What about prescription drugs?

Dave Munger has posted the results of the survey on music preference and substance use I wrote about last week. The important result: "Far from being wine snobs, it appears that most Classical fans prefer to avoid pretty much all mind-altering substances." That's because the music blows our minds, dude! Seriously, the results do debunk many stereotypes, except Electronica fans and their precious Ecstasy.

This is Your Drugs on Music

Dave Munger is asking you to reveal your bad habits, and he also wants to know what drugs you use. Seriously, he is looking at any connections between favorite music and recreational pharmacology:

So while we know the stereotype of rock fans is that they prefer beer and marijuana to wine and cocktails, the Rentfrow and Gosling study can't tell us whether the stereotype is true. Today's study addresses that limitation.

The study is mostly anonymous, though IP information is initially recorded. So if you are running for president, you may not want to take the survey and reveal to the world that your favorite subgenre of alternative rock is emo.

You young'uns don't know who you are!

I wrote previously about research on the correlations between personality and music preference. A new study by Jeremy Dean, et al has some interesting results. The participants filled out a personality questionnaire which measured their strength in five personality factors: extraversion, openness to experience, neuroticism, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. These participants also took the Short Test of Musical Preferences (STOMP). STOMP is basically the same as the online test I linked to, except STOMP has only 14 music categories, whereas the online version adds Bluegrass, New Age, International, Reggae, Gospel, Opera, Oldies, Punk, and separates Funk from Soul/R&B. STOMP gives a result in four music preference dimensions: Reflective & Complex (Classical, Blues, Folk, and Jazz), Intense & Rebellious (Alternative, Rock, and Heavy Metal), Upbeat & Conventional (Country, Religious, Pop, and Soundtracks), and Energetic & Rhythmic (Dance/Electronica, Rap/hip-hop, and Soul/funk). I don't see the point in these dimensions if there isn't acknowledged overlap of genres. Pick dimensions that each genre has different strengths (averaged), so a true multidimensional picture can be developed. Ahem!

Dean, Yu & Epps broke the participants into two groups by age: 18-30 years, and over 30 years. The younger group had only two correlations between music preference dimensions and personality traits: openness to experience correlated with Reflective & Complex (r = .4) and with Intense & Rebellious (r = .19). The older group had four correlations: the two from the younger group plus conscientiousness correlated with Upbeat & Conventional (r = .29) and agreeableness also correlated with Upbeat & Conventional (r = .31). They interpret these results as an indication that younger listeners have not settled in their social identities, which affects their musical preferences.

Do you think personality traits should be compared with genre preferences, or preferences based on more abstract musical traits like timbre, tempo, or loudness? I'd be very interested to see results based on the latter, since genres are not monolithic.

(via)

Know me, know my music

Over at ScienceBlogs, Chris writes about two social psychologists who have studied the links between musical preference and personality type. Chris describes it very well, so I won't go into the details. I will quibble with the researchers' claims that music has not been studied by social psychologists. "Despite its prevalence in everyday life, however, the sound of music has remained mute within social and personality psychology."
Two major books dispute this claim:

I used both of these in my Psychology of Music class, which detail research similar to Rentfrow's and Gosling's.

There is an online test of this research that you can partake in. Here is My Music Personality, and here is Chris's top 10 list. I found this post via Dave Munger.