Classical lovers high on more than music
Last Updated: Thursday, September 14, 2006 | 4:04 PM ET
CBC Arts
Do you prefer La Traviata while on magic mushrooms, or Berlioz after a spliff? You may not be alone.
A study by University of Leicester psychologist Adrian North has found the music you love may suggest how you live — including your likelihood of taking drugs.
His research suggests that more than one quarter of classical music fans use cannabis and 12.3 per cent of opera buffs have tried magic mushrooms.
North surveyed 2,500 British music lovers for a study that will appear in the journal Psychology of Music.
He has plans to extend the study globally by inviting more than 10,000 people to answer an online questionnaire about their musical tastes and lifestyle habits.
"Surprisingly, there have been very few studies on how people's age, sex, socioeconomic status, and personality relate to the music they enjoy listening to," North said in statement released Thursday.
The U.K. study asked people what musical styles they liked most, and then asked them to describe their living arrangements, political and moral beliefs, travel, personal finances, education, employment, health, media preferences and leisure time interests.
North believes there is a link between musical taste and lifestyle.
His study found fans of classical music and opera to be careful in their lifestyles and relationships. They had higher incomes than the average, were more politically conservative and more likely to be in permanent romantic relationships.
But their answers to the questions about drug use indicate they may not be as averse to experimentation as commonly thought.
Still, North found the real sinners among music fans are those who love dance music and hip hop.
They were most likely to have taken drugs and more likely to have broken the law than other groups, with 56.9 per cent of dance music fans and 53.1 per cent of hip hop fans admitting to having committed a criminal act. That compares to just 17.9 per cent of fans of musicals.
Dance and hip-hop lovers were unlikely to be religious, but also unlikely to recycle or be concerned about the environment.
The study found 37.5 per cent of hip-hop fans and 28.7 per cent of dance-music lovers had more than one sexual partner in the last five years.
By contrast, country music fans were a faithful lot, with only 1.5 per cent of them likely to have had more than one partner.
North is inviting music lovers worldwide to sign on for the next stage of his study, which will involve a wide-ranging online questionnaire about musical tastes and attitudes or behaviour.
