Interactive effects of personality and frequency of exposure on liking for music

Liking for a stimulus often increases with initial exposure but decreases with over-exposure. Re-analyses of previous findings revealed marked differences among individual participants who heard music at different exposure frequencies. In fact, fewer than half exhibited the inverted-U shaped pattern that were evident for listeners as a group. We examined whether the dimension of personality called Openness-to-Experience is associated with individual differences in liking for music as a function of frequency of exposure. Undergraduates completed the Big Five Inventory and provided liking ratings for novel music excerpts as well as for excerpts they heard 2, 8, or 32 times. As a group, liking ratings varied as an inverted-U shaped function of exposure. Number of exposures interacted with Openness-to-Experience but not with any of the other four personality dimensions. Higher levels of Openness-to-Experience were associated with higher liking ratings for novel pieces but lower ratings for over-exposed pieces. Although an inverted-U shaped response pattern was relatively common among all listeners, increases in liking as a function of exposure were also common for those who were low in Openness-to-Experience, whereas decreases were the most common response pattern among those who were high in Openness-to-Experience.