To get even more specific, the music empathizers liked tended to be softer, more depressing, and have more emotional depth. Systemizers, meanwhile, grooved to things that were high-energy, animated, and complex. Empathizers liked strings; systemizers liked distorted, loud, and “percussive.”

They also came up with some, uh, playlists for people who find themselves solidly in either the empathizer or systemizer category.

High on empathy:

“Hallelujah” – Jeff Buckley

“Come Away With Me” – Norah Jones

“All of Me” – Billie Holliday

“Crazy Little Thing Called Love” – Queen

High on systemizing:

Concerto in C – Antonio Vivaldi

Etude Opus 65 No 3 — Alexander Scriabin

“God Save the Queen” – The Sex Pistols

“Enter Sandman” – Metallica

* * *

Music taste has long been thought to offer a window to the soul. (Past research has found, for example, that open-minded people are more likely to enjoy the blues, jazz, and folk, while extraverts like pop, electronica, and religious music.) It’s why people at parties ask each other “What music do you listen to?”

Still, this study doesn’t account for the fact that the answer to that question is, more often than not, “A little bit of everything.” Many people listen to Avicii when they run and to Bon Iver when they’re writing a memo in an open-plan office. It’s hard to imagine someone who listens only to Norah Jones on loop—although I would like to meet that person and ask them for stress-management tips.

The results could still be helpful, though, when it comes to things like understanding autism (some think people with autism are just extreme systemizers), or in determining whether listening to different types of music could help people build empathy.

Or, perhaps less nobly but more lucratively, the findings could be useful for companies like Pandora and Spotify.

“A lot of money is put into algorithms to choose what music you may want to listen to,” Greenberg said in a release. “By knowing an individual’s thinking style, such services might in future be able to fine tune their music recommendations to an individual.”