Music preferences in young people: Gender and personal traits

Music plays a powerful role in young people’s lives, especially popular music. For decades, researchers have sought to understand the factors that shape musical likes and dislikes. The uses-and-gratifications approach, proposed by Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch in 1974, helpfully frames our media consumption as meeting certain social and psychological needs — around personal identity, relationships, and the desire for diversion. Work on musical taste has drawn heavily on that framework, looking both at music as a mood regulator and as a tool teenagers use to signal social identity by aligning themselves with the values and preferences of fans of particular styles. The study presented here focuses on musical taste and identity, specifically gender differences and the ways individuals identify with gender-linked traits.

Those findings also reflect the results of earlier academic investigations.

There is a strong thread running through that earlier literature: sustained findings linking feminine stereotypes to music preferences.

Those gender differences have often been explained by how well particular styles match traditional gender roles and the developmental concerns of young men and women. Lighter, mainstream music tends to focus lyrically on emotions and relationships — issues close to the lives of young women. Heavier music, by contrast, is associated with aggression, power, dominance, and rejection of authority — themes tied to the world of young men. Noting work by Rentfrow and Gosling, which identified four underlying preference dimensions — reflective and complex, intense and rebellious, upbeat and conventional, and energetic and rhythmic — the current authors point out that those researchers had not analyzed male and female preferences separately. Data going back to Christenson and Peterson from two decades earlier, however, did reveal gender differences there. Christenson and Peterson factor-analyzed the preferences of US college students for 26 styles and reported results highlighting how prominently up-tempo styles figure on different social identity dynamics.

In that study, contemporary rock stood on its own factor for men, while for women those mainstream forms loaded on the same factor. The authors point out that this result dovetails with the wider split along societal gender-attribution axes inside mainstream culture.

Recent research on music listening behaviors also lends support to such a gender-bifurcated structure of taste. North, Hargreaves, and O’Neill in the UK found that female adolescents used music more for mood regulation, whereas male teens turned to music to construct identity and make lasting impressions on others. Those divergent uses resonate with explanations that foreground male alienation in interior public-private boundaries. Accordingly, the current authors predicted that participants' underlying structures would show the mainstream sound continuing to be located differently for men and women. They further advanced two overlapping central claims to be tested with an empirically malleable solution correlating with impression-target and immediate environment salience measures.

Measurable correlations between social-bet performance and one's internally coded impressions ultimately drive the representational structure underlying overt preference patterns found in prior multivariate taxonomies.

The influence men display often corresponds directly to a variable like person perception according to design norm thresholds working on large-p tabulations mentioned throughout various media universes samples repeated usage prior notes.

Well controlled new-factor classification strategies confirmed women’s ratings aligned faithfully around four basic latent loadings covering primary musical brackets — all characterized by output orientations significantly tied into independent sets like factor-based masculine tilt vectors in direction differences dependent only on surface mapping that new more general behavioral correspondence may act differently under original institutional cultural architecture tools.

Method

Two hundred and eight undergraduates (110 women, 98 men) at the University of Leicester took part. The mean age was 19.6 years for women and 19.8 for men. The overwhelming majority of participants (93.3%) described themselves as White, with the rest being British Asian. Musical training background was classified on a four-point scale ranging from zero (no or very limited training) all the way up to Associated Board Royal Schools Grades Six or above.

Each person filled out a questionnaire rating how much they liked eleven musical styles — folk, chart pop, heavy metal, rock, blues, jazz, classical, reggae, opera, country, and rap — on a nine-level metric extending from "not at all" to "very much." The style labels were kept deliberately broad, deliberately recognizable from existing widely used pilot instruments.

Procedure and measures

They also filled out the forty-item Bem Sex Role Inventory, recording how each trait label fit on a 1–7 scale. Due to distinct historical influences intertwining participant pools generally give positive reaffirmation for critical influence categories being universally relevant endpoints thus offering value neutrality concept trace extraction. Regression modeling handled competing predictor class identifications.

