Personality Secrets in Your MP3 Player 326
Jeremy Dean writes "Once past saying 'hello' and 'how are you?' to someone you've just met, what is next? How do we make friends and get to know other people? Psychologists have talked about the importance of body language, physical appearance and clothing but they've not been so keen on what we actually talk about. A recent study put participants in same-sex and opposite-sex pairings and told them to get to know each other over 6 weeks (Rentfrow & Gosling, 2006). Analysing the results, they found the most popular topic of conversation was music. What is it about music that's so useful when we first meet someone and what kind of information can we extract from the music another person likes? "
personalized (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Random sample (Score:5, Interesting)
1) How drunk you got last night.
2) Which lecturer you hate the most.
3) Have you written that stupid paper yet.
4) Are you going to the club tonight.
A human being != a personality (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate shit like this. Question: Do you want to know how to make friends, or do you want to make friends? Because when you start to look for the secret procedure behind friendship, you start looking at people as if they were abstract personalities, with some quanitifiable set of properties, and you stop looking at them as human beings. And this attitude can prevent you from actually connecting with them. It's completely absurd. Not everything is meant to be turned into cold science.
Definitly nothing profound (Score:5, Interesting)
Most 18 year olds don't have profound achievements that have a commonality. If you have kids, you don't mind hearing about other people's kids. If you're in physics club, you probably don't want to hear about a wrestling match.
Studies also show that teenagers blow at empathetic responses, so it harder to tell if someone is interested by subtle clues. If someone follows along on the conversation, its a go... So music is the most common ground shared by all teens.
Except me, i really didn't ever listen to the radio.
Myers-Briggs Jung (Score:5, Interesting)
Subconscious Connection? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Just note (Score:3, Interesting)
playlist sharing (Score:3, Interesting)
It would be nice to have this feature on the (wireless/bluetooth enabled) digital music players: an option to share the playlist, so I could get my cellphone and read (and store) the info on the music being played.
Re:Because... (Score:3, Interesting)
for the same reason music is useful in religion (Score:2, Interesting)
there are very valuable emotions communicated by very shoddy musicianship. there are very bland emotions communicated by overproduced garbage. the conglomeration of what people like is telling at least of what they're going through at the moment.
it tells you if they're into ecstatic fun stuff, if they're into sad stuff, angry stuff. music is cathartic and healing, and it shows you what the person needs. it can be revealing if they view it as entertainment, or just background noise.
the kiss of death for me is, "I like all music," um... like what? "Oh, I listen to everything," and what are some bands you like... "[billboard top 5]" if people like music I don't like, but like it for a reason, and are interested in it, then I'm fine with that. but then, I'm a musician. when people ask me about painters, I say the same thing.
that's my opinion anyway.
The Onion has been at this for a while (Score:4, Interesting)
The Onion has a feature called Random Rules. [avclub.com] They take a celebrity type person and put their MP3 player on random. Then have the person being interviewed discusses what happens to come up on their player.
It's actually a pretty good feature. I especially liked the one with Gerald Casale.
The Culture of Music The Sound of Music (Score:3, Interesting)
IAAMusician, and let me be the first to tell you that coming to this realization was not easy at first, probably due to the fact that I had to first learn and internalize most of the fundamentals of music, which kept me focused on the structural aspects. That being said, I still have no idea what music is or why I enjoy to make or listen to it. I do know that most people refuse to believe that the reason they don't like rap music isn't because of the sonic structures or lyrical content of the music rather the fact that they cannot relate to the culture that is responsible for its creation. Most musicians I know refuse to believe this as well, and while I cannot even come close to proving my thoughts on this, I know that if it is not the most important aspect of music, it is at least partially true.
For example, last night, I was coming back from a friend's place, and I took a cab, not the easiest thing to do right after the Superbowl ends, especially in New York City. I was lucky enough to get a cab almost right away. The driver, as usual, was minding his own business. He was listening to a type of ethnic music typically known as Hindustani, originating from the Northern parts of India, near the Pakistani border, but also closely associated to Bangalore. I'm pretty in to this kind of music, the vocal styles, the tablas, the sitars here and there. However, he was used to the fact that most white dudes would probably rather listen to classic rock and offered to change to a radio station of my choice. I told him that I was enjoying this music, and immediately, he sprung to life! He handed me the album case and started telling me all about who this guy was that had written the songs, who the singer was, and tons of other information about the music and the culture behind it. Apparently, it was all written by this man, Rabindranath Tagore [wikipedia.org], who my cabbie enthusiastically told me was the first person from Asia to win the Nobel Prize, AND, that he had written all of his work in his native language. He was overflowing with pride. Not wanting to be the cultural hog of the conversation, he grabbed another CD case from the front and passed it back. It was a compilation of the Greatest Love Songs, with stuff like Genesis, Fleetwood Mac, Foreigner, etc... He had grown fond of listening to an Adult Contemporary station here in NYC and bought some albums and he was really in to it! I told him that if he enjoyed these songs, he would love one of my favorite songwriters, Burt Bacharach. At the end of the journey we both exchanged information about the artists we had recommended to each other and completed our cultural exchange.
