For generations it has been a universally accepted fact that music can incite appreciation from even the most stone-hearted people. However, recent studies have indicated higher levels of impact of music on certain people as opposed to others. A deeper look into the matter by a Utah State Ph.D. student revealed a connection between cognitive personality types and impact of music.
In this research, people were first administered a personality test and then made to listen to powerful song clips whose composers included Hans Zimmer, Vangelis, and Chopin. Current research theorizes that frisson, or feeling of “chills” one gets from a stimuli, is experienced by about 55-86% of the people with music being a particularly powerful stimuli.
On comparing the levels of frisson with the personality test of the subjects, conductors of the study were built upon previous evidence of a connection between those scoring high on “Openness to Experience” and the degree of “chills” felt. This was in contrast to a prior hypotheses of emotional components catalyzing such high levels of frisson in finding that cognitive components such as predicting what will happen next in a song or daydreaming while listening to music indeed have an effect on frisson.
H/T: The Conversation
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