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Received July 3, 2001; revised March 18, 2002; accepted May 9, 2002
The purpose of this study was to examine the personality characteristics and developmental issues of 3 groups of adolescent music listeners: those preferring light qualities of music, those preferring heavy qualities of music, and those who had eclectic preferences for music qualities. One hundred sixty-four adolescents completed an age-appropriate personality inventory and a systematic measure of music listening preference. The findings indicate that each of the 3 music preference groups is inclined to demonstrate a unique profile of personality dimensions and developmental issues. Those preferring heavy or light music qualities indicated at least moderate difficulty in negotiating several distinct domains of personality and/or developmental issues; those with more eclectic music preferences did not indicate similar difficulty. Thus, there was considerable support for the general hypothesis that adolescents prefer listening to music that reflects specific personalities and the developmental issues with which they are dealing.
KEY WORDS: music; personality; adolescent development.
INTRODUCTION
Music is important in the social and personal lives of adolescents. They cruise the streets in vehicles with pounding subwoofers; 25,000-seat concert stadiums sell out in minutes; and billions of dollars are spent each year on tapes and compact discs (Geter and Streisand, 1995). Between Grades 7 and 12, the typical adolescent spends over 10,000 h listening to music, an amount of time similar to that spent in class by the time they graduate from high school (Davis, 1985; Mark, 1988). Many researchers have examined why music is so important to adolescents and how adolescents actively use music to satisfy particular social, emotional, and developmental needs (Arnett et al., 1995; Larson et al., 1989; Larson and Kubey, 1983; Levy and Windahl, 1985; Lull, 1987; Rubin, 1994). Researchers have been particularly interested in adolescents and young adults who are marginalized and/or experiencing major psychological issues and have found that they prefer heavier forms of music such as heavy metal and hard rock (Hansen and Hansen, 1990; Took and Weiss, 1994; Wass et al., 1989). It is presumed that these music preferences reflect the values, conflicts, and developmental issues with which these youth are dealing.
Two groups of adolescents ignored by researchers are those who have strong preferences for lighter kinds of music...