Can individual music preferences be influenced by imposed artificial music personality ingroups?
Files
Date
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate whether assigning nonmusic majors to artificial music personality ingroups influences their individual music preferences. Participants were recruited from undergraduate nonmusic majors enrolled in a music appreciation course at the University of Alabama (N = 4,737). Survey participants (n = 130) were randomly sorted into three treatment groups, Popular Music Personality Group (n = 29), Classical Music Personality Group (n = 22), and World Music Personality Group (n = 21), and two control groups, Personality-Control (n = 27) and Control (n = 31). Participants listened to 15 samples of popular, classical, and world music. They rated their individual preference for each sample, and predicted the other participants’ preferences for each sample. Responses were recorded using 7-point Likert-type scales. Results showed group assignment did not have a significant effect on participants’ individual preferences for popular, classical, or world music. There were significant differences in how the treatment groups predicted the preferences of the World Music Personality Group for popular music (p < .01) and world music (p < .01). These differences arose between the World Music Personality Group and the other two treatment groups, which may suggest that participants in the World Music Personality Group might not have been convinced that they belonged to their artificial ingroup, but also that participants may have been less sure of how to predict preferences concerning world music.