Personality Traits and Psychological Symptoms of Music and Art Students

Abstract

The qualities of artists and musicians have attracted the attention of personality psychologists and researchers studying creativity. Artistic activities are considered by some to be therapeutic, and may offer a buffer effect on psychological health. On the other hand, research has occasionally revealed a positive relationship between creativity and psychological disorders when it comes to artistic activities. This study aims to investigate the personality traits and psychological symptoms of art and music students, and to make comparisons between different fields of art. The present research was planned as a descriptive and comparative study. The participants consisted of 245 university students (79 male, and 166 female), including 120 music and 125 art students. The Big Five Inventory, the Brief Symptom Inventory, and a Personal Information Form were administered to all participants. The Mann-Whitney U test, a descriptive analysis method, was used to test if students from the two fields of art differed according to their personality traits and psychological symptoms. The results showed that the students from both fields of art had a similar range of scores for the five domains of personality traits: extroversion, openness to new experiences, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. The study revealed that neuroticism in the music students and conscientiousness in art students were found to be significantly higher. As for psychological symptoms, the music students' scores on total symptom disorder, anxiety, and negative self-concept factors were found to be significantly higher than that of art students. The results of the study were discussed by drawing upon relevant literature.