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How do you know you have found The One? Simple: they share your love of the Backstreet Boys or obscure Brazilian bossa nova. At least, that’s the conclusion of one new study.
Scientists found that couples in romantic relationships share a taste in music more than they do personality traits and values. Their research also suggests that a common appreciation of the same music may even be associated with slightly better relationship quality.
The team at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, looked at 309 couples across three studies. They asked all 618 people about their musical preferences – across genres and artists – and had them complete questionnaires about their personal values and traits.
They then shuffled the respondents and created thousands of random ‘pseudo-couples’. The findings, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, were clear: “couples consistently demonstrated greater similarity in music preferences than pseudo-couples”.
Dr Julia Vigl, a co-author of the study, said it “adds another piece to the puzzle” of what makes couples click.
“We tend to think of personality and values as fundamental aspects of who we are, so it was striking that something seemingly ‘superficial’, such as musical taste, showed an even stronger pattern of similarity between partners,” she added.
Quite why music would act as such a reliable foundation for a relationship is another question. One possibility the study proposes is that music preferences form a strong part of people’s idea of themselves, and influence who they choose as partners.
The study did not look at whether a couple’s taste in other art or interests was just as important. But it does support similar research conducted in 2013 that found that couples shared more similar tastes in film and music than non-couples did.
Vigl said she was pleased to learn that she and her partner had very similar musical tastes – and talked about music on their first date. “In my case at least, there may be something to the idea that music can play a part in drawing two people together.”
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