Analysis & first findings

Music training differed notably between genders: women scored a mean 1.06 (SD 1.03), men 0.72 (SD 0.95). This inequality matters statistically, potentially coloring degrees of conscious brand access differentiation to a range of comparably popular formal outlets that earlier authors documented precisely for those same discriminants, pushing methodological neutrality constraints front. So training was entered as a covariate across all subject-multivariate slices testing attitudes and fashion orientation contrasts.

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Main Effect highlights sorted by independent classification pairs

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Underlying structure break by gender applied factor decompositions

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The zero-order correlations between style ratings and predictors (gender, musical training, masculinity, femininity) are presented in Table 3. For rock, significant correlations emerged with gender (−.159), masculinity (.155), and femininity (.179). Rap correlated with masculinity (.378), femininity (−.148), and training (.285). Jazz correlated with femininity (.247), masculinity (.194), training (.240), and gender (−.153). Folk showed correlations with gender (−.117 again and masculinity (.258).

Table 3 shows significant predictors from regression analyses. For rock, Step 3 included gender (−.197) accounting for .076 of variance; Step 4 added femininity (−.161) with R² of .051. Rap predictors were masculinity (.310 in Step 2), then femininity (−.204 in Step 3), and in Step 4 masculinity (.161) with final R² of .026. Jazz predictors were gender (.235 in Step 1, R² = .058) and femininity in Step 3 (.145), plus masculinity in Step 4 (.171 p > .05). Folk predictors were gender (−.167) in Step 1 and masculinity (−.142) in Step 2, with femininity (.263) added in step 3 giving final R² = .069.

Loading patterns showed a fourth factor with slightly lower loads from chart pop and blues, labeled Mainstream. In men’s data, a distinct fourth style with high loads from reggae and rap emerged and was labeled Rhythmic/Rebellious.

Discussion

As in previous studies, women liked chart pop more, while men preferred heavy metal, folk, rock, and blues. Notably, both heavy metal and folk had overall means below their scale midpoints, indicating relatively low liking levels from both genders. Only rock, blues, rap, and chart pop scored above the scale midpoint for either men or women. Among those, only rap lacked a gender difference, confirming its crossover appeal — males attracted by aggressive or subversive lyrics and females by dance rhythms (Christenson & Roberts, 1998). Rock rated highest among men and second highest among women despite the gender gap.

Table 4 details men’s factor structure: Traditional factor included folk (.890) and chart pop (.900), Sophisticated factor shared classical (.889) and jazz (.856), Mainstream had opera (.735), Rhythmic/Rebellious loaded rap (.888), and Rock factor stood alone (.908). Proportion of variance accounted for: 24.06, 17.05, 15.02, 13.58, and 11.28 percent.

The present preference structure parallels Rentfrow and Gosling’s (2003). The largest factor in all analyses covered classical, jazz, blues, and for both sexes included opera (not in Rentfrow & Gosling) and was labeled Sophisticated. Heavy factors in both men and women aligned with Rentfrow and Gosling’s Intense and Rebellious. Rhythmic/Rebellious factors matched their Energetic and Rhythmic dimension.

The main discrepancy concerned mainstream music factors. In Rentfrow and Gosling (2003), pop, country, religious, and soundtracks loaded on Upbeat and Conventional, resembling the women’s Mainstream here, which included country, folk, chart pop, and blues. Men’s data produced a single high-loading factor for chart pop only; blues loaded on Sophisticated, while folk and country loaded separately on Traditional.

Table 5 presents women’s structure: Mainstream (folk .631, chart pop .860), Sophisticated (classical .815, opera .825), Heavy (rock .609, heavy metal .707), and Rhythmic (reggae .803, rap .779). Proportion of variance: 22.27, 16.75, 15.60, and 13.09 percent.

