Over the past two weeks I have been involved in a music psychology project that was the brainchild of an insurance company called Quotemehappy.com. They were interested to look at the relationship between musical genre preferences and driving behaviour across a large sample of UK drivers. The company hired a polling organisation to run a questionnaire across over 2000 members of the public and then sent the data to me. What did we find?

Aggression: Some of the results replicated those reported in an article that I wrote with Nikki Dibben (Dibben & Williamson, 2007). People who listen to drum and bass and heavy metal music were more likely than listeners of classical music to report aggressive driving behaviours, for example. But then of course there is the large confound in the room – that of age group. Younger drivers are statistically more likely to listen to these genres according to the present survey and according to other evidence they are also more likely to demonstrate aggressive driving.

However, one factor that may play also a role is volume and tempo. These genres can often be played at loud volumes and feature fast tempos. At high levels, fast and loud music can divert attention from driving (Brodsky, 2002) and result in greater driver aggression (Wiesenthal et al. 2003).

There were some other interesting findings in the report that were not necessarily along the lines I would have predicted.

Speeding: Jazz listeners were significantly more likely to report receiving a fine for speeding than any other genre. I can think of three possible explanations;

1) The survey was self report so jazz listeners may simply be more honest than others about their driving mistakes!
2) The complexity of jazz music might mean that the driver becomes more involved with the music (listening analytically) and loses concentration on their exact speed
3) The survey also revealed that jazz listeners make significantly more long journeys that any other genre so they may be more likely to encounter speed cameras.

Near-misses: Reggae listeners were statistically more likely to be involved in near misses. They were also more likely to report that they use music to help them to stay alert and less likely to turn music off in order to help them concentrate.

From this evidence it is possible to speculate that these drivers are over-stimulating their system with music and not recognising the possible consequences for concentration. One issue might be that reggae is often thought of as relaxing music, but it has as much potential to distract a driver as any other type of vocal music.

What music is good for driving? Music listening in cars has both potential benefits and costs. Both of these effects are driven by two main factors; 1) the intrinsic qualities of the music and 2) personal experience and preferences. To explain these in more detail;

1) Music that contains lyrics is potentially more distracting than instrumental music. We know that verbal-based materials interfere more with other everyday tasks such as reading and playing computer games.
2) Music that is louder and more complex (contains more key changes, more erratic rhythms, more layered textures, and more instruments/voices) is likely to be more distracting.
3) Music that is unfamiliar is more likely to be distracting compared to tunes we know well.
4) Not liking the music in our environment can negatively influence our concentration.

It is also important to consider circumstances: whether the journey is common for the driver, whether it is taken under stress (mental or physical) and the complexity of the journey itself (how many other cars are on the road, extent of any traffic works and weather conditions).

Once useful conclusion from all this is that genres that are unfamiliar to us and/or not liked by us are more likely to be distracting while we drive compared to our favourite genre that we know well. A great excuse for insisting that when you drive you should pick the music!

One last Christmas-themed point: According to the survey the UK’s favourite Xmas driving song is Slade’s ‘Merry Christmas Everybody’. Why might this be a good driving song?

The song is mostly in a major key, a musical structure that is often associated with the communication of happy emotions. It is a familiar song for a lot of people so will likely cause a lower drain on cognitive resources compared to an unfamiliar song. It is also quite repetitive in its structure and lyrics, which again will make it easier to process than a more complex melody and song.

Finally, I suspect that it will be linked to plenty of positive memories for a lot of people, being associated as it is with a favourite family holiday in the UK. Triggering pleasant memories can improve current mood and emotional levels, which has the potential to have positive temporary knock-on effects for our behaviour and attitude as a driver.

Please drive safely and happily this Christmas

This week I had a very nice email from a gentleman who is kind enough (much like you, dear reader) to glance over my blog now and then. This student was embarking on a music psychology project at his college and he wanted to ask me a simple question to help him develop his project ideas: Why do different people like different types of music?

Jackpot!

Well, after reading the question I sat at my computer for a minute or two spouting off ideas like a slot machine fires out coins when you hit the jackpot. Where to begin?! So may things influence how people come to form musical preferences; passive exposure during childhood, the influence of culture, the development of self concept in the formative years, the influence of memories, emotional style, listening habits….and so on!

