New study: Musical talent linked to "Open" personality

[dea-man]

It seems like 90% of the musicians and performers I've known are hella neurotic (including me, especially about musical things) and many of them (not all) are incredibly talented.

[cryophonik]

I don't believe that the quiz was not all that great.

- Strongly disagree
- Somewhat disagree
- Somewhat agree
- Strongly disagree
- Somewhat fish
- Strongly fish

[chk071]

Actually it would surprise me if you could deliver quality music without being at least a bit neurotic.

[harryupbabble]

Some studies might seem false at first but seem to turn out to be true in the long run.

For example, a lot of the scrabble top tournament players turned out to be also musicians, composers, computer programmers, etc... supporting the study that scrabble and music is more about math skills than language skills.

There was even a few world scrabble champs that didn't speak English (Thailanders, I think).

Are there not more Robert Fripp types working in music than Shakespeare types? I read somewhere that Brian May of Queen has a degree in Physics.

So yeah, maybe some "musician traits" studies should not be dismissed that easily.

[dea-man]

I guess they strike me as more "human" traits, than "musician" traits.

[AsPeeXXXVIII]

Actually it would surprise me if you could deliver quality music without being at least a bit neurotic.

I think "quality" here is somewhat of a vague term, though, because it's (from my experience, at least) more subjective than objective. What's high quality to one person might be low quality to another.

[DJ Warmonger]

My music got significantly better and the whole process feels smoother once I started to accept sounds as they come and try new workflows. Sticking to fixed 4/4 patterns, presets and concepts got me nowhere.
In fact my most popular track till date was made in 3 days and totally improvised

It doesn't have anything to being neurotic or not.

[jancivil]

Interesting this use of the word 'neurotic'. Kind of a big word. I wouldn't want to apply it to someone else glibly. In terms of the psych profession, the term is fairly deprecated today. Very interesting Wiki: Karen Horney's theory

"The opposite of neurosis is a condition which Horney calls self-realization, which is a state of being in which the person responds to the world with the full depth of his or her spontaneous feelings, rather than with anxiety-driven compulsion. Thus the person grows to actualize his or her inborn potentialities. Horney compares this process to an acorn that grows and becomes a tree."

[annode]

In my high school we had three types of students, freaks, jocks and greasers/motorheads.
The freaks were the rockers, a sorta mix of rocker and mod, musical types. Anyway, if there is any test that really identifies what personality types are more open minded it is with the use of LSD.

I had musician friends as well as some jock friends, and one motorhead. The freak,musical types could more easily accept the new reality within an acid trip much more easily then the other types. The jock type had trouble letting go of his familiar world...even a little bit, and the same was true for the motorhead.
This tells me that musically talented individuals are more likely to accept new experiences with less internal conflict. There are the exceptions.

I know who I am regarding the strength of music in my life and my 'fit in anywhere' sort of personality. So I have no need to test myself.

[annode]

"The opposite of neurosis is a condition which Horney calls self-realization, which is a state of being in which the person responds to the world with the full depth of his or her spontaneous feelings, rather than with anxiety-driven compulsion. Thus the person grows to actualize his or her inborn potentialities. Horney compares this process to an acorn that grows and becomes a tree."

Karen, let me introduce you to the 21st century corporate psychopath.
No disrespect to the famous neo-freudian Karen Horney. I have one of her most well known books, "I So Horney".

[jancivil]

The psychosocial stick is the weakest stick to use here.

For instance, one could be fully open to music and sound but have become very suspicious of people and asocial. Or the analysis could be a confusion, one could be perceived from particular signs wrongly, in a more guarded person. One could want Richard Wagner as a terrible guy, antisemitic and stingy to translate into something-something about his music. Musical talent seems to be a mystery a lot of people that don't really have very much to do with music are driven to solve.

[jancivil]

I don't see how this 'psychopath' would be self-realized, with the basic problem of the lack of real empathy. Or that this 'psychopath' as a type poses any big surprise for someone that recognizes Full-Blown Antisocial Personality Disorder. That word's popularity seems to place as much with the prevalence of TV procedural crime drama as with anything.

Anyway, I'm open to read things like that, as I don't really know anything. I tended to trip alone, but the one person I did hang out with on acid was such a jock but his mind was wide open as to music and one of the more intellectually progressive people I knew then.

