Dr. David Greenberg is a psychologist, musician, behavioral scientist, and expert in music psychology. He holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Cambridge and an MPhil in Clinical Psychology from the City University of New York. We asked him a few questions about personality and how it informs entertainment preferences.
What psychological needs does entertainment (movies, television and video games) serve, beyond just passing the time? Can you give us a few examples?
Entertainment, including music, movies, and other media, helps us to fill our emotional needs, our intellectual needs, social needs, and physiological needs. Emotionally, it can facilitate a healthy process of emotional processes and at times catharsis. Intellectually, in can serve as not only mental stimulation, but at times a social-cultural learning process by which values of a culture are transmitted. Physiologically it meets the needs for arousal, and socially it enables us to develop close bonds with other people and to develop group cohesion.
What is the relationship between personality and entertainment preferences? Why do we choose to watch what we watch or play what we play?
Personality has been shown in various scientific studies to predict entertainment preferences beyond demographic information such as age and gender. This research has utilized the Big Five model of personality, which categorizes personality into five basic dimensions: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. For example, Agreeableness is positively associated with Communal entertainment preferences and negatively correlated with Dark entertainment preferences. Openness (or Intellect) is positively correlated with Aesthetic and Cerebral entertainment preferences.
Can you explain the differences between categorizing entertainment by genre and categorizing it by how it serves our personalities?
The previous research categorized entertainment preferences by genre (e.g. Rentfrow, Goldberg, & Zilca, 2011). Once these categorizations were made, the participant’s preferences for these categories were then correlated with their personality scores. Therefore, the data was not clustered for example, by a combination of the personality scores and scores on the entertainment preference categories.
What are some specific examples of entertainment titles that might appeal to the same personality type, but we would never categorize in the same genre?
People who are Agreeable prefer both Communal and Aesthetic preferences. Therefore, they like classical music but they also like show tunes music. They like reading books on art and watching foreign films but they also like reading books on romance and watching family-oriented films.
How flexible are our individual preferences for types of entertainment? Are we predestined to like certain things or can we evolve?
It is uncertain how entertainment preferences are developed throughout childhood and how they manifest across the age span. However, there is research from a quarter million people on their music preferences which has shown that preferences for intense music peaks in adolescents coinciding with Erikson’s psychosocial stage of development when teenagers are rebellious and forming their unique identity independent from societal pressures and family expectations.
Beyond preference, how can personality also predict the way fans will engage or interact with their favorite entertainment?
Research that I have conducted with colleagues from the past several years has investigated this question as it pertains to music. In fact, I was awarded an early career research award from ESCOM for this work. We found that personality is correlated to the way that people engage with music. For example, Extroverts engage with music more socially and physically, those who are Agreeable engage with it more emotionally, and those who are Open engage with it more analytically.
Find more from Dr. David Greenberg
Professional website
Psychology Today contributions
Music Personality Test
