Research Project

The Effect of Parenting Style on Music Preference

Quinn Sinanan Neal, Austin Lewis
UNST 116C: Ways of Knowing
21st May 2016

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Abstract:
Music is everywhere and for thousands of years it has expanded into a wide array of
different musical genres and styles; because of this, we are curious in how people develop their
own taste in those different styles of music. Overall we want to find out if the way someone is
raised has any connection to how people develop their own musical tastes. To find out the effect
of musical preference on strict parenting, we tested our sample group of PSU college students by
surveying them on how they were parented at a young age. The four options of parenting style
that we included on the survey were Authoritarian parenting, Authoritative parenting, Permissive
Parenting, and Uninvolved parenting. We then listed music genres ranging from more
conservative genres like country, folk, and dance, more progressive genres like rap, punk, and
grunge, and what we considered to be more neutral genres like blues, rock, and jazz. For our
experiment, the explanatory variable is the parenting style of the college students parents, and the
response variable is the college students prefered music genre. After evaluating the data we
collected, we were able to calculate 9 different p-values; 6 of the nine were greater than 0.05,
suggesting that there is most likely no correlation between parenting styles and music preference.

Introduction

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There are many studies that show the effect of parenting style and how it can relate to the
development of a child. In a 1991 study, a test was conducted that showed 4,100 14-18 year olds
that were classified into 1 to 4 groups (Lamborn, Mounts, Steinberg, Dornbusch, 1991). Those
groups were authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent(permissive), and neglectful(uninvolved). They
then rated their parents on 2 dimensions being acceptance/involvement/ and
strictness/supervision. Afterwards the children were differentiated along 4 sets of outcomes,
which were psychological development, school achievement, internalized distress, and problem
behaviour. The outcome of this mostly suggested that adolescents who considered their parents
to be authoritative scored highly on evaluations of psychological competence, with lower scores
on evaluations of psychological dysfunction; the opposite was found in adolescents who viewed
their parents as neglectful. They also showed that the children who described their parents as
authoritarian scored well on measures indexing being known as obedient and comfortable to the
standards of adults, but apparently have poorer self-conceptions than other children.
In another study made in 1994 they conducted a follow up test from their last test which
was described above (Steinberg, Lamborn, Darling, Mounts, Dornbusch, 1994). The reason for
this follow up test was so they could observe the results and see how they have maintained
overtime. In this test the children completed a sequence of standardized instruments that delved
into psychological development, school achievement, internal distress, and behaviour problems.
Results from this follow up study showed that adjustments based on the parenting styles the
children were raised through were either greater than before or had remained the same;
particularly, in the neglectful parenting style. While the benefits of authoritative parenting
remained mostly sound, the negative effects of neglectful parenting continued to grow.This again
shows how harmful neglectful parenting can be to a child, as it furthers the chance of behavioral

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and psychological dysfunction.

A study from 2013, conducted at the University of Cypress, shows how contradictory
parenting styles tend to result in children of opposite social stance; the authoritarian parenting
style more often leads to the child being taking the role of a bully, whereas the permissive style
leads to children being victimized (Georgiou, S., Fousiani, K., Michaelides, M., & Stavrinides,
P., 2013). More so, this data was collected from the bullies and victims being asked how they see
their parents parenting style, which is similar to how we expect to carry out our study. The fact
that this study shows that parenting style is related to the childs outcome on social role implies
that other psychological traits like music preference could very well be related to how the child
was raised.
In a 2014 study, students in grades 4th-12th were gathered to test parental involvementhome environment in music (abbreviated PIHEM), as well as evaluating attitudes towards
music, music achievement, parenting style, psychosocial maturity, academic and musical grades,
homework and reading, and educational expectations (Dell, Rinnert, Yap, Keith, Zdzinski,
Gumm, Orzolek, Cooper, Russell, 2014, p.71). The main purpose of this study was to examine
the effect of home-parental involvement and parenting style on success in music and school.
Results showed that the variables were normally distributed, with the exception of music grades,
and both the expectations for music study and educational expectations measures were
negatively skewed. This could suggest that the majority of parents expect their children to do
well in school, and that most grades earned in music classes were A grade.. Although this shows
how the parents high musical expectation for the children allowed them to have higher musical
grades, this could in a way also help develop their own tastes in certain music genres.
A study from just last year has tapped into how bad music, such as heavy metal and

