Music and Us

What would our world be without music? And how would humans live without music? Would we be hollow and empty? What does music do to us and why is it so important in our lives? We are surrounded by music every day and rarely consider these questions or the effect they have on our lives.

There is both experiential and scientific evidence about how music influences us, how it impacts us, and how it helps us live our lives. Today, I want us to explore how music relates to our personalities. Our personalities are the stable characteristics, qualities, and patterns of our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and behaviours that make each one of us distinct from the others. When individuals listen to the same music, it will impact them differently depending on their personality. We may actually like or dislike the music depending on how our personality responds or interacts with that particular genre of music.

Experts in Psychology such as Jason Rentfrow and Sam Gosling have demonstrated in their studies that we can actually use an individual’s list of music preferences to accurately predict their personalities. Similarly, we can use music to aid the personal development of our children or inculcate certain personalities or skills in adults. There also exists scientific evidence on how music helps in our psychosocial, intellectual, and personal development. Therefore, when music is not revealing who we are, it is transforming and creating new personalities within us.

How Music Reveals Who We Are

Music can turn a sorrowful person into a happy person and a sad person into a joyful one. There are popular associations between our music preferences and our character traits. For example, there are beliefs that people who listen to Rap or Hip Hop are violent and aggressive. Also, people who listen to country music or Jazz are thought to be outgoing, conservative, and sophisticated. Most are myths but some are actually true and backed by research. In this article, we differentiate between facts and myths. I examine what research shows about the relationship between the kind of music we prefer to listen to and our personality traits. By use of the Short Test of Music Preferences (STOMP) scale, Psychologists Jason Rentfrow and Sam Gosling categorized music into four categories which then helped them to analyze the personalities of the people who listened to music in each of the four categories. These musical categories are "reflective and complex," "intense and rebellious," "upbeat and conventional" and "energetic and rhythmic. By knowing in which of these categories the music your friend listens to belongs, you can accurately predict their personalities as I demonstrate below.

Music and our levels of Extraversion or Introversion

Broadly speaking, humans are often classified by the use of these two personality types out of the Big Five personality types. They are the most common among other personality types such as agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. Although research is still limited on the relationship between our music preferences and our personality types, researchers are increasingly studying this relationship. For example, a study by Adrian North, Individual Differences in Musical Taste, published in the American Journal of Psychology, revealed the relationship between an individual’s personality type and the kind of music genre they listened to. The study found that those who listen to Pop, Jazz, Soul, and blues have high levels of extraversion and self-esteem. If your friend listens to Rap or Hip Hop, chances are that they have high self-esteem and are outgoing. Those of our friends who listen to classical music are most likely to have introverted personalities and be conservative.

According to Jason Rentfrow and Sam Gosling, individuals who listen to "upbeat and conventional" music score highly on extraversion. They also have a high self-perceived physical attractiveness. If they view themselves as physically attractive, then they must also have high levels of self-esteem. Music in this category includes country music, religious or sacred music, and pop. This study agrees with the one conducted by North that showed that individuals who listen to pop music have high levels of extraversion.

Those of Us Open to New Experiences

Persons who love listening to heavy metal, punk, alternative rock, hip-hop, and rap are less conservative and hence are highly open to new experiences. This is contrary to lovers of country and jazz music who are conservative. According to Rentfrow and Gosling, people who are open to new experiences love listening to music that falls in the category of ‘Intense and Rebellious’. The music genres in this category include rock and heavy metal. These individuals are risk takers and this can explain their openness to new experiences. Other individuals who are open to new experiences love dance music.

The creative type

Rentfrow and Gosling’s study found that those who love to listen to jazz and classical music are creative and have higher IQ scores. These individuals are also inventive, and imaginative and highly value aesthetical experiences. They also consider themselves intelligent and this can explain why they might be creative. Their creative personalities can also be explained by the fact that these music categories have complex composure characteristics. Do you have a friend who loves attending Jazz concerts? Do you see any traits of creativity in them? North found Pop lovers to be less creative.

Who are the violent ones?

