The study concluded that jazz and classical music fans are creative with good self-esteem, although the former are much more outgoing whereas the latter are shy.
Country and western fans were found to be hardworking and shy; rap fans are outgoing and indie lovers lack self-esteem and are not very gentle.
Those who like soul music can take heart as the research concluded they are creative, outgoing, gentle, at ease with themselves and have a high self-esteem.
This is very interesting--I thought the fact that indie lovers "lack self-esteem and are not very gentle." However, I think it's entirely wrong to assume that the music people listen to is what defines their personalities. One of the first, and most important, things you learn in any statistics class is that correlation is not causation. The similarity of personality traits can be occurring for a number of reasons. For example, indie rock is a genre with a fanbase prmarily of young people--which are the type of people who seem to have more issues with self-esteem. Classical music's audience tends to be older or musically educated, both two groups which also tend to have achieved a level of financial security (at least more so than young people) and it makes sense as well that they would have higher self esteem. Jazz itself is a genre that's incredibly conducive to creativity, since it often has an emphasis on improvisation.
It's incredibly interesting to see what traits are associated with what music, but it seems totally obvious that the people who compose the differing subcultures would have similar values. While the data itself is very interesting, the most intriguing part, to me at least, would be a deeper analysis into how groups gather their own identities and traits, and how they arise.
I'd write more, but I've got to get beer before kickball starts. Just some food for thought.
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