Background Research

Through our research, we have found one previous study on the topic of the relationship of music taste and intelligence. We found this topic by going to the search engine called Google. We typed into the search box ‘music type vs. intelligence level.’ We found only one study on this topic, but there were numerous sites addressing the same study. This study was conducted by Virgil Griffith creator of WikiScanner and a grad student from California Institute of Technology. He studied the relationship between musical styles and bands and the SAT scores of the people who listened to them. He found that the smartest students listened to Beethoven, which had an average SAT score of 1371. Students who have the lowest SAT scores listened to rap music, like Lil’ Wayne. Most of the bands fall into the 1000-1100 SAT score range. From his data he created this easily read chart that can be found in the works cited.

The next question that he asked is what is the relationship? Does a person choose his type of music based on his intelligence level? Or does his intelligence level depend on his music? Also, Virgil Griffith was wondering if listening to certain type of music can make you smarter or dumber. Our study will most likely draw the same type of questions. Our study might yield different results in part because it is based on GPA which is earned over a long period of time. We used this instead of SAT scores because it just measures intelligence on one single test. Also, by using the GPA, we take into account that music can change over the four years of high school, which can influence the students GPA.

The negative aspect to this study is that we do not know how many people were tested. There should have been at least five in each category to make the study reliable. We know this because of the assumptions that must be made to perform a chi-square test.  We also don’t know about any other assumptions that were met by Virgil Griffith. In our study, we will make sure all of the assumptions were met of the chi-square test so our study is as accurate as possible.

To get all of our data from the students, we will handout slips of paper with the following. There will be a line to write your GPA and what their two favorite bands. We would sort the information by ourselves after all of the surveys are returned. We will then put all of this information onto a Minitab and do chi-square two tables test. We will choose the categories to sort the music into by finding how many categories we are given. If we do not know what type of genre a band is we will again use the search engine Google and look up what genre the band is.

Website of previous study - http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2009/03/music-makes-you-dumb-intelligent/