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Have you ever wondered why you enjoy pop while your friends like rock, or why people you work with are obsessed with heavy metal and you can't stand it? A new study has found it may be a result of your upbringing.
The culture you grow up in was found to be far more influential than biological factors, according to the research from MIT. This also means different cultures actually hear the world differently.
“Our results show there is a profound cultural difference in the way people respond to consonant and dissonant sounds," said Josh McDermott, lead author of the paper. Consonant chords typically consist of notes that harmonise, or sound good together. By contrast, dissonant chords typically jar and are less pleasing to hear.
The team surveyed a number of cultures across the world, including the Tsimane' tribe, an indigenous tribe in Bolivia which has an "unusual" way of expressing music.
Rather than playing music simultaneously and harmoniously, as in Western countries, they play one line at a time.
The team investigated the tribe's response to three different types of music – their own charts, a 'dissonant' sound, which is normally considered unpleasant to hear, and a 'consonant chord', which is generally considered pleasant.
Although the tribe was able to distinguish between the tones, it had "no preference" between the dissonant and consonant chords. This, the team said, means the preferences we have are not innate and, in fact, learned as part of our upbringing.
"The observed variation in preferences is presumably determined by exposure to musical harmony, suggesting that culture has a dominant role in shaping aesthetic responses to music," they said.
The study has been published in Nature.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
