探花直播 of Cambridge - systemizing

Opinion: What your musical taste says about your personality

Anonymous — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 01:40:32 +0000

We鈥檙e exposed to music for nearly 20% of our waking lives. But much of our musical experience seems to be a mystery. Why does some music bring us to tears while other pieces make us dance? Why is it that the music that we like can make others agitated? And why do some people seem to have a natural ability to play music while others have difficulty carrying a tune? Science is beginning to show that these individual differences are not just random but are, in part, due to people鈥檚 personalities.

My colleagues and I have published research showing that people鈥檚 musical preferences are linked to three broad thinking styles. Empathisers (Type E) have a strong interest in people鈥檚 thoughts and emotions. Systemisers (Type S) have a strong interest in patterns, systems and the rules that govern the world. And those who score relatively equally on empathy and systemising are classified as Type B for 鈥渂alanced鈥�.

Research from the past decade has shown that 95% of people can be classified into one of these three groups and that they predict a lot of human behaviour. For example, they can predict things such as whether someone studies maths and science, or humanities at university. For the first time, we have shown that they can predict musical behaviour, too.

Matching music with thinking style

To study this phenomenon, we conducted multiple studies with over 4,000 participants. We took data on these participants鈥� thinking styles and asked them to listen to and indicate their preferences for up to 50 musical excerpts, representing a wide range of genres. Across these studies, we found that empathisers preferred mellow music that had low energy, sad emotions, and emotional depth, as heard in R&B, soft rock, and singer-songwriter genres. For example, empathising was linked to preferences for 鈥淐ome Away With Me鈥� by Norah Jones and Jeff Buckley鈥檚 recording of 鈥淗allelujah鈥�.

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On the other hand, systemisers preferred more intense music, as heard in hard rock, punk and heavy metal genres. Systemisers also preferred music with intellectual depth and complexity as heard in avant-garde classical genres. For example, systemizing was linked to preferences for Alexander Scriabin鈥檚鈥淓tude opus 65 no 3鈥�. Importantly, those who are Type B, had a tendency to prefer music that spans more of a range than the other two thinking styles.

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In our most recent study, published in the Journal of Research of Personality, we found that people鈥檚 personality traits can also predict their musical ability, even if they don鈥檛 play an instrument. Our team worked with BBC Lab UK to recruit over 7,000 participants and assess them for five distinct personality dimensions: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism/emotionality stability. We also asked them to conduct various tasks that measured their musical ability, including remembering melodies and picking out rhythms.

We found that, next to musical training, the personality trait of openness was the strongest predictor of musical sophistication. People who score highly for openness are imaginative, have a wide range of interests, and are open to new ways of thinking and changes in their environment. Those who score low on openness (or who are 鈥渃losed鈥�) are more set in their ways, prefer routine and the familiar, and tend to have more conventional values. We also found that extroverts who are often more talkative, assertive, and excitement-seeking had greater singing abilities.

Furthermore, we could apply this even to people who did not currently play a musical instrument, meaning there are people who have a potential for musical talent but are entirely unaware of it.

Music therapy

These new findings tell us that from a person鈥檚 musical taste and ability, we can infer a range of information about their personality and the way that they think.

This research shows there are factors beyond our awareness that shape our musical experiences. We hope that these findings can be of help to teachers, parents, and clinicians. Based on information about personality, educators can ensure that children with the potential for musical talent have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument. Music therapists can use information about thinking style to help tailor their therapies for clients, too.

We are also interested in how knowledge gained from science can help children and adults on the autism spectrum who have difficulties with communication, as we recently wrote in the journal Empirical Musicology Review. This could also help people process emotions after experiencing a psychological trauma and when grieving a loss. In fact, initial findings from our lab suggest that people who experienced a traumatic event in childhood engage with music quite differently in adulthood than those who did not experience a trauma.

If you want to find out how you score on musical ability, preferences, and personality, you can take these tests at www.musicaluniverse.org.

David Greenberg, PhD candidate, psychology, 探花直播 of Cambridge

This article was originally published on 探花直播Conversation. Read the original article.

探花直播opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the 探花直播 of Cambridge.

