Your taste in music may reveal more about you than you think. A recent study published in PLOS One has found that the songs you love can provide insights into your moral values. Researchers explored the connection between people’s moral principles and their musical preferences, uncovering intriguing patterns that shed light on the relationship between our minds and melodies.
Prior studies had already delved into the connection between personality traits and musical tastes, but this study aimed to go beyond personality and delve into the realm of moral values. Moral Foundations Theory, developed by psychologists Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham, provided the theoretical framework for this exploration.
“I was intrigued by the exploration and comprehension of the link between moral values and music preferences,” said study author Vjosa Preniqi (@vjosa_preniqi), a PhD student at the Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary University of London and member of the Communication Acoustics Lab. “This interest stems from the potential application of such insights in developing psychologically informed music recommender systems which can indicate on improving user satisfaction and retention (i.e. the listener uses the streaming platform for longer).”
To investigate this, the researchers conducted a study involving 1,480 participants. They gathered data from Facebook users in Italy, as part of the LikeYouth project, focusing on their musical preferences and moral values.
Participants were asked to complete self-reported questionnaires designed to assess their moral values, providing insights into the five distinct foundations: Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority, and Purity. The researchers also delved into the participants’ musical preferences by analyzing the songs they liked on Facebook artist pages. They extracted acoustic and lyrical features from the top five songs of each participant’s preferred artists.
Using Machine Learning algorithms, the team analyzed the extracted features to predict participants’ moral values. Various text processing techniques, including lexicon-based methods and BERT-based embeddings, were employed to analyze narrative, moral values, sentiment, and emotions in lyrics. This deep analysis of lyrical content helped researchers decipher the underlying moral themes in participants’ preferred songs.
Additionally, low- and high-level audio features provided via Spotify’s API were used to understand the encoded information in participants’ musical choices. These audio features encompassed aspects like pitch, timbre, and dynamics, providing insights into how the music itself contributed to moral inferences.
When it comes to songs’ lyrical content, the researchers found that individuals who value moral foundations related to Care and Fairness tended to prefer artists whose songs’ lyrics revolved around themes of care and joy. On the other hand, those who placed more importance on Loyalty, Authority, and Purity were drawn to lyrics discussing fairness, sanctity, and love. This suggests that the content of the lyrics can strongly resonate with individuals’ moral values.
Surprisingly, the study revealed that the musical attributes of songs also played a significant role. Participants with Binding values, which relate to principles of loyalty, authority, and purity, preferred music that was danceable, loud, and had more positive sounds.
Meanwhile, those with Individualizing values, which emphasize care and fairness, were more inclined to choose music with smooth, acoustic qualities and less dynamic sounds. This means that not only the lyrics but also the overall musical style can reflect an individual’s moral values.
“A straightforward message from this study is that individuals tend to align their music preferences with their moral worldviews and beliefs,” Preniqi told PsyPost. “In our exploration, it became evident that both the lyrics and audio features of songs play pivotal roles in shaping individuals’ musical tastes.”
The researchers also tested predictive models to determine how accurately music preferences can predict an individual’s moral values. When both lyrics and audio features were considered, the models performed exceptionally well.
“A combination of musical features and lyrical attributes outperforms basic demographic information in predicting individuals’ moral values, which are directly linked to users. Specifically, musical elements like pitch and timbre emerged as crucial predictors for Care and Fairness, while sentiments and emotions expressed in lyrics were more effective in predicting Loyalty, Authority, and Purity,” Preniqi explained.
“Our study provides compelling evidence that music preferences can serve as a window into an individual’s moral values,” said Charalampos Saitis, one of the senior authors of the study and lecturer at Queen Mary University of London’s School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science.
While this study offers fascinating insights into the connection between music and moral values, there are limitations to consider. The data primarily came from Facebook users in Italy, so the findings may not apply universally to all cultures. Moreover, the study focused on English-language songs, potentially limiting its cross-cultural applicability.
“One of the limitations of this work that the LikeYouth project data include primarily Facebook users from Italy, so our conclusions may only partially apply to other cultures across the world,” Preniqi said. “Therefore, an important question for future exploration is the assessment of moral implications based on music preferences across different countries and cultures. Additionally, we need to investigate whether streaming services, beyond Music Artist Likes on Facebook, can provide more comprehensive insights into the connection between music and moral values.”
“On an additional note, although our results indicated that music preferences carry information about individuals’ moral worldviews that goes beyond basic demographics, there may be other factors not included in our study, such as socio-economic status, religion, culture, and hobbies, that could further support our findings.”
The study, “Soundscapes of morality: Linking music preferences and moral values through lyrics and audio“, was authored by Vjosa Preniqi, Kyriaki Kalimeri, and Charalampos Saitis.