How to Design a Music and Personality Experiment

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At a GlanceA great social experiment idea for students in psychology is exploring how music and personality could be linked. Here are some tips on doing a psychology experiment with music.

At a Glance

A great social experiment idea for students in psychology is exploring how music and personality could be linked. Here are some tips on doing a psychology experiment with music.

Does your taste in music reveal information about your personality? Some researchers have found that people whoprefer certain styles of musictend to havespecific personality traits.However, other studies have not found links between music preferences and personality, so there is still a lot left to learn from doing such studies.

Exploring the connection between musical tastes and personality traits could be a great topic for your own research. Here’s how to set up a psychological experiment on music and personality.

5 Important Steps for Conducting Psychology Experiments

Getting Started

Before you startany psychology experiment, discuss your project with your instructor. You may need to get permission from your school’s Institutional Review Board before you can proceed.

Once you get the go-ahead, you’ll need to narrow your focus to a specific research question and develop a hypothesis. Then, you can begin the process of developing materials and procedures as well as selecting your study participants.

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Key Terms and Definitions

These psychology concepts will be important to know as you’re planning your psychology experiment:

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Possible Research Questions

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Develop Your Hypothesis

Once you’ve picked a research question, the next step is to come up with a hypothesis.

Yourhypothesisis a specific statement that explains what you predict you will find out in your experiment.For example, your hypothesis for your music and personality study could be that:

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Planning Your Experiment

You need to carefully plan the steps and procedures you will use in your experiment. There are some key practical questions that you have to answer before you can get started.

First, where will you find participants? You could ask your fellow classmates or seek out volunteers in your school or community.

Next, what materials and tools will you need to collect data on musical preferences and personality? You may need music, headphones, and devices for listening.

How will you assess each participant’s musical tastes? The easiest method would be to use a simple questionnaire. You can ask participants to rate different musical styles on a scale from one to 10, with one being least preferred and 10 being most preferred.

You also need to determine how you will measure personality. Are you going to look at specific personality traits, such as emotional stability or extroversion? There are different ways you can approach this experiment, so the choice is up to you. For example, you might choose to look at a single personality dimension, like extraversion orintroversion.

What questions did you decide to explore in your study? Maybe, “Do introverts tend to prefer a specific style of music?” Or, “Are extroverts drawn to faster-paced musical styles?”

You may choose to look at music tastes within the Big Five personality dimensions. Instead of having to come up with a questionnaire, you could have your participants do an existing assessment such as the Ten Item Personality Measure (TIPI).

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Collect Data and Analyze Your Results

Once you have collected all the data for your experiment, it is time to analyze your results.

Did you find any evidence to support your hypothesis? Were the results of your experiment statistically significant?

After performing your analysis, you’ll need to report your results according to the format that your instructor has assigned. For example, you may need to write apsychology lab reportor create a bulletin board presentation.

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Examples of Music and Personality Studies

Here are a few studies on music and personality that could serve as inspiration or references as you create your own:

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9 SourcesVerywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Devenport SP, North AC.Predicting musical taste: relationships with personality aspects and political orientation.Psychol Music. 2019;47(6):834-847. doi:10.1177/2F0305735619864647University of Cambridge.Musical preferences unite personalities across the globe.APA.Institutional review board.APA.Informed consent.APA.Operational definitions.APA.Independent variable.APA.Dependent variable.APA.Hypothesis.Goz Lab.Ten-item personality measure.

9 Sources

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Devenport SP, North AC.Predicting musical taste: relationships with personality aspects and political orientation.Psychol Music. 2019;47(6):834-847. doi:10.1177/2F0305735619864647University of Cambridge.Musical preferences unite personalities across the globe.APA.Institutional review board.APA.Informed consent.APA.Operational definitions.APA.Independent variable.APA.Dependent variable.APA.Hypothesis.Goz Lab.Ten-item personality measure.

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

Devenport SP, North AC.Predicting musical taste: relationships with personality aspects and political orientation.Psychol Music. 2019;47(6):834-847. doi:10.1177/2F0305735619864647University of Cambridge.Musical preferences unite personalities across the globe.APA.Institutional review board.APA.Informed consent.APA.Operational definitions.APA.Independent variable.APA.Dependent variable.APA.Hypothesis.Goz Lab.Ten-item personality measure.

Devenport SP, North AC.Predicting musical taste: relationships with personality aspects and political orientation.Psychol Music. 2019;47(6):834-847. doi:10.1177/2F0305735619864647

University of Cambridge.Musical preferences unite personalities across the globe.

APA.Institutional review board.

APA.Informed consent.

APA.Operational definitions.

APA.Independent variable.

APA.Dependent variable.

APA.Hypothesis.

Goz Lab.Ten-item personality measure.

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