Research over the past decade has shown that various personality traits are communicated through musical preferences. One limitation of that research is external validity, as most studies have assessed individual differences in musical preferences using self-reports of music-genre preferences. Are personality traits communicated through behavioral manifestations of musical preferences? We addressed this question in two large-scale online studies with demographically diverse populations. Study 1 ( N = 22,252) shows that reactions to unfamiliar musical excerpts predicted individual differences in personality—most notably, openness and extraversion—above and beyond demographic characteristics. Moreover, these personality traits were differentially associated with particular music-preference dimensions. The results from Study 2 ( N = 21,929) replicated and extended these findings by showing that an active measure of naturally occurring behavior, Facebook Likes for musical artists, also predicted individual differences in personality. In general, our findings establish the robustness and external validity of the links between musical preferences and personality.

References

Abrams, D. ( 2009 ). Social identity on a national scale: Optimal distinctiveness and young people’s self-expression through musical preference . Group Processes & Intergroup Relations: GPIR, 12, 303 – 317 .

Google Scholar SAGE Journals | ISI

Bonneville-Roussy, A., Rentfrow, P. J., Xu, M. K., Potter, J. ( 2013 ). Music through the ages: Trends in musical engagement and preferences from adolescence through middle adulthood . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105, 703 – 717 .

Google Scholar Medline | ISI

Brown, R. A. ( 2012 ). Music preferences and personality among Japanese university students . International Journal of Psychology, 47, 259 – 268 .

Google Scholar Medline | ISI

Bruner, G. C. ( 1990 ). Music, mood, and marketing . Journal of Marketing, 54(4), 94 – 104 .

Google Scholar SAGE Journals | ISI

Camerer, C. F., Dreber, A., Forsell, E., Ho, T.-H., Huber, J., Johannesson, M., . . . Wu, H. ( 2016 ). Evaluating replicability of laboratory experiments in economics . Science, 351, 1433 – 1436 .

Google Scholar Medline | ISI

Camerer, C. F., Nave, G., Smith, A. ( 2017 ). Dynamic unstructured bargaining with private information and deadlines: Theory, experiment, and outcome prediction via machine learning. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Google Scholar

Carter, E. C., McCullough, M. E. ( 2014 ). Publication bias and the limited strength model of self-control: Has the evidence for ego depletion been overestimated? Frontiers in Psychology, 5, Article 823. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00823

Google Scholar

Chong, I.-G., Jun, C.-H. ( 2005 ). Performance of some variable selection methods when multicollinearity is present . Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems, 78, 103 – 112 .

Google Scholar ISI

Colley, A. ( 2008 ). Young people’s musical taste: Relationship with gender and gender-related traits . Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 38, 2039 – 2055 .

Google Scholar ISI

Delsing, M. J. M. H., ter Bogt, T. F. M., Engels, R. C. M. E., Meeus, W. H. J. ( 2008 ). Adolescents’ music preferences and personality characteristics . European Journal of Personality, 22, 109 – 130 .

Google Scholar ISI

George, D., Stickle, K., Rachid, F., Wopnford, A. ( 2007 ). The association between types of music enjoyed and cognitive, behavioral, and personality factors of those who listen . Psychomusicology: A Journal of Research in Music Cognition, 19(2), 32 – 56 .

Google Scholar

Goldberg, L. R., Johnson, J. A., Eber, H. W., Hogan, R., Ashton, M. C., Cloninger, C. R., Gough, H. G. ( 2006 ). The International Personality Item Pool and the future of public-domain personality measures . Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 84 – 96 .

Google Scholar ISI

Greenberg, D. M., Baron-Cohen, S., Stillwell, D. J., Kosinski, M., Rentfrow, P. J. ( 2015 ). Musical preferences are linked to cognitive styles . PLOS One, 10(7), Article e0131151. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0131151

Google Scholar

Greenberg, D. M., Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D. J., Monteiro, B. L., Levitin, D. J., Rentfrow, P. J. ( 2016 ). The song is you: Preferences for musical attribute dimensions reflect personality . Social Psychological & Personality Science, 7, 597 – 605 .

Google Scholar SAGE Journals | ISI

Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., Norenzayan, A. ( 2010 ). The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33, 61 – 83 .

Google Scholar Medline | ISI

Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D., Graepel, T. ( 2013 ). Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 110, 5802 – 5805 .

Google Scholar Medline | ISI

Lane, A., Luminet, O., Nave, G., Mikolajczak, M. ( 2016 ). Is there a publication bias in behavioural intranasal oxytocin research on humans? Opening the file drawer of one laboratory . Journal of Neuroendocrinology, 28(4). doi:10.1111/jne.12384

Google Scholar Medline

Langmeyer, A., Guglhör-Rudan, A., Tarnai, C. ( 2012 ). What do music preferences reveal about personality? Journal of Individual Differences, 33, 119 – 130 .

