ACTION : For your third blog entry, titled Blog 3, read the attached article Soul Meets Body. Write a short paragraph discussing your thoughts on the connection between music and relationships. Have you noticed a similarity in music preference between yourself and a romantic other or a friend(s)? Do you also share similar values and ideals?

MATERIAL: from the text " SSoul Meets Body"

""As noted by my colleagues in previous articles, similarity betweenpotential romantic partners predicts feelings of attraction and love.1“Similarity” can includethings like similar backgrounds (e.g., nationality), physical features, personality, hobbies,attitudes, and beliefs.What about music preferences? As discussed in a recent post, music and personality expressionare intertwined. People make judgments of others’ personalities based on music tastes,2andmany people consider their music preferences to be “social badges” that are more central to theirpersonality expression than books, clothing, food, movies, and TV.3In fact, in a study on initialimpressions over a 6-week period, music was the most frequent topic of conversation betweenpeople who were just getting to know each other, and was more frequent than any other topicover the first 5 weeks.2Why is music so important? It may be that having similar taste in music leads people to believethey have similar personalities, which in turn facilitates attraction. Sounds reasonable, but that’sScience of Relationships – | Page 1 of 3http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2012/2/21/soul-meets-body-how-music-and-r… 2/7/2018actually not the case. The link between music and relationship development has to do withsimilar values and ideals, rather than similar personalities and traits. Across 3 studies,psychologists demonstrated that music taste similarity and social attraction are connected throughvalue similarity (see the figure below).4In other words, when participants viewed profiles ofothers who had similar music tastes, that led participants to believe they had similar values,which then led to increased social attraction (this effect was also found in college roommateswho were randomly paired to live together in dorms by the university administration).Here are a few examples of the types of “values” measured in this research: conservatism(tradition, conformity, and security), self-transcendence (universalism and benevolence), selfenhancement(power and achievement), and openness to change (hedonism, stimulation, andself-direction). When the same participants in these studies were asked about general personalitytraits (e.g., shyness, responsibility), this did not have the same result. It appears that commonvalues and ideals are the “missing link” between similar music taste and attraction.To summarize, music preferences provide information about a person’s core values, and peopleexhibit “musical bonding” early in relationship development through the feeling that they havesimilar values and ideals. Importantly, this behavior is not unique to Americans; these behaviorsare found in German and Chinese samples as well.So, sharing your music selection with a new friend or partner is a great idea, especially if youwant to get past more surface-level personality traits. You’ll get closer to knowing a person’s“soul” with music (disclosure: I borrowed the title for this post from a Death Cab For Cutiesong).""