Adolescents' music preferences and personality characteristics

TLDR

The study examined Dutch adolescents’ music preference structure, its stability, and its relationship with Big‑Five personality traits. The authors used exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses on 2,334 adolescents’ music preference data to identify four dimensions—Rock, Elite, Urban, and Pop/Dance—and then followed 1,044 participants over three years with repeated personality and preference questionnaires. Music preferences were relatively stable over 1–3 years and consistently correlated with personality traits, and personality also predicted changes in preferences over the 3‑year interval. © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract

The present paper examined the structure of Dutch adolescents' music preferences, the stability of music preferences and the relations between Big‐Five personality characteristics and (changes in) music preferences. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of music‐preference data from 2334 adolescents aged 12–19 revealed four clearly interpretable music‐preference dimensions: Rock, Elite, Urban and Pop/Dance. One thousand and forty‐four randomly selected adolescents from the original sample filled out questionnaires on music preferences and personality at three follow‐up measurements. In addition to being relatively stable over 1, 2 and 3‐year intervals, music preferences were found to be consistently related to personality characteristics, generally confirming prior research in the United States. Personality characteristics were also found to predict changes in music preferences over a 3‐year interval. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.