Personality

Individuals differ from each other in terms of their particular emotional, attitudinal, and behavioral response patterns. Personality traits are a way of explaining what people are like and how they act in a variety of situations. Understanding which personality factors contribute to individual differences in musical behavior, and how, can help show why different people prefer different kinds of music, and why different people react to a given piece of music differently. Perhaps there is something in common in the personalities of people who like similar styles of music and react similarly to certain kind of music?

The bulk of studies investigating the role of personality in musical behavior have focused on music preferences. This may be because individual differences seem inherent to matters of taste, with music preferences greatly varying from one individual to the next. It is also often assumed in folk psychology that people with similar taste for music are also similar in more fundamental ways. Research has shown that there are some consistent associations between certain personality traits and the preference for certain kinds of music, although the proportion of variance explained by personality traits is relatively modest. In other words, other factors besides personality, such as previous experiences and exposure to certain kinds of music, also contribute to music preferences.

Although studies from other fields have shown that personality plays a crucial role in emotional processes, the role of personality in music-induced emotions has received relatively little attention until recently. However, recent results seem to suggest that there are consistent, trait-congruent associations with certain personality traits and certain kinds of emotional responses, although further research is still required to clarify the pattern of associations. Another line of research that has been neglected until recently concerns the associations between personality traits and the ways in which people use music in everyday life. Because music is almost omnipresent in the modern world, the everyday functions and uses of music are of great significance for understanding the associations between personality and musical behavior.