The Personalities of Popular Musicians

Abstract

In this study, the personality characteristics of rock and country musicians were examined. One hundred and seventy-one musicians completed Inter-personal Adjective Scale-Big Five (IASR-B5) measures of personality. The results suggest that such musicians tend to be more arrogant, dominant, ex-traverted, open to experience and neurotic than university males. However, no significant differences were found among singers, guitarists, bass players and drummers.

Personality related traits as predictors of music practice: Underlying environmental and genetic influences

“…Kemp (1996) reported that musicians are relatively more introverted, independent, sensitive, and anxious compared to non-musicians. Compared to population norms, musicians have been shown to be higher on neuroticism and openness and some aspects of extraversion (Dyce & O'Connor, 1994;Gillespie & Myors, 2000), while differences in conscientiousness have been found between different types of musicians (Bell & Cresswell, 1984). A recent study showed that, in children, conscientiousness and openness was correlated with music practice; however, in hierarchical regression with cognitive variables included, only openness was significant (Corrigall, Schellenberg, & Misura, 2013).…”

Personality Traits and Psychological Symptoms of Music and Art Students

“…Music students, however, were found to have significantly higher neuroticism scores than art students did, and art students had higher conscientiousness scores than music students did. Paralleling these results, extraversion (Dyce & O'Connor, 1994;Feist, 1998;Steele & Young, 2011;Per & Beyoğlu, 2011) and openness to new experiences (Dyce & O'Connor, 1994;Feist, 1998;Gillespie & Myors, 2000) have been reported as distinguishing characteristics of musicians and artists. However, some studies have found that features of introversion were higher in musicians (Kemp, 1996) and in artists in general (Dutta Roy, 1996).…”

“…There are not many studies in the relevant literature related to the comparison of individuals in the field of music and art in respect to psychological symptoms. However, some earlier results showed that neuroticism tends to be high in musicians (Dyce and O'Connor, 1994;Gillespie & Myors, 2000) and psychoticism in artists (Booker, Feam and Francis, 2001) when compared with non-artists. There was some evidence for the relationship between creativity and bipolar disorders (Vellante, Zucca, Preti et al, 2011), schizotypal-positive schizotypy and hypomania-manic symptoms (Rawlings & Locarnini, 2008), and also higher substance-use, suicide rate, and mood disorders among artists (Papworth et al, 2008) .…”

Performance Psychology in the Performing Arts

“…A number of studies have examined aspects of personality, such as extraversion-introversion, with fi ndings that appear to vary with the samples studied (Bakker, 1988(Bakker, , 1991Buttsworth & Smith, 1995;Cribb & Gregory, 1999;Dyce & O'Connor, 1994;Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975;Gillespie & Myors, 2000;Hammond & Edelmann, 1991;Kemp, 1981Kemp, , 1996Marchant-Haycox & Wilson, 1992;Nettle, 2006a;Reardon MacLellan, 2011;Stacey & Goldberg, 1953;van Staden et al, 2009;Wilson, 1984). Many researchers noted unfavorable personality fi ndings for artists for traits such as neuroticism and emotionality (Bakker, 1988(Bakker, , 1991Dyce & O'Connor, 1994;Gillespie & Myors, 2000;Hamilton, Kella, & Hamilton, 1995;Kemp, 1981;Marchant-Haycox & Wilson, 1992;Nettle, 2006a;Taylor, 1997;Wills & Cooper, 1988). Th ese traits may well be worth further investigation due to their inherent link with stress and anxiety (McCrae & Costa, 1999).…”