Your music taste tells people how smart you are: psychologists

LONDON (Web Desk) – Psychologists have been trying to figure out what your music choice says about your personality and intelligence.

In 2003, psychologists Jason Rentfrow and Sam Gosling said most people’s musical preferences fell into one of four categories: reflective and complex; upbeat and conventional; energetic and rhythmic; and intense and rebellious.

According studying students at the University of Texas and asking them what music they liked, the psychologists concluded that extroverts like  bass-based songs , while people who are more creative and have higher IQ’s enjoy listening to jazz and classical music.

Another study at Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University found that people who liked pop music tended to be honest but lacked creativity while those who listened to a lot of  rap had high self-esteem; people who listened to heavy metal were gentle but lacked confidence while people who liked jazz and classical music were found to be highly intelligent and self-confident respectively.

Software writer Virgil Griffith also studied what a person’s favorite music said about their intelligence. He plotted the most liked artists and musical genres on Facebook by students against those colleges’ SAT scores and uncovered a “correlation between musical tastes and dumbitude (smartitude too)!”

Virgil said that the smartest college students mostly liked Radiohead, Beethoven and Bob Dylan, while people who listened to Beyonce and gospel music tended to be less smart. They also said that people of average intelligence mostly preferred Coldplay, Maroon 5 and Snow Patrol.

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