A Study on the Relationship of Music Therapy and the Personality Traits of Neuroticism and Agreeableness.

BACKGROUND: Music has emotional, cognitive and social impacts on the listener. The magnitude of response is associated with the Big Five personality traits (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness). AIM: To determine the association between the Big Five personality traits and response to music therapy based on classical Indian ragas as evaluated by the improvements in self-rated anxiety and depression scores before and after music administration. METHODS: 28 engineering college students (15 males, 13 females) with signs of clinical anxiety and depression, evaluated by the Self- Rating Scale for Anxiety and depression (SAS and SDS) devised by Zung, were recruited for the study. The anxiety and depression scores before and after 21 days of music administration (music in Rag Bilaskhani Todi for 30 minutes twice a day through head phones) were compared. The personality traits of the students were assessed using the NEO-FFI of Costa & Mc Crae. Association between the personality traits and the difference in anxiety and depression scores before and after music administration was analyzed. RESULTS: The results indicate that response to music therapy is associated with the personality traits. A Significant positive correlation (r=0.3 for anxiety scores) is found to exist between those with high Neuroticism scale and improvement in the anxiety indices after Music therapy. A negative correlation exists between those with low Agreeableness scale and indices for anxiety and depression (r= -0.3 for anxiety scores, r= -0.2 for depression scores). CONCLUSION: Thus music alleviates stress and the response is associated with the inherent personality traits, namely Agreeableness and Neuroticism.