Relationship between Musical Capacity and Big Five Personality Traits: A Study among Emerging Adults

Musical capacity is the ability of an individual to recognize and understand different emotions conveyed through music. A previous study showed that different cognitive and physiological changes were elicited while listening to music. Individuals may rely on music in order to regulate their emotions. The prime focus of this study was to examine the association between factors peculiar to musical capacity and Big Five personality traits. All 110 participants were selected using a convenience sampling method. Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) and a module from MUSEBAQ were used to measure personality traits and musical capacity respectively. The data collected using Google Forms was analysed based on a correlational research design. Big Five personality traits included extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness to experience. Listening sophistication, emotional sensitivity, music memory and imagery, personal commitment and indifference to music were the factors of musical capacity. Listening sophistication was discovered to have a strong correlation with the five robust factors of personality. All the factors of musical capacity were found to have a significant correlation with the openness to experience trait of personality. Indifference to music was found to be significantly correlated with conscientiousness. More studies have to be conducted including a larger sample size covering a diverse population. Since this is the first study to link musical capacity with personality traits, a new avenue for understanding personality traits based on how people listen and respond to musical stimuli was explored.