. Multiple regressions revealed that values contributed differentially to the prediction of musical preferences. We also found that cognitive use of music partially mediated the association between openness to change values and preferences for music emphasizing both complexity and rebelliousness. Moreover, the association between conservation values, as well as self-transcendence values, and a preference for music emphasizing positive emotions was partially mediated by emotional use of music. These findings underscore the importance of accounting for specific uses of music when examining how musical preferences express the values of its listeners.
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