In our daily interactions with the listeners of rock and heavy metal, they project personalities of anger, aggression, and bravado. These are our friends who are likely to cause trouble in social gatherings, especially when they are excited or intoxicated. The study by North, however, showed that those who listen to Rock and heavy metal are gentle, creative, and introverted in terms of their real personality. It, therefore, follows that we often misjudge our friends who love rock and heavy metal.

Our friends who love dance music score low on being gentle. Scoring low on the gentleness scale, however, does not translate to being violent. The study by North found that lovers of country music are emotionally stable. If so, they are less likely to be violent.

Other Personality Pointers We Can Decipher from Music

People who listen to Pop and Country music are hardworking. Those who listen to country music are found to be conservative. According to North, pop lovers are honest. Our friends who love dancing are most likely very assertive besides being outgoing.

How Music Shapes Us

Apart from music revealing our personalities, it can also help us to develop certain skills. Below are some scientifically backed evidence on how music can help develop certain skills in children and adults.

Impact of Music on Early Childhood Development

Research in various disciplines such as Psychology, Neuroscience, and Music confirms that exposing children to music impacts their intellectual and social development. When children are exposed to music at an early age, their brains develop the ability to encode sound. This ability in turn strengthens the child’s listening and aural processing skills. As a result, the children who are introduced to music at an early age perform better than those who were not exposed to music in areas such as verbal memory, language skills, and general literacy. Therefore, when children are exposed to music at an early age, they are more likely to outperform their counterparts whose exposure to music was limited in terms of intellectual abilities and academic performance.

Look around your neighborhood and I believe you will easily notice the differences between children that are exposed to music and those that are not. One major differentiator is that the children who listen to music will respond to this music whenever it is played even far away from their homes. If they are too young to speak, they will at least show increased levels of alertness. If they have developed motor skills, they might nod their heads or move their legs or hands in response to music. For children that can speak, you will often hear children sing and dance to music they have listened to. This is mostly the popular music in their hood because even if they do not listen to it with their parents, they hear it often from neighbours, in malls, and other public spaces. Not forgetting that these days children have access to lots of media where they can listen to and watch music videos. I personally get thrilled whenever I hear children beautifully sing lyrics that I do not even know. These children are often cheerful. They are more active than their agemates who have limited access to music.

When children join school, it is common for teachers to use music in teaching. Apart from music enhancing the children’s abilities to remember what they were taught, music also helps cultivate personalities within the children as they learn. For example, group music teaches children how to engage with their mates. This in turn enhances the children’s teamwork and collaboration skills.

Impact of Music on Adults

Music can help adults in social integration and teamwork. This has been demonstrated on various fronts. One common example that most of us can relate to is team-building activities. Apart from giving staff members a chance to take a break from work, have fun, and re-energize, team-building activities also have the objective of enhancing cohesiveness within the staff. One aspect of the teambuilding events that is always present is group music. Just like group music for children, group music enhances adults’ teamwork abilities. Therefore, music enables us to cooperate with each other for common objectives. Soldiers and players also find motivation for their common objective to win from group music.

When inmates are released, they are often disengaged from their communities. Music, particularly group music, has successfully been used to re-engage these people with their communities and thus promote social cohesion. The simple rationale here is that it is harder to ignore or discriminate against a person who plays a crucial part in the system. Engaging inmates in community musical activities thus helps them to develop social skills that they had lost while incarcerated. It also gives the community an opportunity to engage and interact with those released from prisons.

As demonstrated in this article, music is very significant in both forming us and revealing who we really are. By understanding the type of music a person loves listening to, it is possible to accurately predict their personality. We can also use music to aid in the development of our children and inculcate certain values in adults. Music streaming service providers such as Spotify use machine learning to predict the personality types of their listeners and thus be able to suggest songs and playlists that suit who they are. After reading this article, take time to analyse the types of music you love listening to, and try to understand who you are, and whether you are comfortable selling yourself as that person to your friends and colleagues. Take time to also observe your children and understand the people they are growing into and if that aids in their desirable intellectual and psychosocial development.