by Joshua Kern

Created on: March 11, 2010

Picture a tall black man with dreadlocks, giant sunglasses, and Technicolor stripes all over his clothes, and sandals. Without knowing anything else about this character, we make some assumptions about him; we might fit him with a naturally easygoing personality, and most people probably imagine the stripes on his clothes to be green, gold, black, and red. If you had to pick a genre of music to associate with this character, most people would probably pick Reggae. Why do we make these assumptions? Our brains are experts at making associations and filling in blanks. The mind makes these kinds of shortcuts to save time processing information, and it’s something we all do in one form or another. In Psychology, the most basic form of conditional learning as shown by Maslow is considered to be a direct association between two things; “This” = “That”, or “This” often goes hand in hand with “That”. Since our most basic form of learning is through associating things with each other, it follows that if you tell somebody what type of music you listen to, they will make certain associations between you, that style of music, and other things associated with it. Reasonable people won’t let that become the full conclusion they reach about you, but to an extent, the type of music you listen to is a factor in how other people define you. And, no matter how you define yourself, the type of music you listen to, and HOW you listen to it, does reflect certain things about yourself.

Think of your favorite genre of music, and think of who “usually” likes that style. Of course we all know that not every demographic is cut and dry; all kinds of people listen to all kinds of music. But, there is a reason MTV and FUSE don’t play polka. Music is delivered to specific audiences for a very specific (and monetary) reason: People listen to (and purchase) the music that they have some sort of connection to. Many people listen to metal music, but few of these people are likely to listen to metal because they love flowery lyrics about passion and romance. Some might like it for this, but the driving attitude and usual direction of most metal music is more of high-power energy and angst than of flowers and love. People like music that resonates with what they want out of it. If somebody likes a genre of music, it’s usually because that genre offers them something that they want more than what other genres offer.

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>