I tried to be helpful and pointed my young enquirer in the direction of some literature on musical preferences. My advice then was for him to pick one or maybe two of the influences, whatever he was intrigued by the most, and to investigate hypotheses directly from within his chosen dimensions. He thanked me for my reply and that was that.

Then, low and behold, the very next day I can across and article on one of the dimensions which I have not yet mentioned; personality. So in honour of that young man, here is a summary of a recent article entitled ‘Toward a better understanding of the relation between music preference, listening behaviour, and personality’

The article was written by a group from the Philips Research Lab in the Netherlands and they had a rather intriguing method for their study. They wanted to better understand how reported musical preferences related to actual listening behaviour, as attitudes are not always consistent with behaviour in this world. They tracked what people listened to and how long they listened while they were at work (at Royal Philips Electronics) from a database of 70,000 audio recordings over three months. Remember my blog last week about music listening habits at work? This is a simpler form of recording listening habits, but much more extensive –  a rare source of rich data!

The recordings from their database were grouped using the ‘All Music Guide’ (2008) into 16 music genres. They measured the music preferences of 395 people (using the STOMP – Short Test of Musical Preference) of which 267 people provided enough listening behaviour data for further analysis.

The authors originally intended to try to support the findings of Rentflow and Gosling (2003) who had set out four types of musical preference;

• Reflective and complex
• Intense and rebellious
• Upbeat and conventional
• Energetic and rhythmic

However, try as they might (and they tried a LOT of factor analyses!) the present authors could not replicate their framework. Their data pointed to a 6 factor preference model instead:

• Rhythm and Blues
• Hard Rock
• Bass Heavy
• Country
• Soft Rock
• Classical

It is interesting that they chose to stick more closely to genre type labels instead of the more esoteric concepts employed by Rentflow and Gosling (2003). And I wonder how well these models hold up against different cultures, as well as across different periods of time. The authors acknowledge in their paper that a lot of the music listening reflected the current state of industry music sales in the US and UK.

When they looked at musical preference according to the STOMP and listening behaviour they found strong correlations, meaning that the individuals were reliably listening to the types of genre that they reported liking on their questionnaire (measured using listening duration).

This seems a straight forward finding, but I wonder how it would change if you asked people of a younger age group, perhaps one that was less gender biased (the majority of participants in the present study were male), and how it would vary if people had to fill out the STOMP in group situations. That would be a good way to get at social influences on reporting of musical preference.

And what about personality? They found a number of correlations between personality traits (as measured by the Big 5) and musical preference which replicated previous work. These included positive correlations between extraversion and pop, dance, rock and religious music, and a positive correlation with agreeableness and soundtracks. But the only consistent correlations that were found after they considered both reported preferences and listening behaviours were between neuroticism and classical music, and openness to experience and jazz.

The authors make an additional point throughout the paper which I think is very worthy of future consideration.  They argue that studies in this field are hampered by the use of genre labels. Genre’s, they argue, are evolving, overlapping, ambiguous, and vary across individuals as to how they are defined; these are all potential reasons why their data did not replicate those of Rentflow and Gosling (2003).

After less than 10 years the groupings of musical genre seemed to have changed quite a lot between the two studies. In the present study rap and dance genres grouped together in the analysis, whereas in 2003 they were easily separable. Also, blues and jazz were distinct from classical music in the present study whereas in 2003, apparently, they grouped together!  So the use of genre labels may be too unstable a notion upon which to measure musical preference. What might we use instead? The authors suggest trying to relate personality to specific, objective audio characteristics rather than genre. An intriguing idea…

Conclusions

This study has shown that musical preferences can match closely with listening behaviours in an occupational environment (although, as I said, I would love to see this tried out in different populations and situations) and that there are relatively few reliable correlations between personality and musical preference/listening. However, the problem of using genre labels must be considered before drawing conclusions on the latter point. Overall, this is a very interesting study and certainly an eye-opener when it comes to ways in which you can potentially measure listening behaviour when you have access to music industry level technology.