New research: High IQ people tend to listen to music without words

A new study published in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences provides further evidence that people with high IQ tend to prefer non-verbal music to other music genres.

Researcher - Elena Racevska, Oxford Brookes University doctor said: " I have been interested in this topic since I was working on a research project on the relationship between personality traits. At the time, I was studying the field of evolutionary psychology and the Savanna intelligent index interaction hypothesis by Satoshi Kanazawa ".

This hypothesis states that intelligence develops as a way to deal with new and strange things - so smarter people are more excited with new stimuli than those who are not as smart.

People with higher IQs often prefer non-verbal music styles.

Racevska explained: " After reading Kanazawa's studies, including writing about the relationship between intelligence and musical preferences, we decided to continue researching to supplement this hypothesis using Using a different set of independent variables, namely a new type of intelligence test combined with many music-related questions, we also calculated variables that might affect the relationship. this, such as participation in extracurricular music activities as well as the type and duration of the music that is in that activity ".

A study of 467 high school students from Croatia showed the link between high scores in IQ tests and preferences for musical instruments / genres, including ambient / chill out, music jazz and classical music.

Talking to PsyPost , Racevska said: " From the point of view of evolutionary psychology, intelligence can only predict differences in preferences for musical instruments. People with higher IQs often I love the non-verbal style of music but on the contrary, from the information about my favorite music, we cannot predict the score on someone's IQ test . "

The researchers also found that survey participants would use different types of music for different reasons. For example, people who say using cognitive music will find it interesting to analyze works or tend to love music techniques and often tend to like non-verbal music. than.

However, this study - like all other studies - includes certain limitations.

According to Racevska: " Intelligence is just one of the factors affecting music preferences , there are many other factors, such as personality traits, gender, age, education level and income. Future studies may focus on answering the relationship between monotony and new elements in hobby shaping because the non-monotonous characteristics of phonetic not only appear in private. human beings, and maybe it is part of the evolutionary process . "

Racevska also said that she really wanted to do a long-term study on how music tastes change with each stage of development in each person's life; how they interact with many social and personal events, such as social pressure and human relations.

The full version of the research done by Elena Raceveska and Meri Tadinac was posted on the Psycnet page with the title: Intelligence, Music Preferences, and Uses of Music From the Perspective of Evolutionary Psychology.