Study reveals strong link between political ideology and music preference

A new study conducted by researchers Brianna N. Mack and Teresa R. Martin has revealed an unexplored link between music preference and political partisanship. The results of the study revealed that people associating themselves with certain political identities were more likely to have a liking for a certain genre of music, as opposed to the rival political group.

“The original interest started with Martin in my research methods course Fall 2020,” Psypost quoted Mack as saying, an assistant professor of politics and government at Ohio Wesleyan University.

“She proposed the topic (relationship between music preferences and party identification) as the subject of her final paper in the course. I thought it was a very interesting idea because I often wondered if party polarization was seeping into non-political aspects of life like TV show preference and clothing choices and I enjoy the novelty of pop-culture/politics discussions,” she added.

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“Martin ran a pilot study in my public opinion course Fall 2021; I was her honors thesis advisor 2022-2023 and we worked on this project while she worked on her thesis,” she told Psypost.

Online survey

The two researchers conducted an online survey via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (mTurk) platform, taking responses from 588 participants.

The participants were asked questions to gather their demographic information, including age, gender, and racial background, along with detailed inquiries about their political ideologies, party affiliations, and music preferences.

The participants were then asked to list their three most favourite music genres. Then, they were told to list the genres in descending order, with the most favourite genre at the top.

Results

Individuals favouring country music, spanning from classic to contemporary, tended to lean towards Republican ideologies, highlighting the link between the genre's themes—embodying traditional values, rural living, and patriotism—and the principles championed by the Republican Party.

Conversely, Democrats and liberal-minded individuals showed a diminished inclination towards country music, indicating a negative correlation between their political leanings and musical preferences.

On the other hand, genres like pop and rap/hip-hop were more popular among respondents who identified as Democrats.

The findings indicate that “even music is political and that there is a relationship between their music preferences and their partisanship,” Mack told PsyPost.

(With inputs from agencies)