What Your Stuff Reveals About You

Our choices in books, movies, music, and art go to the core of who we are. What your tastes reveal about you.

By Eriq Gardner, Jay Dixit, published on September 01, 2008 - last reviewed on July 21, 2009

Personality types are not mutually exclusive—most of us are a complex combination of many traits. An open-minded taste hunter, for instance, may also have an extrovert's need to seek sensation. No one trait wholly determines our tastes—various overlapping personality traits each exert an influence, as do cognitive abilities like language mastery and overall intelligence. Combined with experiences and exposure, the result is the infinite variety of preferences we see.

We make judgments about others' tastes based on stereotypes, explains Gosling; we assume fans of mainstream popular artists are uncreative and conventional, for instance, or that fans of energetic vocal music are gregarious and sociable.

Some stereotypes are correct. When Gosling asks his students to list their top 10 favorite songs, other students are able to match lists to students with impressive accuracy. Rock fans truly are less friendly, conservative, and religious, and more artistic and anxious than fans of religious music. We assume classical music fans are friendly, conscientious, and emotionally stable—and for the most part, we're right.

People judging others based on Facebook profiles, which typically include catalogues of favorite books, music, and movies—are able to accurately predict openness and extroversion, but not emotional stability, Gosling has found. And our stereotypes about fans of heavy metal, electronic, pop, rap, and soul are considerably less accurate, perhaps because inaccurate racial assumptions cloud our judgment.

Another reason our judgments falter is that we focus on the wrong cues. We wrongly assume, for instance, that people with highly decorated and cluttered rooms are more extroverted. We also assume such people are more open—when really we should be looking for variety in books and music, for books on art and poetry, and for art supplies. We assume that rooms with stale air belong to emotionally unstable people—when really we should be scanning for inspirational posters.

In the end, then, perhaps we should view the differences in tastes between us and others not as grounds for disagreement, but as opportunities for interpersonal revelation. Perhaps the Romans were right when they proclaimed, "De gustibus non est disputandum." About matters of taste, there can be no argument.