What Does Your Musical Instrument Say About You: Analyzing Musical Instrument Preference And the Big 5 Personality Traits

Abstract

Personality traits have unique abilities to shine through every action, thought, and belief that an individual engages in. These traits, in addition to other influential life experiences, shape all expressions of personality. Past publications in psychomusicology suggest that music listening preferences can be measured and predicted by personality traits. The present study expands on these discoveries by asking the question: What correlations exist between the Big Five personality traits (Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Negative Emotionality) and musical instrument listening preferences? 202 participants recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk completed a survey on Qualtrics measuring personality traits through the Big Five Inventory-2, as well as musical instrument and genre preferences. First, results revealed that individuals who prefer to listen to traditionally melodic instruments (such as guitar and piano) tend to have higher Agreeableness and Openness to Experience personality scores than those who prefer rhythmic instruments (such as bass and drums). Second, this study found significantly different Extraversion scores among musical instrument preferences. Third, this study found significantly different Extraversion scores among different musical genre preferences. The findings of this study indicate that musical instruments may provide more personality correlations than other musical elements, such as genres.