So your musical preferences will have a direct relation to your cultural preferences. How all of this applies to todays hyper-culture, with it's multitudes of sub genres and opinions scattered left and right, I have no idea. I'm still trying to figure that one out. I wouldn't have a hard time believing that if two people are both into neo-industrial-hardcore-skate-ska that there would be enough of a cultural/personality match for them to make a good couple.
So, no offense to all of you Julie Andrews fans out there, but the sound of music really doesn't seem to be as important as the culture of music.
Re:A human being != a personality (Score:4, Interesting)
Because when you start to look for the secret procedure behind friendship, you start looking at people as if they were abstract personalities, with some quanitifiable set of properties, and you stop looking at them as human beings.
Long ago I read a book where two characters were discussing personality types. One character claimed he categorized people into two groups. He'd show people the idyllic garden behind his home and eventually tell them he had built that small hill, and moved those rocks so they looked like they had fallen there, and reshaped the stream to run a different way. One type of people were appalled that the beauty was not natural and felt disillusioned and the other group were amazed by his ability to create beauty and enlightened by the knowledge. The claim was that some people prefer to believe in the beauty in the natural world, while others prefer to see the beauty inside a person expressed.
I don't believe in such dichotomies, but I think there is a valuable lesson there. Understanding the processes that lay behind some phenomenon need not devalue that phenomenon and may in fact enhance one's appreciation of it. Every day I am appalled by the ignorance and meanness and stupidity and selfishness of people. They lie right to your face, care nothing for people they profess to love, and are unthinking animals in making decisions, while they are cold and calculating robot lawyers when it comes to justifying those same actions.
Every day I am amazed by how amazingly generous and giving people are. People will ruin their entire day to avoid disappointing a friend, children put us all to shame with their friendliness and wonder and lack of prejudice, and people with completely different world views and beliefs can set that aside to do some good in the world.
I've read more psychology books than some psychologists I know. I am very good at understanding people's motivations and feelings. I understand and implement a half dozen different models of the human animal. I don't think that stops me at all from being a very social person and I don't think it objectifies people. I don't have any trouble making friends and always seem to be meeting new people.
I think it is important to recognize that understanding the human mind in a scientific sense does not mean you cannot understand it from a human perspective as well, and empathize and connect. These are not mutually exclusive points of view.
LOL who listens to lyrics? I just hear the melody (Score:3, Interesting)
If the words are the most important part of the song - then fine go listen to it, but you can drop the music part, since it's not the focus, and call it a poem, so I won't have to listen to it.
Musical ?Taste? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A human being != a personality (Score:1, Interesting)
I would have to respectfully disagree. Concrete procedures are not "completely absurd." Yes I have very many close friends that I love dearly, and that love me back, but I would have never met them if it wasn't for an intermediary with a lot more charisma and social aptitude than I have. Now that we've gone our separate paths, and I have moved to a new area, if I'm going to set up a new circle, I'm going to have to do real concrete work to develop my own social skills and confidence. Which pretty much boils down to, "OK. At this party you will introduce yourself to a complete stranger. Ask them questions and get them to talk about themselves. Act interested. Make eye contact and smile." My thought process really goes like that.
Yes, once I go through that ad nauseum, I find the real friends I hold onto. I stop following any steps and just wing it. But to meet these people, yes, I need the steps.
Work with a great therapist has worked wonders. And yes, I also take medication for this. All concrete steps I had to consciously take.
Re:Great idea for next /. poll (Score:3, Interesting)
* Launch into a rant
I know you were joking, but ranting is a pretty good bonding strategy. Disliking the same things is a much better ground for friendship than liking the same things. NYT [nytimes.com], PDF paper [ou.edu], Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]