Is there a correlation between musical taste and personal traits?

Question

Like, could people that have similar tastes in music have similar IQs, or share certain characteristics? I was reading about this company called Platinum Blue or something like that, and they could recommend songs based on the underlying mathematical "structure" of a song... So even if two people didn't necessarily share musical taste in a conventional sense, maybe if they liked songs with the those same consistencies they could have traits in common... Has anyone read anything about something like that? (If so send me a link, it's really interesting.)

Answer 1

Have you ever heard of gang banger that liked Bach or Beethoven? Of course not, they are the lowest common denominator with the lowest IQ. What kind of music to they listen to? You couldn't even repeat three stanzas of that filth without the censors blocking the posting.

People with intelligence, class. What kind of music do they listen to?

Certainly there are common traits among people with similar IQ.

Answer 2

I've known some people from very different backgrounds, with very different aspirations/outlooks on life/IQ's who were very, very good friends ~ The only cement keeping the friendships together, & was the basis of the friendships in the first place, was that they liked the same types of music.

Answer 3

Hi

This is somewhat of a new area of study but they are finding more and more correlation between music and psychology.

Always consider a person's culture and their exposure to music.People don't always embrace another's choice in music right off -but this does not mean one or the other is musically or socially inept or that one has higher IQ etc..

I personally believe music can help the mind develop and bring in new awareness to things around us -if we allow it.

I found this and hope it will give you various areas to research. Music can be broken down mathematically but it may serve you better to look at music theory so you can understand the patterns of music and how is composed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_psych...

Answer 4

I do not have a clue but am definitely interested, would you mind posting the link to what ever it was you were reading?

Answer 5

Although an "opportunistic" product of Hume's literary activity, the essay is a masterpiece of elegance and style. Its polished and subtle manner of exposition proves, however, to be very deceptive. It creates the impression that the argumentation flows smoothly and clearly from the beginning to the end whereas in reality it abounds with reversals and almost all provided explanations raise more questions than they manage to answer. A careful student should be mindful of many snares intentionally or unintentionally laid down throughout the course of Hume's analysis.  

Variety of Taste: In keeping with his empiricist epistemology Hume starts with a factual statement about the existing variety of taste and opinion. He focuses on the former as the latter proves to be less egregious.

The variety of human taste stretches over different individuals (even siblings may have different taste), across different cultures and throughout different historical periods.

Answer 6

I have puzzled over the loud music and 'contemporary' nature of Pentecostal music. The correlation seems to be that the powers that be in that church want to attract young people into the fold whether they have a legitimate calling to worship or to practice faith. My wife differs from me on this. My objection is that the music is damagingly loud. I have measured the loudness with a DB meter.

Answer 7

I would say no.

However, I do not know of any bona fide scientific study either. I'm not a big proponent of statistics, partially because it can only get you so far, but mostly because it is so often misused and used as the vehicle for  falsified proofs and validations.

You could probably make a case of just about anything....people with blue eyes and their favorite color. People who are left handed that drive sports cars.....and so on and so on.

If you took a photo of nothing but grass, and then studied the textures and patterns you could probably find all kinds of things and then make a case for 'spirits', or something else subliminal.

The thing so many people don't realize, or understand or whatever, is....when you have sets of things the numbers of these sets makes a difference.

For instance, the handedness (right or left) of someone and the correlation to certain sports say. People only have a right and left side, so you only have two possibilities with which to match up to a relatively wide array of possibly sports. Now, if you tried to correlate the total of all human diseases as a correlation with favorite colors, that might be different because of the huge number of colors and huge number of diseases. I chose those two things because they are not topics one would expect to be related in any way, so I could make my point.

And it goes the other way too. If you have enormous groups of things, there will have to be some correlation to another enormous group.....say....the color of a roof top of a house that is within 1/4 mile of a beach. There are a LOT of beaches in the world, and a LOT of houses. Of course there will be some number of houses with brown roof tops, and others with gray roof tops, etc etc. The question is....is it significant? Statistics only gives the numbers. The interpretation comes from those looking at those numbers. In some cases some of those people may have ulterior motives, especially where votes, money or influence comes into play. Politicians are famous for this kind of bullsh!t. Same with salesmen...insurance people.....blah blah blah. They all have something to gain by professing their 'statistics'. You have to question their numbers. Their sources, the methods of carrying out the calculations and so on.

There is a LOT of subjectivity to it, so when I see statements like this, all this goes thru my head in a flash and wonder just what goes thru others minds because there's so much more to it than what I think is held by most other folks.

Need to ask a lot of questions and not be satisfied with flat, vanilla answers composed of nonsensical facts.