Musical Omnivore and Omnivorousness

Question 1

Who suggested the concept of open-earedness?

Answer 1

Hargreaves (1982)

Question 2

What does the concept of open-earedness refer to?

Answer 2

How receptive ears are to certain types of music

Question 3

Who are less influenced by normative standards of good taste?

Answer 3

Young children (Hargreaves)

Young children showed less evidence of acculturation.

Young children are less tainted by conformity and conservatism than older people. They are more open to anything and are easily malleable. They are their own judge of their music taste, amongst many other things.

Question 4

What did Hargreaves & Bonneville-Roussy (2018) find?

Answer 4

Open-earedness of children declines around age 10-11 (secondary school age)

At age 10/11 children started to express strong dislikes and develop a more narrow range of musical taste

Found that at age 44-55 people peaked in terms of the number of genres that they liked

Open-earedness has some relationship with openness to experience (Big 5) - openness to experience was a predictor of the number of genres one claims to like

Question 5

What did Louven (2016) find in a counter-study?

Answer 5

Claimed that there were no age effects and age was not related to open-earedness

Different definition of open-earedness to Hargreaves

Question 6

How did Louven (2016) open-earedness?

Answer 6

Open-earedness is to do with curiosity and tolerance

Question 7

What did Louven (2016) ask people to do in his study?

Answer 7

Turn off music when they had enough of it

Question 8

What did Louven (2016) find?

Answer 8

Tolerance to different types of music is not related to age

Question 9

Is Louven’s (2016) study good or not?

Answer 9

No. There could be all sorts of alternative explanations for this finding.

Question 10

What is the term given to the idea that we are all becoming more open-minded generally?

Answer 10

Omnivorous consumption

Question 11

Which researchers developed the term ‘omnivorous consumption’?

Answer 11

Peterson & Kern (1996)

Question 12

Who does the term ‘omnivorous consumption’ describe?

Answer 12

The modern middle-class consumer - likes a bit of everything.

People who like to choose from a range of different genres to show how sophisticated they are because they can sample lots of different forms of art or entertainment

Question 13

What kind of approach is ‘omnivorous consumption’ in terms of musical taste?

Answer 13

A modern approach

Question 14

How did Savage & Gayo (2011) criticise the modern consumer who ‘likes a bit of everything’ and the idea of ‘omnivorous consumpion’?

Answer 14

Superficial liking and appreciation of certain genres

Putting music on in the background is not the same as avidly listening and following the genre / artists

Question 15

How else can omnivorousness be understood?

Answer 15

In terms of expertise

Middle-class people are simply more familiar to a wider range of elite forms of music as well as popular music

Question 16

What is associated with musical knowledge?

Answer 16

Status - we might want people to think that we know a lot about different types of music

Question 17

What is the media effect?

Answer 17

Pop music was not shown on tv as much as it is now.

Pop music is most common.

If you turned on BBC, classical music would probably play.

We have to try harder to seek out ‘elite’ forms of music (e.g., classical) that are not pop music.

Question 18

Why is there a fixation of genre in the psychological literature on individual differences in musical taste?

Answer 18

Easy to study quantitatively

Question 19

What are limitations of having a genre-studying approach?

Answer 19

How many genres are useful? Is 5 musical genres or 25 or 50 musical genres useful?

How many personality traits are useful?

Genres are hard to define - how well defined do they need to be? What characteristics would you be looking for to categorise a piece of music as a certain genre?

Even just one genre of music (e.g., classical music) can encompass such a range of music produced over many centuries. There are NUMEROUS different styles, mellowness, intensity, complexity that vary enormously.

Genre labels are so broad and encompass such a range of styles. Labels are virtually useless.

Would everyone agree on what genre a piece of music is? Genre is subjective.

How well do genres accommodate any given piece of music?

Question 20

How can we criticise research that uses recorded music?

Answer 20

Research often focuses on listening to recorded music. People are given snatches of musical performances to listen to and rate. We are only tapping into a fraction of people’s musical experience - just listening to music (not performing, dancing, or singing)

People are already familiar with many of the songs

Do we need to stretch our concept of musical taste to encompass lots of other things?

Can’t understand what music actually means to the people listening to it. Hundreds of people in samples. Just have a superficial idea of what people’s musical experiences are. Need qualitative research to address this.

We don’t know how people consume music. We assume that everyone consumes music in the same sort of way, which is often not true.

Question 21

What else could we measure and take into consideration when looking at people’s musical taste, other than listening to music?

Answer 21

What music do we like to go and listen to live? What concerts to we choose to go to?

What music do we play?

What music do we like to sing along to? Is singing along to music part of the enjoyment?

Question 22

How have consumption of music patterns changed?

Answer 22

Used to have to pay to listen to music

Music is MUCH more readily and freely available now.

No more CDs etc. - can digitise everything for free

Question 23

What else do we need to take into account when looking at individual differences in musical taste?

Answer 23

Consumption of music patterns

What music means to people

Digital music and the media