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goth, is something that teenagers will turn to during their time of development as something to
relate to; this is similar to a common trope seen in the media as rebellious teenagers will listen to
music seen as distasteful to their higher ups (Gold, 2015). It was found that adolescents are more
likely to turn to music genres such as metal when they are distressed, seeking the expression of
anger in music. This suggests, as it was stated in the study, that there is correlation between
teenagers development and music tastes, yet there is no actual causation. However, in the case of
our study, this might be looked at differently; as a teenagers identity development hinges heavily
on how their parents might treat them, the correlation between the preference of angry, relatable,
and bad music might be seen as a causal effect from their parents parenting style.
For our own research we surveyed many college students about the parenting style their
own parents used for when they were being raised at youth. We then asked them to pick their
four favorite genres from the list we included and asked them to number their four favorites from
greatest to least greatest. With this data we want to see if there is a correlation between
someone's musical preference and how they were parented as a child. For our hypothesis, we
believe that authoritative parenting styles will lead to a conservative music preference while
other parenting styles will mainly lead towards neutral and progressive music preference. If each
parenting style leads to each musical preference about equally then that will show that there is no
correlation; this would be our null hypothesis.

Methods
Our plan to conduct this study was to gather our data via online survey; we had an initial
question, asking how the subjects parents parenting style was. This question was a multiple
choice question on how they would describe their parents parenting style, using the four

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parenting styles as reference to describe different parenting styles as options for an answer

(Lamborn, Mounts, Steinberg, Sanford M., 1991). Following this question we had asked the
subject to select their favorite music genres out of a list provided; four genres were to be chosen
out of the twelve. The final question asked that the subject write out the four genres they selected
in order from their most favorite to least favorite.
Our study was an observational one, as we are not manipulating our explanatory variable.
The parenting style was the explanatory variable, while the different preferences were the
response variable. The population in question are American university students, while our sample
was PSU students. We gathered our sample from a dorm on campus, gaining a sample size of 49.
All data was gathered through the internet on our survey; we distributed our survey through
email as well as occasionally spoken word or text message. We tried to present our survey in a
way that did not make it obvious what we were evaluating; we attempted this by ordering the
questions a certain way and having the options of each genre and parenting style seem less
particular and more general. The purpose of the survey was never explicitly given to the subjects.
To evaluate the data, we separated the genres into three general categories: neutral, progressive
and conservative. Seeing which category the subjects favored genre fell into allowed us to more
easily see if there was any correlation between the different subjects parenting style and what
kind of music they listen to.
Since there was no other information gathered from our sample aside from parenting
style and music preferences, there may be reason for certain music preferences that was left
unobserved by us. The most profound variable that could possibly lead us to false conclusions
would be the subjects cultural background; obviously, cultural background could influence ones
taste in music significantly, but it could also be assumed that parenting styles vary from different

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places across the world. The main source of our sample, the dormitory, is meant to house mostly
domestic students, as exchange students and such have separate housing, yet this does not rule
out all cultural influences from either other countries, our from different cultures within the
United States.

Data/Results
In our study we were able to gather data from 49 responses to our survey. The 49
respondents had to choose what parenting style description fit best to how they were parented at
a young age and then choose 3 of their favorite musical genres from a list of 18. Out of the 49
respondents 26 chose Authoritative parenting, 16 chose Authoritarian parenting, with only 4
choosing Permissive parenting, and 3 choosing Neglectful. This may be because Permissive and
Neglectful parenting are uncommon in Portland.

Figure 1

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For Figure 1 we have a pie chart that shows the students that selected Authoritative
Parenting and what their favorite musical genres are. Having an Authoritative parenting style
means that children probably had to follow rules established by their parents/guardians.
However, these rules had a purpose and the parents/guardians succeeded in explaining the
reasoning behind these rules. The parents were responsive to their children and were willing to
listen to questions. If the children failed to meet their expectations, they would mostly forgive
them rather than punish. We can see that most of the Authoritative students favored genres like
Pop, Rock and Folk we consider these to be more conservative/neutral genres which is quite the
opposite to what we thought most Authoritative parented students would prefer.

Figure 2

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For Figure 2 we have a pie chart that shows the students that selected Authoritarian
Parenting and what their favorite musical genres are. Having an Authoritarian parenting style
means the children probably had to follow strict rules established by their parents/guardians.
Failure to follow such rules usually resulted in a punishment to the child. If they asked to explain
the reasoning behind these rules the parents/guardians would most likely refuse or fail to explain.
We can see that the students that chose the Authoritarian style of parenting favored musical
genres like Rock, R&B, and Hip Hop. We considered these genres to be more neutral meaning
they can be both progressive and conservative. For this style of parenting we expected a majority
of the students to favor more conservative genres,so far they seem to favor more neutral and
conservative genres with the more progressive genres being the minority. This is in a way close
to what we expected..