David Greenberg (Department of Psychology) discusses how musical preferences are linked to thinking styles.

Jake Bellucci

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Diagnosed autism is more common in an IT-rich region

gm349 — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:29:20 +0000

A new study from Cambridge 探花直播 has for the first time found that autism diagnoses are more common in an IT-rich region.

探花直播Medical Research Council (MRC) funded study, published today in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, has important implications for service provision in different regions and for the 鈥榟yper-systemizing鈥� theory of autism.

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre (ARC) at the 探花直播 of Cambridge, led the study (which was conducted in the Netherlands) with Dr Rosa Hoekstra, a Dutch autism researcher based at ARC and 探花直播Open 探花直播.

探花直播researchers predicted that autism spectrum conditions (ASC) would be more common in populations enriched for 鈥榮ystemizing鈥�, which is the drive to analyse how systems work, and to predict, control and build systems. These skills are required in disciplines such as engineering, physics, computing and mathematics.

探花直播team had previously discovered evidence for a familial association between a talent for systemizing and autism in that fathers and grandfathers of children with ASC are over-represented in the field of engineering. 探花直播team had also previously found that mathematicians more often have a sibling with ASC, and students in the natural and technological sciences, including mathematics, show a higher number of autistic traits.

探花直播researchers tested for differences in the prevalence of ASC in school-aged children in three geographical regions in the Netherlands: Eindhoven, Haarlem, and Utrecht-city. 探花直播region Eindhoven was selected because it is rich in information-technology (IT) having the Eindhoven 探花直播 of Technology there, as well as the High Tech Campus Eindhoven, where IT and technology companies such as Philips, ASML, IBM and ATOS Origin are based. ( 探花直播Philips factory has been in Eindhoven since 1891. Since then, the region has attracted businesses in IT and technology.)

探花直播growth of the High Tech Campus Eindhoven has led to Eindhoven becoming a major technology and industrial hub: 30% of jobs in Eindhoven are now in technology or ICT, in Haarlem and Utrecht this is respectively 16 and 17%.

探花直播two control regions were selected because they have similar size populations and a similar socioeconomic class. Schools in each region were asked to provide the number of children enrolled, the number having a clinical diagnosis of ASC and/or two control neurodevelopmental conditions (dyspraxia and ADHD). 探花直播participating schools in the three regions provided diagnostic information on a total of 62,505 children. 探花直播researchers found school-reported prevalence estimates of ASC in Eindhoven was 229 per 10,000, significantly higher than in Haarlem (84 per 10,000) and Utrecht (57 per 10,000), whilst the prevalence for the control conditions were similar in all regions.

Simon Baron-Cohen commented: 鈥淭hese results are in line with the idea that in regions where parents gravitate towards jobs that involve strong 鈥榮ystemizing鈥�, such as the IT sector, there will be a higher rate of autism among their children, because the genes for autism may be expressed in first degree relatives as a talent in systemizing. 探花直播results also have implications for explaining how genes for autism may have persisted in the population gene pool, as some of these genes appear linked to adaptive, advantageous traits.鈥�

Rosa Hoekstra added: 鈥淲e need to conduct a follow-up study to validate the diagnoses and to test the alternative explanations for the elevated rate of autism in Eindhoven, including the possibility that children with autism may more often remain undetected in the two other regions. These results are important findings in the field of autism epidemiology, since they suggest regional variation in autism prevalence. In our follow-up study we plan to study the causes of this variation in more detail. This will help local authorities plan services appropriately for the number of children with autism.鈥�

探花直播Cambridge research team also included Martine Roelfsema (a Dutch graduate student), Sally Wheelwright and Dr Carrie Allison (experts in autism screening), and Professor Carol Brayne and Dr Fiona Matthews (experts in public health research and biostatistics).

Research provides important insight into 鈥榮ystemizing鈥� theory of autism.

These results are in line with the idea that in regions where parents gravitate towards jobs that involve strong 鈥榮ystemizing鈥�, such as the IT sector, there will be a higher rate of autism among their children, because the genes for autism may be expressed in first degree relatives as a talent in systemizing.

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen

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