Musical tastes mirror moral beliefs, new cross‑national study finds
Researchers from Queen Mary University of London collaborated with Spanish colleagues to uncover a connection between musical preferences and moral values. The study, published in a scientific journal, examines how what people enjoy listening to might reflect their ethical outlooks.
The research draws on data from 1,480 volunteers who completed questionnaires aimed at gauging attitudes across five moral pillars: compassion, justice, loyalty, authority, and moral purity. By pairing these profiles with each participant’s top five songs, the team explored the relationship between ethics and music through advanced analytical methods.
To understand the link, psychologists analyzed both the content and the sonic characteristics of the participants’ favored tracks. The approach combined lyrical examination with machine learning to reveal patterns in how songs align with moral views.
The analysis showed that individuals who prioritize care and fairness tended to gravitate toward songs that celebrate support, warmth, and happiness. In contrast, those who place emphasis on authority, loyalty, and purity showed a stronger preference for music that explores themes of love, justice, and morality. The takeaway is clear: the words in a song can resonate with a listener’s moral framework almost as much as the music itself.
Sound properties also played a meaningful role. People who value loyalty, authority, and purity were more likely to choose tracks that are loud, danceable, and uplifting. Those with more individualizing values, such as compassion and justice, tended to select songs with smoother acoustics and calmer rhythms. This pattern suggests that musical selection is shaped by the listener’s broader moral priorities as much as by personal taste.
Lead author Vjosa Preniki commented on the core finding: music aligns with moral worldviews, offering a window into how individuals interpret and respond to art in relation to their beliefs [Source: PLOS One, QMUL study].
While the study highlights intriguing links, the researchers note that music taste is influenced by a constellation of factors, including cultural background and life experiences. The work adds to a growing body of evidence that our entertainment choices can reflect deeper mental and ethical landscapes, rather than simply filling time or expressing mood.
Further investigations are planned to examine how these associations may shift across different populations and over time, as new genres and artists enter the cultural conversation. In the meantime, the study invites listeners to consider how their favorite songs may echo the values they hold most closely.
[CITATION: PLOS One; Queen Mary University of London; Spanish collaborators]