The Social Psychological Underpinnings of Musical Identities

Abstract

Abstract We explore how personality stereotypes are linked to musical preferences. Whereas previous literature has focused on how these stereotypes are based on information gained from genre labels, we show how personality stereotypes are derived from actual musical stimuli. Specifically, based on judges’ perceptions of 102 musical pieces of music from 26 genres, we show that there is shared agreement of the personality stereotypes associated with music preferences, these stereotypes are differentiated by the type of music preferred, and attributes in the music are better predictors of stereotypes than genre-based classifications. We suggest that future research extend these findings to examine the role of social perception in musical engagement. Further, we emphasize the importance of future work to explore the musical identities of musicians—particularly in the case of artistry where the musician and the music they produce become nearly one in the same.