What your music taste actually says about 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.

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).

And if you like exaggerated bass in music, it could be bad news.

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.

So are extroverts – and also people who are psychotic.

The researchers, led by William McCown, wrote, ‘Personality was measured with the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire.

Results showed that Psychoticism, gender, and Extraversion are all positively related to preference for enhanced bass.

Music to be murdered by?

Real-life psychopaths are not like the classical music-loving Hannibal Lecter – and are actually more likely to enjoy retro rap, a study found.

No Diggity and Eminem’s Lose Yourself were enjoyed by people with the highest scores for psychopathy in a 2017 study.

The least psychopathic people enjoyed Sia’s Titanium and My Sharona by The Knack.

The research was part of a preliminary unpublished study by New York University in 2017, which hoped to find a way to identify psychopaths without their consent – and which focused on 260 songs and 200 volunteers who had also self-administered a psychopathy test.

Study leader Pascal Wallisch said in 2017: ‘The media portrays psychopaths as axe murderers and serial killers, but the reality is they are not obvious; they are not like The Joker in Batman.

‘They might be working right next to you, and they blend in. They are like psychological dark matter.

‘You don’t want to have these people in positions where they can cause a lot of harm. We need a tool to identify them without their cooperation or consent.’

Empathetic people prefer mellow music

A 2015 study by musician and researcher Dr David Greenberg – who has performed multiple studies into music preferences, but also performs as a jazz musician – found that the way we think is strongly linked to music tastes.

The research with volunteers found a stark divide between empathetic people and ‘systematizers’ who think of things in a more machine-like way.

The research found that people who are more empathetic prefer mellow music – R&B, soul, soft rock.

People who are more systematizing (ie less emotional) tend to prefer intense music including punk, heavy metal and hard rock.

Violent music doesn’t mean you’re violent

Listening to violent music such as extreme heavy metal doesn’t mean people are violent – and instead, it’s a geeky hobby like battle re-enactments.

A study played one particularly horrific track to listeners and then tested how desensitized they were to violence – then compared the results to what happened when they listened to ‘Happy’ by Pharrell Williams.

Viewers were shown violence-related images to see if they were desensitized by the song Eaten by Blood Bath, which revolves around a real-world case in which a man killed and ate a voluntary victim in Germany in 2001.

The researchers found no evidence that the music desensitized listeners.

Prof Bill Thompson, from the Australian University said, ‘The fans are nice people. They’re not going to go out and hurt someone.’

‘The dominant emotional response to this music is joy and empowerment. And I think that to listen to this music and to transform it into an empowering, beautiful experience – that’s an amazing thing.’