Musical notes of personality : investigating the correlation between personality types and the preferred music genre for young adults

Abstract

The present study investigated the personality traits of enthusiasts of different music genre (Rock, Pop, Rap and Techno) for Maltese University students. It used the Myers Briggs Personality Type Indicator as the personality test, and held a respondent count of 431 participants. An automated link was sent by Survey Monkey to create, deliver, and act as a response site for the participants. The analysis of the responses showed a significant difference between the Pop group and the Rock group for the Judging and Perceiving traits of the MBTI. The MBTI was taken up as a different approach to this type of study, as most previous literature made use of the HEXACO or the preferred Big Five model. The MBTI proved to be an interesting tool to work with for the investigation of personality traits, and average trait mean scores. This study builds on previous literature that investigates personality differences across several music genre, not necessarily the same as this research, for both local and foreign samples.