PAST attempts to link personality to musical taste have foundered on the rocks of small sample sizes, culturally homogenous samples (usually of undergraduates at universities in rich countries) and the fact that most such studies relied on the participants themselves defining what genres they enjoyed. But Jason Rentfrow of Cambridge University and Gideon Nave of the University of Pennsylvania think they have bypassed these obstacles. As a consequence they believe, as they write in Psychological Science, that they have shown how personality traits can indeed predict musical preferences.
To overcome problems of sample size and diversity Dr Rentfrow, Dr Nave and their colleagues used the internet to recruit 22,252 participants of different ages and backgrounds from all around the world. In particular, 45% of their volunteers were over 22 and thus unlikely to be undergraduates. To work around the problem of letting participants define what they liked, they presented...Continue reading
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