Abstract
Despite some evidence that performing musicians tend to have distinct personality characteristics, there is little understanding of how specific positions in bands might be correlated with certain traits. Moreover, there is the possibility that such correlations are exaggerated via stereotypic social perception. In an online sample of popular musicians (including 87 bassists, 48 drummers, 115 guitarists, and 30 vocalists), we evaluated (a) differences in self-reported personality characteristics along the Big Five dimensions; and (b) perceptions of each kind of musician in terms of social category membership (e.g., “What are guitar players like?”). Singers were significantly more extraverted than bassists, and more open to experience than drummers. Whereas there were few differences among other musicians in self-reported personality, the various categories evinced stereotypes that were moderated by participants’ own positions in the band. For example, bass players were generally seen as the most agreeable band members, but this was especially true in the eyes of the bassists themselves. Results are interpreted with reference to biases associated with social categorization and group membership.
A recent magazine advertisement aimed at rock bands claimed that a particular microphone is “incredibly sensitive…kind of like your bass player,” and elaborated in smaller print: “by sensitive we mean finely-tuned and responsive, not moody and introspective like your bassist.” The effectiveness of this comparison, and of the ad itself, rests on readers’ recognition of what bass players “are like” – it assumes, in other words, that there is a stereotype of bassists (i.e., a set of attributes consensually associated with a specific social category; Gardner, 1994). This in turn raises some questions about the form and origin of the stereotype: Are bassists really more “sensitive” and self-contained than their bandmates? Do bass players see themselves in the same way? Although there is evidence that stereotypes of musicians do exist (e.g., Cribb & Gregory, 1999; Langendörfer, 2008; Lipton, 1987), there is only an emerging understanding of why they take the shapes they do. In this study, we examined band members’ perceptions of themselves and each other, to determine (a) the stereotypes associated with band position/instrument (guitarists, bassists, drummers, and vocalists); and (b) whether self-reported personality traits also differ according to these categories. We also focused on musicians playing in popular veins, who have received less attention than orchestral musicians.
Stereotypes of musicians
Stereotypes can apply to musicians in various ways, depending on the social categories that are relevant in a given perceptual framework (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987). For example, musicians can be seen as belonging to a category that contrasts with non-musicians, as affiliated with a particular genre or style (e.g., country, rock; see Rentfrow & Gosling, 2007), as being a member of one band as opposed to another band, or – our focus here – as playing a particular kind of instrument.
According to theories of social identity and intergroup relations (e.g., Tajfel & Turner, 1979), membership in social categories has two basic implications for understanding how musicians are perceived, and how they perceive themselves. First, to the extent that stereotypes characterize musicians by virtue of the instrument they play, social categorization processes will, in relevant contexts, amplify the consensually distinctive features of the roles. In other words, stereotypes serve the cognitive function of organizing social information, resulting in exaggerated representations of category features. Second, assuming that musicians’ position within the band (e.g., as a singer or bassist) contributes to their self-concept and self-esteem, musicians are likely to view their own instrumental category in relatively positive terms (i.e., the general phenomenon of in-group bias, or in-group favoritism; Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Such positive distinctiveness can be achieved in various ways, including emphasizing positive aspects of the in-group (i.e., own instrument) stereotype, and attributing more negative (and/or less favorable) traits to musicians who play other instruments (see Giles, Denes, Hamilton, & Hajda, 2009, for an overview of the social identity framework in a music context).
The existence of instrument-based stereotypes, and the tendency toward in-group-favoring comparisons, is well-documented in the literature, particularly with respect to the distinctions between orchestral sections (e.g., Cribb & Gregory, 1999; Davies, 1978; Lipton, 1987). For example, Lipton (1987) found that percussionists were regarded by members of other orchestral sections as loud and insensitive, whereas their own-category stereotype emphasized competence and reliability. Although there appears to be no prior research on the potential stereotypes associated with instrumental categories in the domain of popular music, we expect the general pattern of in-group bias to apply to band members’ perceptions of their own and other categories.
