The HEXACO personality profile of musicians

Abstract

While it is reasonable to assume that the passion and drive toward musicianship has its roots within the personality, there are few studies focusing on the relationship between musical practice and personality and their findings are often contradictory. The aim of this study is to explore the differences in personality traits between musicians and nonmusicians. Altogether 355 responders participated in our research ( MAge = 31, SD = 12.4), 189 musicians and 166 nonmusicians. We used the HEXACO Personality Inventory - Revised (HEXACO-PI-R) questionnaire for measuring the traits of the six-factor model of personality. Multivariate analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that musicians scored significantly higher on Honesty-Humility and Openness, while nonmusicians scored higher on Emotionality. Binary logistic regressions with stepwise method showed that the main personality facets which differentiate between musicians and nonmusicians are Aesthetic Appreciation, Creativity, Social Self-Esteem, Fearfulness, Greed Avoidance, and Organization. The explained variance of the model ranged between 15.6% and 26%. Our analysis shows that there are several important personality-based features of the six-factor model of personality that could help to efficiently differentiate between musicians and nonmusicians.