Two findings are of particular interest. First, the structure of musical preferences shows relative consistency across sample and culture. Second, the gender differences in mainstream style endorsement mirror Christenson and Peterson (1988) supporting the proposal that men and women use music differently. Men draw clearer boundaries between current styles because music is central to their subcultural identity and self-presentation (North et al., 2000). One apparent objection is that no gender difference in rating variance emerged, implying men do not differentiate styles more sharply. Yet contemporary styles (most relevant to young men) show that only chart pop — disliked by men (below midpoint) — drew greater female liking; other contemporary styles showed no gender differences. Men’s significantly lower liking for chart pop plus the separation of mainstream styles in their preference structure supports the self-presentational interpretation. Young men may avoid styles associated with femaleness since gender-role socialization discourages cross-gender behavior in boys more than in girls (Bussey & Bandura, 1999; Martin, 1993).

Some associations between liking of individual styles and participants’ self-rated gender traits emerged. Femininity correlated positively with chart pop, jazz, blues, classical, and country; masculinity correlated with blues, jazz, and heavy metal. Generally, femininity linked to lighter styles, masculinity to heavier ones.

However, these zero-order correlations disregard gender and training. Regression analyses including gender and training generally found gender was a stronger predictor than masculinity or femininity for five of six stylistically gendered styles. For rock, reggae, and heavy metal, gender alone was significant. Social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) and abundant research (Tekman & Hortaçsu, 2002; Tarrant, North, and Hargreaves, 2001) show music influences social perception. Since gender is a primary social category, identification as male or female appears more influential than gender-related personality traits in shaping musical taste.

Musical training significantly predicted liking of more sophisticated styles. North and Hargreaves (1995) found musically trained participants preferred prosocially complex pop. Training provides voluntary exposure to classical and opera, which fosters liking (North & Hargreaves, 1997). These data lend empirical support to the educational benefits of training: enhancing enjoyment of complex music among youth.

Despite the dominance of gender and training as predictors, masculinity and femininity still registered some effects. Femininity uniquely predicted liking of country music, perhaps due to emotional lyrics, and significantly predicted liking of chart pop, which conveys romantic and emotional themes.

Jazz and blues produced significant effects of both masculinity and femininity, possibly because these genres combine strong rhythm and forceful sound with emotional expressiveness.

The hypothesis that high androgyny or broad taste would accompany either high masculinity or high femininity was unsupported overall. Men rated more styles higher than women, aligning with the view that music matters more for men’s social identity — they seek out and listen to a wider array, especially non-mainstream styles (Christenson & Roberts, 1998; voluntary exposure → liking; North & Hargreaves, 1997). Yet the association of broader taste with high femininity (rather than androgyny or high masculinity) likely stems from music being a fundamentally expressive medium. The uses-and-gratifications perspective suggests that those high in expressive traits take more benefits and therefore develop wider listening taste.

These results replicate and extend prior findings on gender difference in young people’s music preferences. The overall pattern echoes earlier accounts and, in particular, the gender gap in mainstream style representation — present in Christenson and Peterson (1988) — endures two decades later, linking to the role contemporary music plays in young men’s personal identity and in women’s social–affective engagement.

Young men showed broader taste, consistent with music’s centrality to their identity. But the connection between feminine expressiveness and broader listening suggests further avenues of inquiry. That girls typically develop expressive traits through gender-role socialization may explain their greater positive response to music education (Crowther & Durkin, 1982) and their higher rates of instrumental instruction (Hanley, 1998; Lamont et al., 2003).

The findings bring an updated mapping of gender differences in musical tastes and structure. While gender-specific traits had some relationship with individual taste, being male or female overall more powerfully predicts liking of these sances. Aligned with music’s deeper role in male identity, men rated more styles higher. Yet, expressive stereotypic femininity also linked to higher liking across varied styles, adding a new individual-difference factor to the study of musical preferences (Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003), suggesting that further exploration of the link between expressiveness acquired through socialization and music behavior would be useful.

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