Self-serving bias is important to understanding the evaluative tone that social comparisons tend to have, but this alone cannot fully explain the particular content that stereotypes have. Indeed, while there is evidence (albeit in limited settings) that stereotypes are associated with different instrumental categories, there is an absence of a theoretically-based explanation for why this is the case. According to self-categorization theory, stereotypes serve to generate meaning, or explanations, in particular comparative contexts (see McGarty, Yzerbyt, & Spears, 2002). Within this framework, stereotypes are regarded not as fixed, but as flexibly employed, depending on the categories at hand, the dimensions of comparison that are available, and the relationship of the perceiver to the categories. Of course, one possibility is that the stereotypes reflect real differences in personality, and/or attributes that facilitate performance demands. However, in the absence of a well-defined stereotype, category content has to be inferred from the context; that is, “stereotypes have to be worked out in relation to specific intergroup comparisons” (Spears, 2002, p. 145).
In the music performance context, one potential source of information, and means to find distinctiveness between social categories, is the role- or task-based qualities of the particular instruments. Thus, for example, the “loudness” ascribed to drummers or brass players, in contrast to woodwind or string players (Lipton, 1987), or perceptions of the latter as “touchy” (Davies, 1978), could reflect structurally salient features of the task or instrument (see Cameron, Cameron, Dithurbide, & Lalonde, 2012, for an analogous argument in a sports context). These processes and outcomes are consistent with cognitive heuristics such as the correspondence bias (e.g., Gilbert, 1998), and are established in the literature on social role explanations of gender stereotypes (Bosek, Sczesny, & Eagly, 2012; Eagly & Steffen, 1984). In rock/pop bands, we expected that singers, given the front-and-center nature of their role and stage position, are seen as more extraverted than other band members, whereas the stereotypes of bassists and drummers are characterized by the conscientiousness required to keep a steady beat.
Self-reported personality and instrumental affiliation among popular musicians
There is some agreement, following A. E. Kemp (1982), that “musicians share a common core of traits which may be interpreted as musicianship-linked” (p. 5) – including introversion, sensitivity and imagination, and intelligence – but it is clear that there is considerable variability of findings across studies. This is also true for investigations of self-reported personality correlates of instrumental categories associated with classical music (for reviews, see Buttsworth & Smith, 1995; Cribb & Gregory, 1999; Langendörfer, 2008). These mixed results likely arise for a number of reasons: small sample sizes, a lack of a common measurement framework, and idiosyncratic sample characteristics and contexts. There are also very few studies directly relevant to our focus on musicians and instrumental affiliations in the rock/pop domain. Of these, none reported any reliable personality differences across instruments. Dyce and O’Connor (1994), in a study of 171 musicians in bar bands, found no significant differences between singers, guitarists, bassists, and drummers, and Cooper and Wills’s (1989) sample of 70 male bar musicians was too small to permit reliable tests (they did not present statistical analyses).
Gillespie and Myors (2000) appear to be the only researchers to assess popular musicians (N = 100) using the Big Five model of personality domains, and they also did not find significant differences associated with instrument. Instead, they posited the existence of a “common rock musician’s profile” (p. 161) characterized by relatively high levels of neuroticism and openness to experience, compared to the norm, and relatively low levels of conscientiousness and agreeableness (their sample also scored above the norm on two facets of extraversion). Of these, the dimension on which the musicians were most distinctive was openness; this is consistent with previous work indicating that creativity and imagination tend to accompany musical inclinations, and presumably enhance performance. From this we infer that openness to experience – referred to as “intellect/imagination” in other representations of the Big Five taxonomy; e.g., Goldberg, 1999) – also represents a collection of traits that is particularly valued by musicians themselves.