Google Scholar ISI

Lindenbaum, O., Maskit, S., Kutiel, O., Nave, G. ( 2010 , December ). Musical features extraction for audio-based search. Paper presented at the IEEE 26th Convention of Electrical and Electronics Engineers , Israel . doi:10.1109/EEEI.2010.5661916

Google Scholar

Logan, B. ( 2000 ). Mel frequency cepstral coefficients for music modeling . Paper presented at the International Symposium on Music Information Retrieval , Plymouth, Massachusetts . Retrieved from http://ismir2000.ismir.net/

Google Scholar

Matz, S. C., Gladstone, J. J., Stillwell, D. ( 2016 ). Money buys happiness when spending fits our personality . Psychological Science, 27, 715 – 725 .

Google Scholar SAGE Journals | ISI

Matz, S. C., Kosinski, M., Nave, G., Stillwell, D. ( 2017 ). Psychological targeting as an effective approach to digital mass persuasion . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , USA , 114, 12714 – 12719 . doi: 10.1073/pnas.1710966114

Google Scholar

Miranda, D., Claes, M. ( 2008 ). Personality traits, music preferences and depression in adolescence . International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 14, 277 – 298 .

Google Scholar

Nave, G., Camerer, C., McCullough, M. ( 2015 ). Does oxytocin increase trust in humans? A critical review of research . Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10, 772 – 789 .

Google Scholar SAGE Journals | ISI

Nosek, B. A., Alter, G., Banks, G. C., Borsboom, D., Bowman, S. D., Breckler, S. J., . . . Yarkoni, T. ( 2015 ). Scientific standards: Promoting an open research culture . Science, 348, 1422 – 1425 .

Google Scholar Medline | ISI

Ogden, J. R., Ogden, D. T., Long, K. ( 2011 ). Music marketing: A history and landscape . Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 18, 120 – 125 .

Google Scholar

Open Science Collaboration . ( 2015 ). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science . Science, 349, aac4716 . doi:10.1126/science.aac4716.

Google Scholar Medline | ISI

Palmer, S. E., Griscom, W. S. ( 2013 ). Accounting for taste: Individual differences in preference for harmony . Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 20, 453 – 461 .

Google Scholar Medline | ISI

Reise, S. P., Moore, T. M., Haviland, M. G. ( 2010 ). Bifactor models and rotations: Exploring the extent to which multidimensional data yield univocal scale scores . Journal of Personality Assessment, 92, 544 – 559 .

Google Scholar Medline | ISI

Rentfrow, P. J., Goldberg, L. R., Levitin, D. J. ( 2011 ). The structure of musical preferences: A five-factor model . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 1139 – 1157 .

Google Scholar Medline | ISI

Rentfrow, P. J., Goldberg, L. R., Stillwell, D. J., Kosinski, M., Gosling, S. D., Levitin, D. J. ( 2012 ). The song remains the same: A replication and extension of the MUSIC model . Music Perception, 30, 161 – 185 .

Google Scholar Medline | ISI

Rentfrow, P. J., Gosling, S. D. ( 2003 ). The do re mi’s of everyday life: The structure and personality correlates of music preferences . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 1236 – 1256 .

Google Scholar Medline | ISI

Rentfrow, P. J., McDonald, J. A., Oldmeadow, J. A. ( 2009 ). You are what you listen to: Young people’s stereotypes about music fans . Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 12, 329 – 344 .

Google Scholar SAGE Journals | ISI

Revelle, W. R. ( 2017 ). psych: Procedures for personality and psychological research [Computer software]. Retrieved from https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/psych/index.html

Google Scholar

Saarikallio, S., Erkkilä, J. ( 2007 ). The role of music in adolescents’ mood regulation . Psychology of Music, 35, 88 – 109 .

Google Scholar SAGE Journals

Schäfer, T., Mehlhorn, C. ( 2017 ). Can personality traits predict musical style preferences? A meta-analysis . Personality and Individual Differences, 116, 265 – 273 .

Google Scholar ISI

Schäfer, T., Sedlmeier, P. ( 2009 ). From the functions of music to music preference . Psychology of Music, 37, 279 – 300 .

Google Scholar SAGE Journals | ISI

Simons, D. J. ( 2014 ). The value of direct replication . Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9, 76 – 80 .

Google Scholar SAGE Journals | ISI

Steiger, J. H. ( 1980 ). Tests for comparing elements of a correlation matrix . Psychological Bulletin, 87, 245 – 251 .

Google Scholar ISI

Stone, M. ( 1974 ). Cross-validatory choice and assessment of statistical predictions . Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B: Statistical Methodology, 36(2), 111 – 147 .

Google Scholar ISI

Tibshirani, R. ( 1996 ). Regression shrinkage and selection via the lasso . Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B: Statistical Methodology, 58(1), 267 – 288 .

Google Scholar

Vuoskoski, J. K., Eerola, T. ( 2011 ). The role of mood and personality in the perception of emotions represented by music . Cortex, 47, 1099 – 1106 .

Google Scholar Medline | ISI

Yarkoni, T., Westfall, J. ( 2017 ). Choosing prediction over explanation in psychology: Lessons from machine learning . Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12, 1100 – 1122 .

Google Scholar SAGE Journals | ISI

Yeoh, J. P. S., North, A. C. ( 2010 ). The effect of musical fit on consumers’ memory . Psychology of Music, 38, 368 – 378 .

Google Scholar SAGE Journals | ISI