Music and Personality

"Some psychologists have linked various personalities to various sorts of music, and to do this they had to classify music into a very small number of titles," said John Powell, author of "How Music Works," and "Why You Love Music: From Mozart to Metallica—The Emotional Power of Beautiful Sound."

The musical categories are:

• Reflective and complex music: classical, folk, jazz, and blues
• Intense and rebellious music: rock, alternative, heavy metal
• Upbeat and conventional music: pop, soundtracks, religious music, and country and western
• Energetic and rhythmic music: rap, soul and electronic  

"It’s been found that enthusiasts for reflective and complex music tend to score high on intelligence but they’re very poor at sports. They’re good with words and they’re often politically towards the left," Powell said.

People who like intense and rebellious music are smart, good with words and often skilled athletes, Powell said.

      There are, of course, exceptions to these categories and the associated personality traits, but the good thing is people can expand their musical tastes using these categories, the author said.

"If you like rock, you’re probably going to like alternative music as well; and if you like country and western, you’ll probably like pop music and sound tracks as well," Powell explained.

      Part of the reason music is so important to lots of people is because the brain is almost hard-wired to use music.
About 3 percent of the population is tone deaf, but for everyone else music is powerful, Powell said.

"If you think about your body having a sort of internal pharmacy which dispenses various chemicals to make you run away from danger or go to sleep, then music has the key to the pharmacy," Powell said. "It can actually help dispense these chemicals when they’re required or … if you’re having trouble sleeping for example, you’ve got too much of a chemical called noradrenaline in your system, and just listening to classical music quietly before you go to bed can stop that problem and cure insomnia."