This study
We addressed two sets of questions in this study. First, to what extent are the perceptions of band members – by themselves and each other – patterned by stereotypes and bias? Second, do the self-reported personality traits of popular musicians correlate with their position in the band (i.e., guitar, bass, drums, and vocals)?
Given the small amount of research on personality and instrumental affiliation in the pop/rock domain, and the lack of significant results where evidence exists, it is difficult to make any predictions about differences in self-reported personality. There is, for example, surprisingly little empirical support for the hypothesis that singers are more extraverted than other kinds of musicians (A. Kemp, 1982). In any case, we generally expect that perceived differences between instrumental categories will be more dramatic than any self-reported personality differences that might exist. We also hypothesized that (a) the stereotypes of band members tend to reflect the nature of their role/instrument (cf. Eagly & Steffen, 1984); (b) musicians differentiate between categories in ways that favor their in-group (i.e., other musicians who play the same instrument); and (c) this bias exists with respect to the Big Five dimensions that are inherently evaluative (e.g., agreeableness, neuroticism, and conscientiousness, but not extraversion); and (d) that in-group favoritism is particularly pronounced on the trait domain that seems to be most relevant to musical talent: openness to experience.
Thus, we considered our analyses to be largely exploratory, but sought to evaluate potential differences using a larger sample than in previous studies of popular musicians. We also used the Big Five dimensions of personality traits (see John & Srivastava, 1999, for a review) as a template for these tests, because of their widespread adoption by contemporary personality researchers, and because they contain a clearer operationalization of openness (or intellect/imagination) than other models of personality.
Method
Participants
Participants were 510 musicians who responded to an advertised invitation for band members to participate in an online study. Of these, 346 (313 men and 33 women) completed the demographic and self-report data. Ages ranged from 17 to 63 years, with a mean of 37.2 and a mode of 25 (SD = 12.1 years). Respondents reported that they had played in their band for an average of 5.48 years, had played their instrument for an average of 20.74 years, and that their band had an average of 24.49 performances in the previous 12 months. Just over 40% of the sample said their band played rock and roll (17.9%), rock (17.6%), or hard rock (6.1%), with a number of other genres also represented to lesser degrees: metal (9.8%), indie (9.8%), punk (9.0%), alternative (6.1%), country (4.3%), pop (3.5%), and jazz (2.3%).
Procedure and measures
We assessed self-reported personality first, in an effort to minimize any bias that might arise from rating the self after heightening the salience of particular instruments. We also used a briefer operationalization of the Big Five to index perceptions of the various band positions, reasoning that efficiency of measurement was a more important consideration than internal consistency in terms of indexing stereotypes across several categories.
Mini-IPIP
We used Donnellan, Oswald, Baird, and Lucas’s (2006) 20-item short form of the International Personality Item Pool (Goldberg, 1999) to assess self-reported traits along the Big Five dimensions: extraversion (α = .83), agreeableness (α = .78), conscientiousness (α = .71), intellect/imagination (α = .68), and neuroticism (α = .77). It is worth noting that in developing the intellect/imagination scale, Donnellan et al. selected “items with content that seemed distinct from those…that appeared to measure general intelligence and even narcissism” (p. 195). These included “I have a vivid imagination,” and “I am not interested in abstract ideas.” Response options ranged from 1 (disagree strongly) to 7 (agree strongly).
Ten-Item Personality Inventory
Participants also rated 4 categories of band members – bassists, guitar players, vocalists/singers, and drummers – along the Big Five dimensions (e.g., “What are singers like?”). Here, we used an adapted version of the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (Gosling, Rentfrow, & Swann, 2003) to capture these ascribed traits for each target band position. The response scale ranged from 1 (disagree strongly) to 7 (agree strongly).
