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Who art thou? Personality predictors of artistic preferences in a large UK sample: The importance of openness
Author(s) -
ChamorroPremuzic Tomas,
Reimers Stian,
Hsu Anne,
Ahmetoglu Gorkan
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
british journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.536
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8295
pISSN - 0007-1269
DOI - 10.1348/000712608x366867
Subject(s) - openness to experience , psychology , conscientiousness , personality , big five personality traits , preference , extraversion and introversion , social psychology , perception , trait , developmental psychology , neuroscience , computer science , programming language , economics , microeconomics
The present study examined individual differences in artistic preferences in a sample of 91,692 participants (60% women and 40% men), aged 13–90 years. Participants completed a Big Five personality inventory (Goldberg, 1999) and provided preference ratings for 24 different paintings corresponding to cubism, renaissance, impressionism, and Japanese art, which loaded on to a latent factor of overall art preferences. As expected, the personality trait openness to experience was the strongest and only consistent personality correlate of artistic preferences, affecting both overall and specific preferences, as well as visits to galleries, and artistic (rather than scientific) self‐perception. Overall preferences were also positively influenced by age and visits to art galleries, and to a lesser degree, by artistic self‐perception and conscientiousness (negatively). As for specific styles, after overall preferences were accounted for, more agreeable, more conscientious and less open individuals reported higher preference levels for impressionist, younger and more extraverted participants showed higher levels of preference for cubism (as did males), and younger participants, as well as males, reported higher levels of preferences for renaissance. Limitations and recommendations for future research are discussed.