Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.15516/cje.v18i0.2113
Musician as a Distinctive Personality Structure – Yes or No?
Zoran Mihajlovski
; Faculty of Pedagogy “Ss Cyril and Methodius”, University of Skopje
Abstract
An empirical study examining differences in personality traits between musicians and non-musicians employing the differential approach was conducted on Macedonian sample. The sample itself consisted of 629 respondents in total, including 288 musicians with ongoing (music high-school or university music students) or completed (university degree in music) musical education, and the control sample of 341 non-musicians with mirrored age structure (non-music high-school or university students, as well as non-music university degree holders from different fields). Individual differences were tested employing four measuring tools: 16PF (by R. Cattell, revised version, 1993), EPQ (by H. Eysenck, 1975) and NEO PI-R (by Costa& McCrae, 1990) personality inventories, as well as FRT i.e. Figure reasoning test (by J. Daniels, 1962, Yugoslavian revised version known as TRL, 1983) as a measure of general intellectual ability.
Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) based statistical data processing indicates results in synergy with referent findings regarding a musician’s personality by the distinguished British music psychologist Anthony Kemp. Several second-order factors emerged as differential between musicians and non-musicians: Introversion – Extraversion, Anxiety – Assurance, Affectivity – Rationality, Higher intelligence – Lower intelligence, and Good upbringing – Bad upbringing. Our findings confirm the existence of four out of five attributive dimensions of the musical temperament, according to Kemp: Introversion, Affectivity, Anxiety and Intelligence. Existence of Independence was not confirmed. Overall, the results achieved give an exceptionally explicit confirmation of the distinctiveness of musicians’ personality structure, i.e. the existence of a unique “musical temperament”, in terms of specific combination of personality traits inherent to people from the classical music environment.
Keywords
intelligence; musical temperament; musicians; non-musicians; personality traits
Hrčak ID:
171677
URI
Publication date:
30.8.2016.
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