Breaking up is hard to do…unless their taste in music sucks.

You meet someone.  You go out on a first date and it goes swimmingly (unlike all of your other first dates.)  You really like them and think (gasp!) he or she could be the one!  But then, just when you’re picturing 50 years of domestic bliss with the white picket fence and 2.3 children, you see pick up their iPod and listen to their favorite playlist. 

It’s truly awful (by your standards) – Free Bird to your Drake, Britney Spears to your Zack Brown band, and Nickelback to your….well, that’s a bad example – no one likes Nickelback.  But the point is that their musical choices make your skin crawl.  So what happens next?  Do you dismiss it and continue with the great relationship?  I mean, it’s just music, right?  It can’t possibly have something to do with their personality, and you don’t want to be superficial…

Believe it or not, you may want to consider giving the person your dating their walking papers if you hate their music.  A new study by Heriot-Watt University shows that comparing top ten favorite songs is a fairly reliable way to predict the other person’s personality traits, and therefore relationship compatibility.   

This study gauged five different personality traits - openness to experience, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability.  (On a side note, I like my dating partners to be shockingly open to experience but very low on the emotional stability index.)

These super-smart scientist types found that some traits were both easier to predict and more accurate indicators of personality.  In fact, openness to experience, extraversion and emotional stability were the easiest to guess correctly when looking at someone’s song and music choices.  However, the trait of conscientiousness wasn’t found to be correlated with a person’s musical taste.  

They went on to find that certain genres of music correspond in general with certain personality traits.  Here is their list:

Blues fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, gentle, and at ease.

Jazz fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, and at ease.

Classical music fans have high self-esteem, are creative, introverts, and at ease.

Rap fans have high self-esteem and are outgoing.

Opera fans have high self-esteem, are creative, and gentle.

Country and western fans are hardworking and outgoing.

Reggae fans have high self-esteem, are creative, not hardworking, outgoing, gentle, and at ease.

Dance fans are creative and outgoing but not gentle.

Indie fans have low self-esteem, are creative, not hard working, and not gentle.

Bollywood fans are creative and outgoing.

Rock/heavy metal fans have low self-esteem, are creative, not hard-working, not outgoing, gentle, and at ease.

Pop fans have high self-esteem, are hardworking, outgoing, and gentle, but are not creative and not at ease.

Soul fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, gentle, and at ease.

Nickelback fans are weirdly gentle, possess no self esteem, and most likely living in their mom’s basement and driving a windowless van with primer spots.

So what do you think - is this true of your top-10 playlist?  Are you going to sit down with your main squeeze and go song-for-song, hoping you’re not in tears and breaking up by the fifth song?  And remember: if they have any Nickelback on their list then it’s ok to dump them immediately because it’s not you – it’s them.  You’re welcome.