Results
Self-reported personality
For the self-report data, we analyzed the responses of males only (n = 268; 109 guitarists, 78 bassists, 45 drummers, and 22 singers), given that females disproportionately represented the vocalist category. (We also excluded the keyboardists from this analysis, given the relatively small sample size, n = 14.) One-way ANOVAs indicated that the instrumental categories did not differ on the personality dimensions of agreeableness, F(3, 250) = 1.49, p = .22, conscientiousness, F(3, 250) = 1.38, p = .25, or neuroticism, F(3, 250) = 0.60, p = .62. There were, however, significant differences on extraversion, F(3, 250) = 3.41, p = .02, and openness, F(3, 250) = 3.14, p = .03. Post hoc comparisons using Tukey’s HSD procedure indicated that (a) singers were, on average, significantly more extraverted than bassists and drummers, whereas guitarists did not differ from any other category; and (b) vocalists scored significantly higher than drummers on the intellect/imagination dimension, with the bassists and guitarists in-between (neither of the latter was significantly different from any other category). Descriptive statistics for the self-report findings are summarized in Table 1.
Descriptive statistics for self-rated personality by instrument played.
Note. Means in the same row that do not share a subscript are significantly different from one another (p < .05).1n = 109; 2n = 45; 3n = 78; 4n = 22.
Perceptions of band members by instrument
We conducted a series of 4 (Participant’s Instrument) × 4 (Target Instrument) ANOVAs, with repeated measures on the second factor. These analyses include both men and women – assuming that there are no gender differences in terms of the stereotypes that are applied to the categories – and are based on 92 guitarists, 77 bassists, 39 drummers, and 24 vocalists who responded to this part of the questionnaire. The effects of interest are: (a) the main effects of target, which indicate whether different band members are generally seen as having different personalities; and (b) the Participant’s Instrument × Target Instrument interactions, which indicate whether perceptions of the categories are systematically biased by people’s own position in the band.
The main effect of target instrument was significant for each of the Big Five dimensions: extraversion, F(3, 226) = 98.13, p < .001, η2 = .57; agreeableness, F(3, 226) = 31.55, p < .001, η2 = .30; conscientiousness, F(3, 226) = 16.07, p < .001, η2 = .18; neuroticism, F(3, 226) = 52.74, p < .001, η2 = .41; and openness to experience, F(3, 226) = 2.89, p = .04, η2 = .04. Post-hoc comparisons with a Bonferroni adjustment (p < .05) indicated that on the two personality dimensions with the largest effect sizes – extraversion and neuroticism – all pairwise differences were significant, and followed the same trend: singers were seen as the most extraverted and neurotic, followed by guitarists, drummers, and bassists (see Table 2). Bass players received significantly higher ratings on agreeableness than any other band member; on the other end of the dimension, singers were regarded as less agreeable than drummers. Bassists and drummers were seen as the most conscientious band members, followed by guitarists, and then singers. Finally, guitar players were rated as more open to experience than bassists, but there were no significant differences between any other pair of positions.
Mean trait ratings by target instrument.
Note. Means in the same row that do not share a subscript are significantly different at p < .05 with a Bonferroni adjustment. N = 230.
Participants’ own position within their band significantly moderated intergroup perceptions for agreeableness, F(6, 684) = 2.14, p = .025, η2 = .03, conscientiousness, F(6, 684) = 5.03, p < .001, η2 = .06, and openness to experience, F(6, 684) = 8.17, p < .001, η2 = .10, but not extraversion, F(6, 684) = 0.82, p = .059, η2 = .01 or neuroticism, F(6, 684) = 1.66, p = .095, η2 = .02. To evaluate in-group bias effects, we conducted 2-tailed t tests to compare band members’ ratings of their own instrumental category with their ratings of the other positions (e.g., how bassists view their in-group members as relatively agreeable, compared to how they rate guitarists, drummers, and singers; see Table 3 for descriptive statistics). With three comparisons for each participant category, there are 12 possible comparisons for each trait, so we used a Bonferroni-adjusted alpha level of .004 (.05/12).
Mean trait ratings by target’s instrument and participant’s instrument.
