Studies: Music Tastes Can Reveal Your Personality

What does it actually say about you if you love chart pop hits, or prefer unwinding with some bass-heavy dance tracks or heavy metal? Probably not what you expect.

The Daily Mail reports multiple scientific studies have investigated the personality traits associated with different music genres, and come up with some unexpected facts, like the fact that psychopaths are most likely to enjoy No Diggity by Blackstreet.

If you like popular, chart-topping music, you’re more likely to be an agreeable person. Meanwhile, people who listen to extreme heavy metal about violence are actually no more likely to be violent themselves (and in fact just find ‘joy’ in the music).

We listen to music by people like us

When we choose music, we often choose music by people who we think are like us, a 2020 study showed. So for example, David Bowie fans are drawn to him because of his slight weirdness and neuroticism, and Radiohead fans are drawn to the band because of their ‘open’, experimental nature.

The research based on 80,000 fans and 50 famous musicians asked fans to give personality ratings for the public persona of each artist - and found that people naturally gravitate towards artists that are similar to themselves.

So Marvin Gaye fans tend to be agreeable, like the public persona of the musician, where Ozzy Osbourne fans tend to be more obnoxious and ‘disagreeable’, the researchers say.

Dr David Greenbeg of Bar-Ilan University, said: 'In today's world, where social divisions are increasing, our studies are showing us how music can be a common denominator to bring people together.'

Study co-author Dr Sandra Matz, from Columbia Business School, said: 'The findings can pave the way for new approaches for record companies or music management to target and build audiences.'

Like big bass, and cannot lie?

Big bass lines are an unavoidable feature of modern music, but you might be surprised by what a fondness for basslines says about your personality. A 1997 study in the journal Personality and Individual Differences found that men are more likely than women to enjoy music with ‘exaggerated’ bass.