Playlist
The shape of sound Katrell Readus
M
usic is the language of emotion; it plays an integral part in our identities and most of us are very particular about our musical preferences. Different genres evoke, enhance or change a wide array of emotions in listeners. We often identify parts of our personality by what we listen to and insinuate things about other people based on their music preferences. We see this in stereotypes: people who listen to rap like to do drugs and are in gangs, country music fans drink their night away and are not well educated, classical music fans have high IQs, while R&B listeners are overly sexual. These stereotypes have become a sort of building block for how we view individuals when it comes to things like their true character, intentions, future opportunities and aspirations, but what if our taste comes from a deeper, more neurological place? Oftentimes, we judge genres based on their sound, but the true meaning and purpose are in the feeling being expressed by the artist. Specific musical styles have unique effects on emotions. For instance, a study done in 2015 on anger processing found that extreme heavy metal music, a genre commonly characterized as
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loud and aggressive with heavy instruments and emotionally intense vocals, often included themes of depression and loneliness and was found to decrease anger while maintaining physiological arousal. Another example of this is in R&B. The genre is the creditor for many hit songs as well as famous artists and musicians, and it is not just because its listeners and creators are lustful, but R&B lyrical themes often encapsulate the African-American experience of pain outside of and on the quest for love, freedom and joy, as well as economics and other aspirations. It possesses relatability and an emotional compass, while also appealing to listeners’ more sensual side. Not only does music have a deeper meaning behind its sound, but it also can be impacted by your thinking style. A team at the University of Cambridge directed by trained jazz saxophonist and doctoral candidate David Greenberg wanted to go beyond personality and see whether our “cognitive style” might predict musical taste. According to a theory authored by autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen who worked with Greenberg, brain types can be classified based on scores in two areas of thinking: empathy and systemizing.
People who score higher in empathy focus and respond more to the emotion of others, while those who score higher in systemizing like to analyze rules and patterns in the world around them. For this study, more than 4,000 participants completed psychological questionnaires to determine their balance of both empathic and systemizing thinking. They then listened to 50 musical pieces from 26 genres and rated each piece. “Although people’s music choices fluctuate over time, we have discovered a person’s empathy levels and thinking style predicts what kind of music they like,” Greenberg said in a release on the study. “In fact, their cognitive style (whether they’re strong on empathy or strong on systems) can be a better predictor of what music they like than their personality.” According to their results, an empathizer might gravitate to straightforward, unpretentious singer/ songwriter styles like country or folk. They might also prefer mellower music like soft rock or R&B. Systemizers, on the other hand, were more likely to enjoy intense music like punk and heavy metal. In the end music taste expostulates more than simple preference, it holds relatability, identity and thinking style.
April 2022
