What singing along to Whitney can tell you about your personality

EVER find yourself singing along to Beyonce or Taylor Swift?

That’s because you’re an extrovert, say scientists. More a fan of David Bowie or Pink Floyd? Well, you’re a complex individual who’s a tad neurotic.

What we listen to says more about us than we realise, researchers behind a study into musical tastes claim.

They worked out the broad personality types of more than 80,000 people by monitoring their Facebook ‘likes’ and their favourite musicians from fan sites they followed on social media.

They also used a personality questionnaire and got participants to pick their favourites from a list of 50 pop and rock artists. The study found fans were attracted to artists whose personalities appear to match their own.

Those who were quarrelsome loved Ozzy Osbourne or Britney Spears, while the more agreeable enjoyed listening to Billy Joel and Paul McCartney.

Calm, emotionally stable types liked Marvin Gaye, while their neurotic, introvert opposites favoured ‘intense’ bands such as Pearl Jam and Nirvana.

Those open to experience liked more avant garde artists such as Radiohead, while the more conservative and conscientious listened to the likes of Whitney Houston. Dr David Greenberg of Cambridge University, co-author of the study from Bar-Ilan University in Israel, said: ‘It’s odd that passionate music fans feel close bonds with their favourite musicians even if they have never met them in person before.

‘There’s a feeling of this person knows me and I know them, even if all we have to rely on is the musical cues.’

The authors of the report, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, have set up a website, Musical Universe, where people can take music and personality tests and see their results.