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Figure 3

For Figure 3 we have a pie chart that shows the students that selected Permissive
Parenting and what their favorite musical genres are. Having a Permissive parenting style shows
that the parents/guardians made very few demands. The parents/guardians rarely disciplined their
children because they mainly had low expectations of maturity and self-control. As you can see,
so far we were only able to get a few responses from students who were parented Permissively.
This is probably do to the rareness in Permissive parents in Portland. From this bit of information
we see that these people favored Rap, Rock, Metal, and Punk, these seem to fall under more
progressive and neutral genres of music which is starting to shift to what we expected.

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Figure 4

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Finally for Figure 4 we have a pie chart that shows the students that selected Neglectful
Parenting and what their favorite musical genres are. Having a Neglectful Parenting style shows
the parents/guardians barely communicated with their children. They mainly had no demands or
rules and failed to provide them with their basic needs. The parents/guardians were basically
detached from the child's life. Like Permissive parenting we were only able to gain a few
responses, as it is probably just as rare for there to be neglectful parents taking this survey. As
you can see the respondents for Neglectful parenting seemed to favor progressive musical genres
like Metal, Grunge, and Goth. Although the data is small this is the type of genres that we
believed students who picked Neglectful would probably favor more than the rest.

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Neutral Genres = Blues, Rock, Hip Hop, Jazz, R&B, Comedy

Conservative Genres = Country, Pop, Electronic, Folk, Dance, New Wave
Progressive Genres = Rap, Metal, Avant-garde, Punk, Grunge, Goth
Music Genre
Authoritarian
Authoritative

Permissive

Neglectful

Blues

Electronic

Country

Folk

Hip Hop

Jazz

Pop

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R&B

Rock

10

12

Rap

Metal

Avant-garde

Punk

Goth

Grunge

Comedy

Dance

New Wave

Other

17

28

15

13

39

39

0.24

0.35

0.25

0.21

0.16

0.5

0.67

0.55

0.49

0.25

0.33

Overall Conservative
Genres
Overall Progressive
Genres
Overall Neutral
Genres
Conservative Genre
Probability
Progressive Genre
Probability
Neutral Genre
Probability

This table is our research summary showing all of the parenting styles and what was the
most prefered music genre for each parenting style. For students choosing Authoritarian
parenting styles the neutral genres (Blues, Rock, Jazz, etc) were most prefered with a proportion

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of 55% with Conservative Genres with 24% proportion and Progressive genres with 21%

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proportion. Authoritative parenting style students also seemed to prefer neutral genres with 49%
proportion as well as conservative genres with 35% proportion. However, both Permissive and
Neglectful parenting style students seemed to prefer the progressive genres the most with
Permissive having a 50% proportion and Neglectful having a 67% proportion in progressive
musical genres.

Conservative
Genre

Authoritarian/Authoritative

Authoritarian/Permissive

Authoritarian/Neglectful

Statistics

Proportions

Proportions

Proportions

DIFF

0.11

0.01

-0.24

SEM Control

0.061

0.061

0.061

SEM Exp.

0.0681

0.0619

SEM DIFF

0.1291

0.1229

0.061

Test Statistic

0.852

0.0814

-3.9

Percentile

0.8

0.79

0.005

P-Value

0.2

0.21

0.005

For this research project we calculated nine P-values, with the Authoritarian parenting
style holding the control proportions and Authoritative, Permissive and Neglectful parenting
styles holding the experimental proportions. For this table we focus on the conservative genre
proportions, for calculating the sample proportions of Authoritarian(control) and
Authoritative(experimental) we are given a p-value of 0.2. Because it is greater than 0.05 we
cannot reject the null hypothesis with these sample proportions. This is also the same with
Authoritative and Permissive samples, as the p-value is 0.21, but with Authoritarian and
Neglectful samples we calculated a p-value of 0.005 meaning that the null hypothesis can be
rejected.

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Progressive
Genre

Authoritarian/Authoritative

Authoritarian/Permissive

Authoritarian/Neglectful

Statistics

Proportions

Proportions

Proportions

DIFF

-0.05

0.29

0.46

SEM Control

0.0582

0.0582

0.0582

SEM Exp.

