What does your playlist say about you?

As festivals have begun to announce their line-ups for next year, many music lovers have been rubbing their hands in contended glee.

Although most swapped the tent for the sofa this year, there has still been plenty of virtual coverage to dig into. Whether you settled down to the Reading and Leeds highlights or caught up with Green Man’s Field of Streams, it was clear that, despite the digital shift, many festivals still managed to maintain a distinctive flavour, whether they were all about rock, rap, folk, electronic, or pop.

But have you ever wondered why certain people are drawn to different types of music? Why T in the Park is not quite everyone’s cup of tea (sorry), or why Bestival might be best for others?

The question has been on the minds of psychologists for years – and the answers can be eye-opening.

Some findings are easier to guess than others. It will be of no surprise to anyone who spent their Friday nights dancing to Disco 2000 in a sweaty student nightclub that that's why they're attached to it. Or that a love of Abbey Road stems not from the fact that it's really rather good, but because for weekend after weekend growing up, your parents had it on repeat. That's probably why Here Comes the Sun reminds you of Sunday kitchen clatter and the smell of burnt scrambled eggs, too.

Familiarity is a key factor in responding positively to music, which explains why certain cultures evolve unique musical styles. If you grew up with a particular sound, there is a good chance that you will grow to love it (this may also account for the suppressed groans of any audience when a heritage band happily declares that they're going to give us some “new material”).

But what about music that you've never heard before, but are inexplicably drawn to? And why do people with exposure to the same music sometimes prefer completely different genres?

Musicologist Nolan Gasser, author of Why You Like It: The Science and Culture of Musical Taste, was intrigued by these ideas after starting work as a pianist.

“I had people asking me to play a rather eclectic repertoire. Everything from Scott Joplin to Mozart to Stairway to Heaven, every single day,” he explained. “It really got me thinking – maybe not in a conscious way at that point – about how varied people’s tastes are, and how people of the same age group could gravitate to different styles of music.”

Gasser discovered that we often have distinct musical tastes because we use music to forge an individual identity. You might sub-consciously (or consciously) choose to deviate from the musical preferences of your parents, for example. “Music becomes that stake in the ground – ‘this is who I am,’” he explains.

What's particularly interesting about how we respond to music, though, is just how early in life this process actually begins.

“In the first six months or so, babies can actually follow the syntax of any musical style — complex rhythms from Turkey or major scales from Europe," says Gasser, "If you play something for a baby a few times and make a slight shift, the baby turns its head at that shift. It recognises the deviation.”

As we grow, our minds start to narrow down our musical choices. This is partly due to developments in personality. One 2012 German study, What Do Music Preferences Reveal About Personality?, linked different musical qualities to different aspects of the brain.

The results demonstrated that people who were more “open to experience” preferred reflective and complex music, such as jazz, blues, and classical, and intense music like rock. These types disliked “upbeat and conventional” music, such as pop, whereas extroverts found pop music much more enjoyable.

Musicologist Nolan Gasser

Extroverts also preferred rhythmic types of music, such as rap and hip-hop, but disliked electronic and religious music, as well as soundtracks. “Agreeable” people, on the other hand, were far more in favour of soundtracks.

A 2015 study led by Cambridge University psychologist David Greenberg, divided subjects into three different categories: Empathisers (those who focus on thoughts and emotions), Systemisers (those who focus on rules and systems), and Balanced types (those who focus on both areas equally).

“Low energy songs with emotional depth, including sad songs, and genres like soft rock and singer-songwriters” were said to appeal to Empathisers, while Systemisers favoured “more intense and structured music like heavy metal – or classical music in the avant-garde vein.”

Systemisers are “focusing more on the instrumental elements, seeing how the music is mixing together. It’s almost like a musical puzzle that they’re putting together,” explained Greenberg.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, those in the Balanced category displayed a “broader range of preferences than either of the other types.”

“We are seeking music that reflects who we are," the study sums up, "so that includes personality, that includes the way we think, and it may even be the way our brain is wired.”

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