Musical Preferences and Personality Development Are Parents Vs. Teenagers Excessive Wars About Music Preferences Justified?

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What is more, parents usually perceive heavy music as being inappropriate for teenagers because it might influence his or her personality development in a negative way; however, most parents know nothing about the actual correlation between music preferences and personalities. Many psychologists have done several experiments within the topic of music preferences and personalities which almost always showed the same or similar results – that a person can be perceived based on his or her favorite music or that music preferences of adolescents can predict their future identity development. Almost all the studies divide people undergoing the experiments into five categories that originate from the five-factor model of traits describing different personality types created by Costa and McRae in 1992 (Schwartz & Fouts, 2003). These five factors are 1.) Extroversion, 2.) Openness to Experience, 3.) Neuroticism, 4.) Conscientiousness, and 5.) Agreeableness. However, this topic has been also approached in a slightly different way – by grouping music genres into more particular categories than simply labeling them as heavy or light music, as mentioned earlier. Peter Rentfrow and Samuel Gosling (2003) divided music genres into four groups: 1.) Reflective and Complex, including classical music, jazz, blues, and folk music; 2.) Intense and Rebellious, including rock, metal alternative, 3.) Upbeat and Conventional, including pop, country, religious music or soundtracks, and 4.) Energetic and Rhythmic, including dance music, electronic music, soul, funk, hip hop, or rap. Later on, some of the other researchers examined peoples’ music preferences and their personalities in a more detailed sense by actually breaking the music groups back into individual music genres, which provided even better idea of the correlation between personalities and music preferences. A psychology professor Adrian North from the Curtin University in Australia asked over 36,000 people in over 60 countries about their music preferences and conducted a survey that helped him determine the key aspects of peoples’ personalities at the same time (Collingwood, 2008). Based on his findings, people can easily figure a person out just by asking them about their favorite music genre because he classified people based on the preferences in details as follows:

Music Genre

Personality Aspects

Blues

High self-esteem, outgoing, gentle, creative, at ease

Bollywood

Outgoing, creative

Classical

High self-esteem, creative, at ease, introvert

Country

Outgoing, hard-working

Dance

Outgoing, creative, not gentle

Indie

Low self-esteem, creative, not gentle, not hard-working

Jazz

High self-esteem, outgoing, creative, at ease

Opera

High self-esteem, gentle, creative

Pop

High self-esteem, outgoing, hard-working, gentle, not at ease, not creative

Rap

High self-esteem, outgoing

Reggae

High self-esteem, outgoing, at ease, creative, gentle, not hard-working

Rock & Heavy Metal

Low self-esteem, gentle, creative, at ease, not outgoing, not hard-working

Soul

High self-esteem, outgoing, at ease, gentle, creative

While some of these findings may not be surprising, others may be actually quite bewildering for most people. For example, many people would think that those preferring rock and metal music are rude, violent, and oozing confidence while those listening to classical music lack the confidence. Parents usually think of their children’s preferences this way, and that is why they are so concerned about their personality developments. However, as it can be seen, the correlation between music preferences and personalities may not be viewed correctly by parents.

To conclude, many teenagers lead endless wars against their parents because of their music preferences. While teenagers consider their parents as annoying and impercipient, parents are just being concerned about their children’s future. Their worries are, however, often exaggerated because they have biased perceptions of how much music preferences influence a person’s personality. Truly, music preferences and personalities correlates, but there are several factors that prove that the correlation may not always be as high as people would think. Teenagers’ choices of favorite music often depend on various factors, such as social and family issues, or peer pressure, which can strongly influence their personality development, but the preferences may not always be constant because there are teenagers who do not have any particular music preferences - in other words, their choice of music is affected by different situations they face every day. Additionally, parents usually judge some music genres incorrectly. For example, they often think that rock, metal, and punk music have a very negative effect on teenagers because they view it as loud and violent, which makes them worried that their children will turn out to be rude rogues. However, there are studies that clearly show otherwise. Nevertheless, teenagers’ personalities are being developed within different environments with many other factors that all play a rather significant role in the development process, so the outcome is not dependable exclusively on music preferences. Even a seemingly calm teenager who prefers classical and peaceful music may later in his or her life become violent or commit a suicide.

References

Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2011, January 14). The psychology of musical preferences. Retrieved July 12, 2014, from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mr-personality /201101/the-psychology-musical-preferences

Collingwood, J. (2008). Preferred music style