EXPLORING THE RELATION BETWEEN PERSONALITY AND THE APPRECIATION OF ROCK-MUSIC

Scores on five personality characteristics, extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism as well as reactive and proactive rebelliousness, an d the appreciation of soft/nonrebellious and hard/rebellious rock-musi c videotapes were explored. After completing the personality tests, fe male and male undergraduates were exposed to rock-music videotapes and asked to rare various aspects of their enjoyment of each. Analysis in dicated that psychoticism and reactive rebelliousness were associated with enjoyment in a parallel fashion. Specifically, respondents scorin g high on psychoticism or high on reactive rebelliousness enjoyed hard /rebellious rock-music videotapes more than did their peers scoring lo w on psychoticism or low on reactive rebelliousness. The reverse was e vident for the enjoyment of soft/nonrebellious rock-music videotapes. In contrast, scores on extraversion, neuroticism and proactive rebelli ousness were not associated with enjoyment. Gender differences emerged , however; women (n=78) enjoyed soft/nonrebellious rock music more tha n did men (n=60); and conversely, men enjoyed hard/rebellious rock mus ic more than did women.