Romantic Partners Match on Music Taste More Than on Personality

Romantic partners are far more likely to match in musical preferences than in personality traits or even personal values. That’s the conclusion of psychologists at the University of Innsbruck, who studied 309 couples — 618 people in total. The research was published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

The researchers ran three separate studies. Participants independently rated their favorite music genres and artists and took tests measuring Big Five personality traits, personal values and relationship quality.

The real couples were then compared with thousands of randomly generated “pseudo-couples.” To do this, the researchers ran 5,000 permutations, each time randomly pairing participants into new couples and comparing their similarity with that of the real partners.

The result was especially striking for music. The average effect size for musical preferences was Cohen’s d = 0.93. For personal values it was much lower, at 0.38, and for personality similarity just 0.08.

The authors conclude that music taste may be one of the most pronounced markers of similarity between romantic partners. In terms of effect size, it sits closer to partner-choice characteristics such as political views, religiosity or education level than to personality traits.

The results are described in more detail in the study itself.

Why music may play such a role

The researchers suggest that musical preferences work as a social signal. Favorite genres and artists can indirectly reflect a person’s lifestyle, cultural environment, emotional habits and part of their identity.

That means music may already matter at the dating stage. People may be more likely to notice those whose tastes seem close to their own, while listening to music together and going to concerts create additional shared activities within a relationship.

However, the study cannot determine why partners end up similar. People may choose someone with similar preferences from the start, or they may gradually converge on music taste once they are together. Separating these effects would require long-term observation of couples.

Identical playlists don’t guarantee a happy relationship

The link between music taste and relationship quality itself turned out to be far weaker than the similarity in preferences.

Matching on broad music genres alone showed no consistent link to relationship satisfaction. But in a combined analysis of the three studies, similarity in favorite artists was associated with slightly higher relationship quality scores — a standardized coefficient of β = 0.13.

The authors stress that the effect is small and did not show up in all three studies. So comparing playlists cannot reliably determine a couple’s compatibility.

There are also sample limitations. Between 83% and 93% of participants across the studies were from Germany and Austria, most couples consisted of a man and a woman, and a significant share of participants were relatively young. On top of that, couples who were already fairly satisfied with their relationships were more likely to end up in the sample.

So the work shows an unusually strong similarity in musical preferences within couples rather than proving that matching music taste makes relationships more successful.