“I thought we had nothing in common until I saw a CD by Jellyfish (an obscure Beatlesque pop group) which I thought no one else had — well, that was a revelation that lead to us getting together,” said a still astonished Liz, who works for Newark council in Nottinghamshire.
Liz is not alone in making life-changing decisions based on cultural ephemera. In his 1995 novel High Fidelity, Nick Hornby’s alter ego Rob Fleming recommends always judging a potential mate by their record covers.
Some scoffed, but a forthcoming study in the journal Psychological Science suggests that Hornby and the Olsons were spot-on.
Samuel Gosling, a British psychologist at the University of Texas, and Peter Jason Rentfrow, an American teaching at Cambridge, have identified links between taste and personality. Or what your music says about you.
Among a battery of tests, volunteers created a CD of favourite songs. Strangers then judged what the anonymous compilers were like — extrovert, adventurous cheery, brainy, melancholic and so on.
Advertisement
The CD proved significantly more reliable than other ways of quickly assessing people such as by looks, clothes or taste in films or politics. The Olsons, for instance, love punk, which the Rentfrow-Gosling index equates with outgoing social personalities.
The index is so focused that, last week, Rentfrow was able to match Tony Blair and Ruby Wax, the comedian and writer, to records they selected for Desert Island Discs. Blair’s mixture of classical (Debussy) and rock standards (the Beatles and Free) pointed to a “conventional rebel” while Wax’s choices of Mussorgsky, the Doors and West Side Story signalled a “loud” personality, said Rentfrow.
The psychologists also monitored courting couples’ first six weeks of conversation, and discovered that they used music to “check each other out” nearly twice as much as books, television or sport.
While the men tended to use musical references to establish themselves as belonging to a particular “tribe”, and the women more often choose it to reflect moods, in both cases it had the effect of communicating their character types. “Nick Hornby was right: the music does not lie,” said Rentfrow.
“And this is not just among young people, but also among office staff who are increasingly allowed to use iPods at work. Music is a great social filter and safer than talking about politics or religion,” he said.
Advertisement
“What surprised us is the truth behind many of the stereotypes. If you like country or choral music, you are likely to be more plainly spoken than if you are into music without strong lyrics such as electronica.
“But we were surprised to find that, despite their love of aggressive music, rap and heavy metal fans were typically more shy than many other music lovers. I am not sure they want us to know that, though.”
Advertisement
SCIENTISTS now understand a lot more about our inner secrets and habits than we realise or may be comfortable with.
Over the past decade, boosted by intrusive technologies such as improved brain-scanning machines and CCTV cameras, and mass observation through the internet, there has been a leap forwards in the scientific study of everyday life.
For example, scientists know by mounting cameras in supermarkets that when we walk through a door, our natural instinct is to look left and turn right. They also know that the convenience stores which place beer next to nappies on their shelves sell lots more alcohol. Men may not do much changing of nappies, it seems, but are more likely to be sent out on emergency missions to buy more.
Other tests seem more akin to reality TV than science: in the infamous “Good Samaritan” tests, volunteers hurrying to deliver a homily on that biblical text walked around ‘injured” people lying on the pavement. Much new research suggests we are not as agreeable as we hope.
Around the world scientists are testing the “game theory” developed by John Nash — the mathematician played by Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind — by watching TV game-show contestants as they pick between different strategies to win.
Advertisement
Professor Ian Walker divides his time between teaching economics at Warwick University and studying players on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? It is a cheap way, he said, of analysing how ordinary people balance risk against possible reward: at which point do they stop gambling on their skills to answer the questions and bank their accumulated loot?
Walker said that Britain’s most successful game show is more than just an entertainment: it generates data which can help the chancellor, Gordon Brown, to judge how much people are putting aside for a rainy day and how much more he must find for future state pensions.
The scientific study of personality and choice says how we treat money comes from deep within our genetic heritage: studies at Harvard include capuchin monkeys who use silver discs to buy toys, fruit and even sex from fellow primates. The observers call this “testing price theory”.
Hollywood studios are also employing psychologists and economists to steer through the current box office depression. Later this month Steven Soderbergh, director of Ocean’s Eleven and Ocean’s Twelve, will release Bubble, a small-budget drama, simultaneously at American multiplexes, on DVD and on pay-per-view television.
“It’s an experiment to see how the movie fan jumps,” said a studio consultant. “If more people choose the DVD over the theatre, then studios will reduce the wait between multiplex and DVD to a few weeks, or maybe days. More cinemas will close. This is mass psychology in the real world, far more sophisticated than it was a generation ago, and it is not pretty.”
Advertisement
()
YET scientists still believe that music remains a unique road into the soul, if only because we are now surrounded by so much of it. A century ago all music was live, from whistling in the street to grand opera, but now the average student owns four days of music on CD or iPod.
A recent study found we spend 14% of our waking hours being melodically blasted by jingles, Tannoys and friends. Most goes in one ear and out the other, but some creates a powerful emotional effect.
This is why the majority of dating agencies ask would-be romantics to fill out a musical questionnaire: indeed, some agencies, such as Classical Partners of London and Let’s Rock, based in Los Angeles, only encourage applications from people who share their musical standards.
Michael Lamb, co-founder of Classical Partners, said the questionnaire was not intended as an IQ test but as a litmus test of the underlying attitudes beneath the choices.
“I’d say nine out of 10 of our clients enjoy the countryside and the more spiritual things in life such as art and theatre, reading and literature,” he said. He added that although sharing music is vital, hitting the right note just opens the door. “Chemistry is still king,” he adds firmly.
Ranni Lamperter, who will launch the Let’s Rock dating agency on the web later this year, said that many of his potential clients were proudly elitist: “They feel the music of their youth is the only real stuff and cannot imagine spending time with someone who likes Celine Dion. It’s a matter of pride, a deal breaker, because music says so much for so many.”
When Rentfrow and Gosling, authors of the forthcoming paper Message in a Ballad, asked young volunteers to compile a CD of their musical favourites, most found it difficult to reduce it to 10 songs.
This does not surprise Huw Stephens, a Radio 1 music presenter, who said that taste was too fluid to produce reliable information.
“If someone likes Babyshambles, the Sex Pistols and other rabble-rousing music they might be a troubled person, but they might also be a happy confident person who wants to listen right then to troubled music.”
Stephens said people who insisted on musically compatible friends or lovers might be missing out. “There can be an instant bond over music but, for instance, me and my girlfriend have very different tastes but we meet in the middle, and that is what counts.”
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Personality type: reflective. If you like Mozart, you are more likely than most to also enjoy jazz and choral music, the countryside and theatre
SNOOP DOGG
Personality type: energetic and liberal. Also 'Blurticious', or most likely to nervously blurt out opinions. An 'early adaptor' of fashion and technology
PAUL MCCARTNEY
Personality type: intense with a rebellious streak, a sensation-seeker. You may also appreciate alternative rock and some heavy metal music
MARIA CALLAS
Personality type: extrovert, dramatic. Three times more likely to attempt suicide than other music-lovers
DOLLY PARTON
Personality type: upbeat, honest and conventional. Strong fixed opinions. You may also enjoy Top 20 pop music and film soundtracks
LOUIS ARMSTRONG
Personality type: complex, stable. Likely to be educated and politically middle of the road, a conservationist and recycler. Also enjoys the blues