The Music of Personality

I’m working with a really smart bunch now in my copious spare time to bring to life an idea around the development of a fun, consumer oriented look at your cultural fit with your workplace. The idea is to use some an interesting psychometric framework to figure out your personality type and develop a “fit” with both your manager and your workplace, creating what is in effect an open-source culture graph. But more on this in the coming weeks.

This post is about musical preference as an indicator of personality.

I love music, almost any kind of music, classical piano, slow jazz, blues, Indian classical, classic rock, alternative, loud house music, complex electronic music, its all good. As the rest of my house will complain at times, there’s always some music that I’m listening to. As I’m working on this psychometric look into a person’s workplace fit, I started thinking about whether musical preference is an indicator of personality type. It has to be, I think. Isn’t there something in the fact that you like AC/DC or Coldplay that tells you something about what a person might be like or what he or she might like? How come there isn’t a more documented connection between musical taste and personality?

After some digging, I came across this rather fascinating research http://www.outofservice.com/music-personality-test/ — a product of the Goz Lab at the University of Texas. Taking the test, which seems really quite simplistic, I ended up with a result, and was pretty blown away. Pretty spot on, at least in my case, and totally fascinating.

Having been an ad-hoc DJ for many, many years now, playing classic rock at college get-togethers, and house/dance later on, and kids parties and mixed-audience groups, and still holding on to the idea that a well-constructed mix-tape (now ‘burn-list’, I learn) is one of the best expressions of mood, emotion, and circumstance, this research seems like it should be just the beginning. I’ve got to believe that the next step is to develop a more nuanced understanding of personality based on specific artist or song preferences. In the past, when I’ve had to get a playlist organized for an occasion, it just flows and happens at real-time, because I know the audience and have a feel for what will work next.

But I think there’s something more here. Its not the Pandora experience, which I’m a huge fan of. Its not the collaborative filtering of musical style and preference to identify patterns. Its not that if you like Mumford, you’re going to like the Lumineers, that is most likely the case, its something deeper, it feels like a window to the soul that can be understood, just a little better. If you like Awake My Soul, perhaps you’re hopeless or a romantic or both? Best wishes to the Goz Lab or anyone else who can figure that out.