Music As A Predictor For Personality

Music has played a major role as an agent of socialization in each of my 4 decades. I know and hope that it will continue to do so. During each period music has affected my personality, shown my personality, affected my perceptions and helped me to cope with growing and changing as a person. My Looking Glass Self has compared the person in song and possibly the singer themselves to myself to gain perspective of who I was at each time. I am going to discuss each decade with the thought of how music was an agent of socialization in each.

This reference shows how music lays a foundation of teenage values beyond school or parental teaching. A musical artist can influence a young mind by the chosen lyrics with greater effectiveness than formal education. Music can control or enhance moods. A good mood can get better or a bad mood can be worked through with the choice of music. A bad mood can also be enhanced by lyrics about suicide or violent behavior. Teens can also use music to gain information about the adult world, to withdraw from social contact, facilitate friendships and social settings, or to help them create a personal identity. (O'Toole, 1997)

Yet with all the wonderful things that music can do for human beings, could it possibly be responsible for them committing suicide, or murder? In this paper I am going to explore the chaos that occurred in the 80’s and 90’s when heavy metal music faced accusations that the music and lyrical content was driving adolescent and young adults to commit suicide and murder. I will argue that it is not the music or the lyrics that result in such violent behaviors; rather, individuals with underlying psychological issues such as depression, or anger disorders tend to be more attracted to heavy metal music.

The corruptness of music today seems to be linked to the crude language and aggression found particularly in hip-hop and rap music. Some rap artists use vulgar language in their lyrics that are easily adoptable by teens (Holden). Not only have certain lyrics influenced the way teens speak but also their actions. An article on Headliners.org stated that “lyrics in the music are too violent and are to blame for many problems.” The problems range anywhere from suicide and aggression towards women to underage drinking and drug use. Lyrics are not only to blame, but also what people see in artists’ music videos can affect what they do (Doaks). The urge to emulate these rap musicians has escalated quickly causing a spike in rebellious tendencies among teens.

In life, music affects everything many people look at all the different stories of teenagers committing violent acts and have begun to wonder can violent songs make teens violent? With all the violent acts that music glorifies as of recently many psychologists and parents alike have begun to wonder why certain types of music cause their children and teenagers to become so violent. Because of the questions that violent songs raise and why teenagers have started to gravitate towards violent songs more than ever before. Some factors that could be reasons as to why violent songs have such a powerful effect on teenagers could be that: teenagers learn violence from their surroundings, teenagers can have a history of violence, and violent songs give teens a place to vent their frustrations at,

Music has more of an influence on the people in the twenty-first century than it ever has before. Teens, especially, are surrounded by some sort of it in everything they are around or do. Many disagree on how music impacts one’s mental state and behavior; however, all agree that the impact depends on how the listener feels before and how they allow it to influence them.

In “Music Preferences, Personality Style, and Developmental Issues of Adolescents” (2003) Kelly D. Schwartz and Gregory T. Fouts observed the personality traits and developmental issues in three different groups of adolescences. The three groups of adolescences were separated by the type of music they preferred listening to: “heavy, light, and eclectic music” (Schwartz & Fouts, 2003).

mUSIc hAS ShApEd mY pErSoNAL ANd intellectual life in many ways. Music is a common language that connects me to others who share my enthusiasm for creating it. Furthermore, I learn about my own preferences and personality through the pieces that intrigue me. As I expose myself to a wider array of styles and eras, my musical tastes

How different types of music effect your personal moral choices? We think that words are powerful and within songs the meanings itself can grab a hold of your subconscious. Music has been proven to affect moods in both negative and positive but this is to prove if the wording and rhythm in songs can affect your long term and short term choices. The problem music can many influences our main dilemma is it causes depression and anxiety to certain things without the person even realizing it. Through this project we hope to get more people aware of what they listen to and how it affects them. Another reason why we chose this topic is music is very big part of everybody’s lives and we have noticed music to be very influential in our lives as well

Music is an unparalleled marvel that is found in every known human culture. People have demonstrated individual inclinations in music, yet there is little about what impacts a man's taste. Some identity factors that may influence an individual's musical inclination will be tested in this study. 12 nineteen year old (6 young men and 6 young ladies) from various foundations, will listen to 4 musical pieces from different genres. The participants will select which of the 4 pieces they enjoyed best. Their answers will determine if their identity elements play a part in their inclinations. It is anticipated that the melody's genre will influence their emotions towards the music. The importance of the individual's personality will be talked

Whether it be an uncontrollable brain chemistry reaction, or a conscious desire to make a statement or change, music has more power over us than we think. The “right song” in a jingle or political message can impact our subconscious ideologies and change our choices in little ways all the time. Having been a musician for nearly all my life, I was aware to some degree of the impact music has on my daily life. Being an emotional individual, music serves a huge influence on my mood and emotional status, as well as my overall world understandings. Like reading books, it is through the stories that music shares that people can learn from other people’s experiences and develop a more understanding and open

With a great deal of different genres of music available for listening to, each genre must effect, shape, and allow for the expression of personality to be contrasting with each of the different genres of music that are available to us. In a recent study executed by Yair Neuman, Leonid Perlovsky, Yochai Cohen and Danny Livshits, from the Department of Education & Homeland Security Institute, based their experiment on “a very specific research question: Do personality types differ in terms of their essays’ similarity to the lyrics of various music genres?” (4). They set up their experiment to solely test whether a person’s personality can be directly affected by certain types of music. Their experiment concluded “…all results were statistically

The impact of music on positive psychology and emotion is a well known fact. Music has an extraordinary ability to change people’s emotions. In humans, music has the ability to invoke emotions of sadness, happiness and even fear. The purpose of this study was to investigate the casual relationship between music practice and participation on the emotions and well-being of male and female adults. The hypotheses for this study were as follows; Hypothesis 1: Music practice and participation has an emotional impact on individuals under study; Hypothesis 2: Preference of more music genres is positively correlated with higher levels of happiness among the population under study; Hypothesis 3: Preference of more music genres is positively correlated with emotional response among the population under study. Results of the study indicated that both age groups had a positive emotional response to music.

Music is a huge part of our everyday life. Many people don’t realize that music plays a significant role in in the way it affects the human brain. It connects and helps us share experiences with loved ones, friends, and random acquaintances. The variety of genres lets us explore the different emotions as we listen to specific songs, whether or not its pop, hip-hop/ rap, indie, country, rock/ heavy & death metal, classical, dance, jazz, blues, soul, reggae, and opera. Psychologists seem to believe the answer lies within the rhythm, tone, lyrics, and melody of the music. A great and inspiring songwriter/ vocalist, Mitch Lucker, said, “Keep listening to music, cause it gets you through everything. I promise.” My question is, why do people turn to music rather than friends or family? Considering this, what is it about music that helps us through difficult obstacles in life? According to many psychologist music can affect mood, health, mind, and learning ability.

Music elicits an emotional and cognitive response in all who listen to it. It is powerful at the individual level because “it can induce multiple responses – physiological, movement, mood, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral” (Francis, 2008,