Favorite Music Reveals True Personalities: Are You A ‘Systemizer’ or ‘Empathizer’?

Your choice of music can say a lot about your "cognitive style."

According to a new study, researchers found that people, based on the music they like, tend to fall into one of two categories, which are systemizers and empathizers. A systemizer is someone who prefers to analyze the rules and patters of the world whereas an empathizer will more likely to focus on people's emotions.

"Although people's music choices fluctuate over time, we've discovered a person's empathy levels and thinking style predicts what kind of music they like,' said PhD student David Greenberg from Cambridge University and the study's lead researcher. "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."

For this study, Greenberg and his team recruited more than 4,000 participants via the myPersonality Facebook app. The app allowed the researchers to examine the results of the psychology-based surveys that the Facebook users completed. The researchers then asked the users, at a later time period, to listen and rate 50 musical pieces from 26 different genres and subgenres.

The team found that people were scored high in empathy were more likely to prefer mellow music, Euro pop and "unpretentious music" as opposed to R&B, soft rock and adult contemporary genres. Under the "unpretentious" category, the researchers selected songs from country, folk and singer/songwriter genres.

People who scored high on systemizing tend to like intense, complex music and avant-garde jazz. These people also liked high-energy music.

"This line of research highlights how music is a mirror of the self. Music is an expression of who we are emotionally, socially, and cognitively," Peter J. Rentfrow, the senior author on the study stated.

Greenberg believes that his research could help music companies better market their products.

"A lot of money is put into algorithms to choose what music you may want to listen to, for example on Spotify and Apple Music," he said. "By knowing an individual's thinking style, such services might in future be able to fine tune their music recommendations to an individual."

The study, "Musical Preferences are Linked to Cognitive Styles," was published in PLOS ONE.