Personality and world music preference of undergraduate non-music majors in South Korea and the United States

Abstract

We investigated contributors of undergraduate nonmusic majors’ preferences for world musics, specifically those from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Drawing upon the reciprocal feedback model as a theoretical framework, we determined the extent to which predictor variables (familiarity with the music, personality, and music absorption) were related to music preference. Participants were 401 undergraduate nonmusic majors from South Korea ( n = 208) and the USA ( n = 183). Participants took an online survey via Qualtrics that included demographic information, the World Musics Preference Rating Scale, the Big-Five Inventory, and the Absorption in Music Scale. Results indicated that, familiarity, followed by openness to experience, was the strongest predictor of participants’ preferences for world musics. For the U.S. participants, familiarity, followed by openness to experience, was the strongest predictor of participants’ preference for musics from each continent. By contrast, for the South Korean participants, although familiarity was also the strongest predictor for African, Latin American, and Asian musics, openness to experience was not consistently the second strongest contributor. For African music, openness to experience was ranked second; for Latin American and Asian music, agreeableness and music absorption were ranked second, respectively.