Personality and music: Can traits explain how people use music in everyday life?

Abstract

This paper reports the results of a study on the relationship between individual differences and specific uses of music, referring to why and how people use music in everyday life. Questionnaire data from 341 respondents showed that open and intellectually engaged individuals, and those with higher IQ scores, tended to use music in a rational/cognitive way, while neurotic, introverted and non-conscientious individuals were all more likely to use music for emotional regulation (e.g. change or enhance moods). Results suggest that individual differences in personality and cognitive ability may partly determine the way in which we experience music. Limitations and suggestions for future studies are discussed.

Personality correlates of reporting Chinese words from the Deutsch “high-low” word illusion by Chinese-speaking people

“…Our findings are also in line with the report that positive music makes people more likely use happy words in their continuations while negative music makes them more likely to use sad words [44] . In our participants, the number of reported meaningful Chinese words was positively correlated with ZKPQ impulsive sensationseeking, aggression-hostility and activity traits, which supports the idea that personality traits influence the perception of music [22][23][24][25][26] .…”

“…Participants who scored higher on activity and reported Chinese words relating to this trait might mobilize the cognitive schema for preferring challenging work, or situations associated with an active life. Indeed, individuals with the conscientiousness trait are more likely to have a rational, or cognitive use for music [23,50] , and conscientiousness is co-loaded with activity in a group of American students [37] .…”

“…In addition, overly positive self-perception appears to be a kind of illusion, which implies that personality trait is correlated with illusion perception [18,21] . Personality traits are also involved in the emotional response to or preference for music [22][23][24][25][26][27] :…”

The Effects of Background Auditory Interference and Extraversion on Creative and Cognitive Task Performance

“…For instance, studies have examined the associations between music and social behaviour (e.g., North, Hargreaves, & McKendrick, 2000;O'Donnell, MacDonald, & Davies, 1999), social identity formation (e.g., Tarrant, North, & Hargreaves, 2004), emotionality (Juslin & Sloboda, 2001), and personality (e.g., Chamorro-Premuzic & Furnham, 2007;Chamorro-Premuzic, Swami, Furnham, & Maakip, 2009). …”

Preface to the special issue on personality in personalized systems

“…that personality factors have significant correlations with media content, such as music (Rentfrow and Gosling 2003;Chamorro-Premuzic and Furnham 2007), which made it a good candidate for personalization techniques. Early research in the usage of personality in personalization has been done in addressing the new user problem in recommender systems (Tkalčič et al 2009;Hu and Pu 2010).…”