Agreeableness
As suggested by the main effect of target, there was general agreement that bass players are the most agreeable band member. Consistent with an in-group bias effect, however, this was most apparent in the perceptions of bass players themselves (see Figure 1), who rated their own category as significantly more agreeable than guitarists, t(81) = 10.46, p < .001, drummers, t(76) = 6.97, p < .001, and singers, t(76) = 10.04, p < .001. Both guitarists, t(98) = 6.51, p < .001, and drummers, t(38) = 3.44, p = .001, rated bass players as more agreeable than their own category, but neither rated their in-group as significantly more or less agreeable then singers. Vocalists themselves did not rate their own category differently from any other instrument on the dimension of agreeableness.
Mean ratings of each target instrument on agreeableness, by participant’s instrument
Conscientiousness
Bass players rated their own instrumental category as significantly more conscientious than guitarists, t(81) = 6.29, p < .001, drummers, t(76) = 5.14, p < .001, and vocalists, t(76) = 8.13, p < .001. Similarly, drummers saw other drummers as more conscientious than singers, t(38) = 4.95, p < .001, bassists, t(38) = 2.03, p = .049, and guitarists, t(38) = 2.37, p = .02, though the latter 2 comparisons do not reach significance at the adjusted alpha level. Guitarists rated their in-group as more conscientious than singers, t(93) = 5.22, p < .001, but there were no significant differences relative to bassists or drummers. For vocalists there were no significant differences in comparisons involving them and other band members.
Openness to experience
Mutual inter-category ratings tended to be quite high on the openness dimension, but these evinced the clearest evidence of in-group bias across the categories: (a) guitarists perceived their own category to be more imaginative than bassists, t(98) = 4.24, p < .001, drummers, t(91) = 4.92, p < .001, and singers, t(93) = 6.33, p < .001; (b) bass players felt that they were more open to experience than drummers, t(76) = 3.16, p = .002, and singers, t(76) = 3.43, p = .001, but not guitarists; (c) drummers rated themselves as more open to experience than singers, t(38) = 3.43, p = .001, though the comparison was not significant with respect to bassists, t(38) = 2.83, p = .007, or guitarists, t(93) = 2.43, p = .02; and (d) vocalists’ ratings of the in-group indicated significant bias relative to bassists, t(24) = 4.45, p < .001, and drummers, t(23) = 3.74, p = .001, but not guitarists, t(24) = 2.87, p = .008.
Discussion
Music groups, particularly bands in the popular vein, reflect one of the basic dualities of social psychology: they are often as remarkable for the qualities of individual performers as for the emergent product of the collective. Whereas each band member plays a functionally meaningful role by virtue of his or her instrumental and/or vocal contribution, these positions also potentially have a number of psychological implications for both personality and perception. This study shows that whereas there are some significant differences among band members in terms of self-reported personality, perceptions of and by musicians are strongly shaped by stereotypes and biases associated with the instrument they play. Moreover, the content and shape of these social perceptions are predictable on the basis of theories of social identity and intergroup relations (e.g., Tajfel & Turner, 1979).
Stereotypes of rock/pop musicians: Self-reported personality and the “division of labor”
Within-participants effects of target indicated that there was a strong consensus about the characteristics of different band members, with the strongest main effects – for extraversion and neuroticism – indicating the most well-defined stereotypes. Vocalists were seen as relatively extraverted, neurotic, disagreeable, and careless. On the other end of these dimensions, bassists were regarded as relatively introverted, emotionally stable, agreeable, and conscientious. In general, guitarists and drummers were the targets of less polarized perceptions, but the overall pattern indicated that drummers were seen in some ways as more akin to bassists, particularly on the dimension of conscientiousness.
