The link between music taste and personality

To learn from music is one of the aspects of Music Thinking. Here are some learnings that could be used as input for some methods I am using for Brand development and Service Design like Persona Creation, or working with The Company Real Score. So with your next persona creation or service design project you maybe would like to ask your audience what kind (or maybe a combination) of music they prefer. This could help to understand your target group better.

Knowing whether a person prefers John Coltrane to Madonna, Dolly Parton to DJ Avicii, or Wagner to Prince allows for remarkably accurate personality predictions. 

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According to a study with 36.000 participants all over the world (conducted by Professor Adrin North of Heriot -Watt University, Edinburgh) there is a clear correlation between the musical taste of a person and their personality.

People could make accurate judgments about an individual’s levels of extraversion, creativity and open-mindedness after listening to ten of their favorite songs. Extraverts tend to seek out songs with heavy bass lines, while those who enjoy more complex styles such as jazz and classical music tend to be more creative and have higher IQ-scores.

Blues fans
have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, gentle, and at ease

Jazz fans
have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, and at ease

Classical music fans
have high self-esteem, are creative, introverts, and at ease

Rap fans
have high self-esteem and are outgoing

Opera fans
have high self-esteem, are creative, and gentle

Country and western fans
are hardworking and outgoing

Reggae fans
have high self-esteem, are creative, not hardworking, outgoing, gentle, and at ease

Dance fans
are creative and outgoing but not gentle

Indie fans
have low self-esteem, are creative, not hard working, and not gentle

Bollywood fans
are creative and outgoing

Rock/heavy metal fans
have low self-esteem, are creative, not hard-working, not outgoing, gentle, and at ease

Chart pop fans
have high self-esteem, are hardworking, outgoing, and gentle, but are not creative and not at ease

Soul fans
have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, gentle, and at ease

 

References
North, A. C. and Hargreaves, D. J. (2008). The social and applied psychology of music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Collingwood, J. (2008). Preferred Music Style Is Tied to Personality. Psych Central. Retrieved from http://psychcentral.com/lib/2008/preferred-music-style-is-tied-to-personality/
North, A. C., Desborough, L., and Skarstein, L. (2005). Musical preference, deviance, and attitudes towards celebrities. Personality and Individual Differences, 38, 1903-1914. 

 

More of this:
see the comments or go to www.musicthinking.com

 

The Company Real Score a music thinking approach to business innovation

The Company Real Score – a music thinking approach to business innovation

I am working with many tools and methods. There are some I like more. Now I have compiled the, in my opinion, most important tools and instruments to start with for brand minded & people centered innovations, I call it ‘The Company Real Score’, have a look!

What is it?
The company real score is a collection of business tools and instruments to map and visualize your brand. It is a collection of core elements for orchestrating and conducting ‘brand minded & people centered’ innovations.

Why should you use it?
1. To visualize and communicate what is most important for your brand.
2. To identify strategic paradoxes that can be used in innovation projects.
3. To use it as a ‘brand minded & people centered’ starting point.

See a short presentation

 

The Company Real Score – a music thinking approach to business innovation from CREATIVE COMPANION

You can download the original score – 2,50 meters – via this link: http://goo.gl/IkwkTM

Personas and Female Mindstyles

This year I did one of my biggest projects on how to compile and communicate user insights from consumer research together with quantitative research on women. It was a challenging project with international, interdisciplinary teams and one goal: to bring it all together – aspirational personas (the brand point of view) and reality personas (based on quantitative and qualitative research).
To communicatie this inside the company to have a better understanding “for whom we work” there were 100 copies shared internally at my client Veldhoven Group with the brands Sandwich, Stills, Turnover and NoNo. I facilitated all the workshops (including the seasonal briefings), did consulting on personas and the overall design of the persona posters, the female mindstyle posters and this little booklet including tips and tricks why and how to use it. Here a short impression of the work (iPhone video).

The research on female mindsyles was done by Senta: www.senta.com
More info on VeldhovenGroup and their brands: www.veldhovengroup.com

Need help with your persona project?
From time to time I am organizing an open workshop: 
Data storytelling with personas (here the dutch info, but it can also be held in english or german)
 Storytelling mit Daten ganztägiger Zielgruppen Workshop mit Persona