Pop Music's Influence On Personality Research

Introduction

Do personality traits and political views influence music preference? It is hypothesized that an introvert personality type will favor classical and/or indie music, while an extrovert personality type will favor metal and/or pop music. Introversion is the state of being concerned primarily with one’s own thoughts and feelings rather than with the external environment (Dictionary, 2018). An extrovert individual is characterized as a gregarious and unreserved person (Merriam-Webster, 2018). Classical music is defined as music composed during the late 18th and early 19th centuries (Collins Dictionary, 2018). Indie music is music produced independently from commercial record labels (Dictionary, 2018). Pop music consists of short

They will demonstrate how popular lyrics will often reflect common ideas about personality and development should give students a perspective on the public’s perceptions of personality and illustrate the usefulness of psychology in everyday life. The study was conducted by psychology professor and he compared students from his two personality classes. The first class consisted of 18 freshmen, seven sophomores, four juniors, and six seniors and the second class consisted of eight freshmen, two sophomores, three juniors, and two seniors (Leck, 2006). The professor selected 13 songs from his music collection with lyrics that reflected elements of personality theories that were presented to the students throughout the semester and the lyrics were displayed in a powerpoint presentation to the class and than they had to attempt to identify the concept they thought the song demonstrated, they would discuss possible interpretations (Leck, 2006). Towards the end of the semester, the professor administered a short survey to determine the effectiveness of this activity. The survey had the students rate on a scale of one (not at all) to five (very much) of how effective the activity was (Leck, 2006). The results revealed that most students understood the concepts and were able to apply them to the songs that they selected. In addition, the students

In this study they also compare Japanese university students to American university students and see if they had any similarities, despite the cultural differences. There were 268 participants (153 male, 115 female) Japanese college students, attending two universities in Tokyo and all participants were enrolled in English language classes and the questionnaire included 12 genres of rock, jazz, metal, punk, classical, rap/hip-hop, enka, opera, reggae, pop, gospel, and soul/R&B (Brown, 2012). Participants indicated how much they liked these genres on a seven point scale ranging from one (dislike) to seven (very much like) (Brown, 2012). The HEXACO model which stands for Humility-Honesty (sincerity, fairness), Emotionally (fearfulness, anxiety dependence), Extraversion (social boldness, liveliness), Agreeableness (forgiveness, gentleness), Conscientiousness (organization, perfectionism), Openness (creativity, inquisitiveness), assesses six personality domains and it was used to investigate more specific aspects of personality that could be associated with preferences for specific genres (Brown, 2012). A five point response scale was provided that ranged from one (applied to them) to five (doesn’t apply to them). Following procedures the items were summed which provided scores for each personality domain and