Thus, consistent with studies of classical musicians (Cribb & Gregory, 1999; Davies, 1978; Lipton, 1987), these findings provide clear evidence that stereotypes of rock/pop musicians exist, based on their position in the band. What accounts for the content of these category-based stereotypes? One possibility is that the stereotypical distinctions reflect and exaggerate real differences in personality. This is supported by the present findings, but only to a limited extent. In particular, differences in self-reported extraversion mapped onto the stereotypes, at least in the sense that singers were the most extraverted and bassists the least so. (One other finding – that drummers reported relatively lower scores on intellect/imagination and singers relatively higher ones – did not appear to match the social consensus.) Indeed, to the extent that people choose roles and situations that allow them to express their dispositional tendencies, then a certain degree of extraversion should encourage and facilitate the occupation of a central, vocal position in a band.
For the most part, however, band members who perform different musical roles were not distinguishable in terms of their self-described personality characteristics. In the absence of a strong social-reality basis for the “content” of the band positions, we expected, in line with self-categorization theory, that stereotypes would reflect aspects of “fit” between the categories at hand and the available dimensions of comparison. We also expected that the band positions would be seen as relatively distinctive in ways that correspond to their role-based features. For example, the perception of vocalists as extraverted may partly reflect social reality (i.e., self-reported personality), but it is exaggerated by the fact that the singer’s role is one in which they are uniquely “vocal,” and, at least in the rock-band setting, typically out in front of the other band members. Participants saw the rhythm section – bassists and drummers – as the most conscientious, which reflects the reliability and consistency required by the rhythmic backbone of the classic rock band set-up.
That the motivation to achieve differentiation between the categories can lead to illusory extrapolations from position to personality was most evident in ratings of bassists and drummers as less neurotic (i.e., more “stable”) than other band members (just as in a sports-team setting, defenders are stereotypically regarded as more emotionally stable than forwards; Cameron et al., 2012). Conversely, the stereotype that accompanies the singer’s role is characterized not just by extraversion, but also a brashness colored by emotional instability and interpersonal difficulty. In the rock/pop context, then, vocalists appear to carry more negative “baggage,” from a social-perceptual sense, than other band members. Finally, although guitarists were generally seen in less distinctive terms, we speculate that the prevailing perception of them as relatively open to experience (e.g., imaginative) reflects the possibility that their instrument is more stereotypically linked to improvisation than the other categories we examined.
Expressions of in-group bias
The results highlight the value of an intergroup perspective in one other important way: both directly and indirectly, band members’ ratings were characterized by a tendency toward relatively favorable judgments of the in-group (i.e., their own instrument, or position in the band). In general, these suggest that musicians tend to maximize the relative positive distinctiveness of their instrument-defined in-group, within the context of the social consensus defined by the relevant stereotypes. For example, although we expected bias with respect to inter-category ratings of neuroticism, its expression was likely muted by shared notions of how band members differ along this dimension. We did not anticipate bias on extraversion, which is arguably the least inherently evaluative in this setting, and thus presumably less tied to self-esteem. However, as we hypothesized, there was clear evidence of in-group favoritism on the remaining Big Five dimensions. Each of these has evaluative importance, and therefore motivational significance, in the context of a band: agreeableness (who is likeable?), conscientiousness (who is dependable, as a player and as a bandmate?), and openness to experience (who is creative?).
A direct approach to bias is available when positive traits align with the category stereotype. For instance, whereas everyone was inclined to think that bass players are relatively agreeable, this was most clear in the ratings of bass players themselves (Figure 1). Similarly, bassists and drummers tended to be viewed as being conscientious, and members of these categories utilized this (at least implicitly) in their intergroup comparisons; specifically, both bassists and drummers tended to view their fellow category members as the most conscientious variety of musician. Conversely, when the social consensus does not favor the attribution of positive qualities to a category – as noted above, for example, vocalists cannot easily stake claim to a valued stereotype, at least defined in Big-Five terms – then direct routes to in-group favoritism are less easily taken. Bias can be manifested more subtly, however, in a number of ways. In the case of singers, their inter-category ratings were seemingly more evenhanded than those of their bandmates, but this actually serves to soften the negative stereotype of their own group, at least from their own perspective. In other words, that singers did not see their own kind as less agreeable or less conscientious than anyone else suggests a rejection (at least implicitly) of the prevailing stereotype, and therefore an indirect route to self-enhancement.
