Existe-t-il un rapport entre « intelligence » et intérêt - voire goût pour la musique classique ?
C'est la question que se sont posée Satoshi Kanazawa et Kaja Perina dans le Journal of Behavioral Decision Making ; leur article portent le nom - qui en "choquera" peut-être plus d'un, et je souhaiterais soumettre cette réflexion aux membres de ce forum : Why More Intelligent Individuals Like Classical Music où l'on peut lire cet abstract :
Cet article m'a été envoyé par un ami (qui est par ailleurs membre de ce forum, il se manifestera peut-êtreThe origin of values and preferences is an unresolved theoretical problem in social and behavioral sciences. The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis, derived from the Savanna Principle and a theory of the evolution of general intelligence, suggests that more intelligent individuals are more likely to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel values and preferences than less intelligent individuals but that general intelligence has no effect on the acquisition and espousal of evolutionarily familiar values and preferences. Recent work on the evolution of music suggests that music in its evolutionary origin was always vocal and that purely instrumental music is evolutionarily novel. The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis would then imply that more intelligent individuals are more likely to prefer purely instrumental music than less intelligent individuals, but general intelligence has no effect on the preference for vocal music. The analyses of American (General Social Surveys) and British (British Cohort Study) data are consistent with this hypothesis. Additional analyses suggest that the effect of intelligence on musical preference is not a function of the cognitive complexity of music. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.) n'est pas libre de droits et je ne puis le reproduire ici.
Néanmoins, si qqun est intéressé je peux l'envoyer par mail sur simple demande.
Le niveau d'anglais de l'article est tel que mon anglais, basique, est insuffisant pour que j'y entrave les détails de l'analyse. Mais deux tableaux sont assez parlants :
Un compte rendu de cet article peut être lu ici. Le "niveau" d'anglais y est plus accessible - pour moi en tout cas (*)
Le rapport entre « QI » et goût pour la musique instrumentale, classique, existerait donc bel et bien.
Quelles réflexions cela vous inspire-t-il ?
PS.
(*) Je pense qu'il n'y a pas de pb à reproduire ici cet article - avant qu'il disparaisse dans les tréfonds du net :
IQ and Musical Taste
By Christopher Shea
If brought back to life, early humans might grasp “American Idol,” but be stumped by Mahler’s symphonies. That’s because music began, evolutionarily speaking, with singing, and instrumental music arrived much later, along with bigger brains (according to one prevailing theory).
That assumption is what led researchers to conduct a study that concluded that high-IQ people are drawn to classical music, lower-IQ folks to vocal music.
The researchers drew on the 1993 edition of the General Social Survey, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center, in Chicago. That year, participants were asked to rate their enjoyment of 18 musical genres on a one-to-five scale. Half also took a vocabulary test, which was converted to an IQ score.
After statistically correcting for socioeconomic factors, the researchers found that higher IQ did, in fact, predict a preference for instrumental over vocal music. (...) The researcher’s “instrumental” genres were classical, big band, and easy listening—yet, oddly, not jazz. But the finding would have been stronger had jazz been classified as non-vocal, the authors said, given its highbrow audience.
Focusing exclusively on classical, the picture was clearer: Those who liked classical music very much had an average IQ of 107; those who had mixed feelings scored 101; and those who hated it scored 93.
(Classical fans may wish to ponder, however, that they’re in the same category, in this study, as devotees of elevator music.)
“Why More Intelligent Individuals like Classical Music,” by Satoshi Kanazawa and Kaja Perina, is forthcoming in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making.
The research represents the latest effort by Kanazawa to build on what he calls the “Savannah-IQ Interaction Hypothesis,” which has produced far more controversial findings than these. The hypothesis holds that modern high-IQ humans are more likely to embrace “evolutionarily novel” views and experiences, the ones that are quite unlike what our hominid ancestors faced on the African plains.
So he has found that liberals are more intelligent than conservatives (hypothesis: caring about people besides oneself and one’s kin is a modern luxury); that atheists are smarter than believers (hypothesis: the human mind evolved at a time when people saw a divine hand behind every occurrence); and, my favorite, that night-owls are smarter than morning people (because there were no night lights on the savannah).

Playlist du mois
Bibliothèque musicale

) n'est pas libre de droits et je ne puis le reproduire ici.


Bon je me tais 



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