[jancivil]

Some studies might seem false at first but seem to turn out to be true in the long run.

For example, a lot of the scrabble top tournament players turned out to be also musicians, composers, computer programmers, etc... supporting the study that scrabble and music is more about math skills than language skills.

I don't know how it is true, from that statement. 'A lot of top scrabble players turned out to be musicians' doesn't do that at all. 'turned out to be computer programmers' doesn't exclude language skills through itself. Scrabble demands having enough vocabulary, which I can't place with mathematics 'skills' or even aptitude. I suppose counting is important. I would say music is a language more on the order of verbiage and narration than coding language; that language aptitude travels alongside music aptitude in way that math does not. I mean a higher aptitude in language is more to the point. Math in music that requires more skill than an average school child displays is quite scarce, I mean most people will never have any exposure to it. I have def. noticed a tendency here of computer programmers to want to reduce music to maths, it's not a pretty sight.

I wouldn't want an unnecessary dichotomy either way. Being good with telling the machine what's next would not per se exclude being good with conveying with people. or vice versa. It does with certain people, but then again there is such a thing as the idiot savant. My maths aptitude is 85th percentile, I don't know what a higher aptitude would do for it. (The most complicated music we're likely to even encounter is Elliot Carter and metrical modulation. What was 5 to 4 is now 1:1 and we proceed at the rate of 5/4ths of the previous tempo. Or nested tuplets: 3 in the time of 2 while that 2 is 2/5 of 5 in the time of 3. Or, 12 tone serial manipulation, hey here's a hexachord. There's no quantum theory in music. ) My language aptitude was 98th percentile and I consider that this travels completely to musical aptitude. My aptitude in mechanical and spacial reasoning is poorer, so I'm not going into the field of acoustics, although I'm interested.

[annode]

I don't see how this 'psychopath' would be self-realized, with the basic problem of the lack of real empathy. Or that this 'psychopath' as a type poses any big surprise for someone that recognizes Full-Blown Antisocial Personality Disorder. That word's popularity seems to place as much with the prevalence of TV procedural crime drama as with anything.

Anyway, I'm open to read things like that, as I don't really know anything. I tended to trip alone, but the one person I did hang out with on acid was such a jock but his mind was wide open as to music and one of the more intellectually progressive people I knew then.

The psychopath reference was mainly joking. But there is truth on some levels. They have no mechanism for a 'superego' conscience, so there`s no ego fragmentation or anxiety. This might appear self-realized to the observer. They will surely try to convince you they are.

self-realization, which is a state of being in which the person responds to the world with the full depth of his or her spontaneous feelings[drives], rather than with anxiety-driven compulsion

The psychopath fits this enough.

An asocial personality is not a psychopathic personality or sociopathic personality. Sociopaths are frequently also asocial personality types. The psychopath is not usually violent or asocial.
EDIT : to avoid confusion, sociopath and psychopath are frequently used interchangeably. It is becoming more comfortable to see the sociopath as the serial killer type and the psychopath as the user.

[harryupbabble]

I would say music is a language more on the order of verbiage and narration than coding language; that language aptitude travels alongside music aptitude in way that math does not. I mean a higher aptitude in language is more to the point.

In the search for better understanding, correct me I am wrong... but aren't scales, chords, rhythm divisions, music theory, just pure math? And are you right-handed or left-handed?

Also, are any of the following untrue:

Right-handed people uses the left hemisphere of their brain more than the right hemisphere.
Left-handed people uses the right hemisphere of their brain more than the left hemisphere.

The left hemisphere of the brain is what does the mathematics.
The right hemisphere of the brain is what does the languages.

Right-handed musicians would be the math type.
Left-handed musicians would be the language type.

Are my sleep-deprived conclusions faulty or does the statistics support them:

Conclusion 1: most singers and lyricists (and book writers) should be left-handed.
Conclusion 2: most musicians and composers should be right-handed.
Conclusion 3: right-handers are math types therefore music must be related to math more so than language because math types are drawn to anything mathy.
Conclusion 4: right-handers are less interested in writing books or even lyrics because it probably has less or no math and they suck at it.
Conclusion 5: one example reason that left-handed people might be in music is fame.
                    Also applicable to right-handers (fame sometimes, but always music).