Consistent with our expectations, the Big Five dimension of openness (or Intellect/Imagination) appears to have particular evaluative importance for musicians, given that (a) mean ratings of (and by) different band members were high across the board (i.e., close to, or exceeding 5 on a 7-point scale); and (b) despite this, the moderating effect of in-group was the strongest of the Big Five dimensions – indeed, it was the only set of traits for which members of each instrumental category rated themselves as significantly “better” (e.g., more imaginative) than all the others.
Qualifications and implications
As far as we know, this is the first study to demonstrate instrument-related personality effects in the pop/rock music realm. It is important to note, however, that our methodology does not preclude at least one other interpretation of the results regarding self-reported traits: given that participants knew that musicians (and particularly band members) were the focus of the study, their (context-specific) self-perceptions and self-reports could have been shaped by their own implicit or explicit awareness of the stereotypes associated with their own instrumental category. Such an effect of “self-stereotyping” can be expected when an intergroup contrast is contextually salient (Turner et al., 1987), although we tried to minimize this by assessing self-reports prior to ratings of the instrumental categories in the questionnaire.
Another qualification is that in reality, there are many musicians who are not “pure” members of each category, in the sense that there are instrumentalists who are also lead singers, and there are some players who can assume various instrumental roles. Therefore, findings regarding both stereotypes and self-reported personality differences may apply to these players in a less straightforward, and presumably diluted, manner. We also did not differentiate between lead and rhythm guitar players – a conventional distinction, if often blurred in practice – and it is likely that these subcategories have somewhat different stereotypic content. Based on a social role explanation, we expect that the lead player would be seen as more “outgoing” and perhaps unstable, akin to the lead singer, compared to the rhythm guitarist, who in turn might be perceived more as sharing the traits of bass players.
The social identity framework (Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Turner et al., 1987) has been rarely utilized in research on the psychology of musicians, and on the basis of the present results we suggest, in concert with Lipton (1987) and Giles et al. (2009), that it has much to offer. One’s instrument provides both a social category and a source of identity, and band members therefore perceive themselves and each other partly through the lens of category-based perception and bias. The present data add to prior research by demonstrating not just that instrumental stereotypes exist among pop/rock musicians, but also that they assume roughly predictable shapes. Like other intergroup contexts in which social categories are associated with salient role distinctions, or “divisions of labor” (e.g., gender, team position), stereotypes can be interpreted as reflecting the features and demands of the instruments. Finally, the results demonstrate both the pervasiveness and specificity of bias, in the sense that it is expressed by all band members, and on most of the basic personality dimensions, but mostly in ways that are “allowed” by the prevailing stereotypes. One interesting exception to this highlights openness to experience as a motivationally important trait for all musicians. In this vein, it is interesting to note that the punch line of musician jokes often lands on the non-musicality of the target, which potentially implicates their dispositional creativity, imagination, and/or intellect (e.g., “Did you hear about the bass player who was so bad, even the drummer noticed?”).
Conclusion
Are band members distinguishable in terms of their personality characteristics? It depends mostly on whom you ask. We found some (limited) evidence of differences in self-reported personality characteristics, but strong differentiation between the categories in terms of ascribed characteristics. Band members “are what they play,” but this is true mostly in the realm of social perception rather than personality itself.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Isaac Hahn and Holly Marie Chapadeau for their research assistance.
Authors’ note
Portions of the data were presented at the June 2011 meeting of the Canadian Psychological Association in Toronto.
Funding
The authors acknowledge the support of a research grant from the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research at Saint Mary’s University.