0.0524

0.0714

0.0672

SEM DIFF

0.1106

0.1296

0.1254

Test Statistic

-0.45

2.24

3.67

Percentile

0.33

0.98

0.9987

P-Value

0.33

0.02

0.0013

For this table we focus on the progressive music genre proportions, for calculating the
sample proportions of Authoritarian(control) and Authoritative(experimental) we are given a pvalue of 0.33. Like the conservative sample table because it is greater than 0.05 we cannot reject
the null hypothesis with these sample proportions. However, unlike the conservative genre table
the Authoritarian and Permissive proportions have a p-value of 0.02 meaning that it can reject the
null hypothesis. This is also the same with the Authoritarian and Neglectful samples we
calculated a p-value of 0.0013 meaning that this can also reject the null hypothesis.

Neutral Genre

Authoritarian/Authoritative

Authoritarian/Permissive

Statistics

Proportions

Proportions

DIFF

Authoritarian/Neglectful
Proportions

-0.06

-0.3

-0.22

SEM Control

0.0712

0.0712

0.0712

SEM Exp.

0.0714

0.0619

0.0672

SEM DIFF

0.1426

0.1331

0.1384

Test Statistic

-0.42

-0.225

-1.59

Percentile

0.33

0.41

0.06

P-Value

0.33

0.41

0.06

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With 6 out of the 9 P-values being greater than 0.05 we cannot reject the null hypothesis
meaning that it is probable that there is no correlation between parenting style and personal
music preference. A main factor that allowed us to get these P-values is the amount of data we
have been given. Currently the data we have does support our hypothesis for Authoritarian
parenting, Permissive parenting, and Neglectful parenting, but it does not support our hypothesis
about Authoritative parenting. Out of 49 responses 26 selected Authoritative parenting, 16
selected Authoritarian parenting, 4 selected Permissive parenting, and 3 have selected Neglectful
parenting. With most of the sample proportions gaining p-values above 0.05 we believe that it is
most probable that parenting style does not affect music preference.

Neutral
Genre
Authoritarian/Authoritative Authoritarian/Permissive Authoritarian/Neglectful
Confidence
Proportions
Proportions
Proportions
Intervals
SEM
Control

0.0712

0.0712

0.0712

SEM Exp.

0.0714

0.0619

0.0672

0.1424

0.1424

0.1424

0.1428

0.1238

0.1344

95% MOE
Control
95% MOE
Exp.

Authoritarian 95% Confidence Interval: 13.14

Population Means: 19.56% to 45.84%
Authoritative 95% Confidence Interval: 13.97
Population Means: 39.13% to 67.07%

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Permissive 95% Confidence Interval: 7.68
Population Means: 0.52% to 15.88%
Neglectful 95% Confidence Interval: 6.7
Population Means: -0.6% to 12.8%

For this table we have the confidence intervals for the neutral genre proportions. We
could have calculated a lot more confidence intervals, but for now we are only showing the
neutral genre proportions, as they were selected the most by students in the survey. For the
Authoritarian parenting style we calculated a confidence interval of 70% and got a confidence
interval of 63% for the Authoritative parenting style. We also calculated a 37% confidence
interval for the Permissive parenting style and a 46% confidence interval for the Neglectful
parenting style. With this we can see that there is a significant difference in population means
between Authoritarian and Neglectful parenting, as well as a significant difference between
Authoritative and Permissive parenting. This is probably because of the fact that there is a
significantly greater amount of students who chose Authoritarian and Authoritative parenting in
the survey then the lesser amount of students who chose Permissive and Neglectful.

Discussion
After interpreting our final results, we have found the majority of the p-values to be too
high to give any reason to reject our null hypothesis. This means that there is most likely no
causation between the way a child is raised and their later preferences in music genre. The
majority of our participants had considered their parents as being authoritative, at 53.5%;
authoritarian followed at 32.7%. This polarization in itself could have led to our high P-value; if
we were to gather an even sample size for each of the parenting styles, our P-value could have

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potentially been much higher. Furthermore, the inclusion of rock as a genre may have been a
hasty decision; 61% of all responses included rock as one of their preferred genres, despite there
being 18 different options. This could simply be due to rock being a generally ambiguous style of
music; if we were to perform future surveys, more specific genres as options might be a wise
choice, while genres like rock might be taken out.

Conclusion
Our conclusion at this moment is that there is no definite causation with parenting styles
and musical genres. The main factor is that the data we have seems to support our null
hypothesis more than our hypothesis. By finally calculating a significant amount of p-values we
were able to get some p-values that rejected the null hypothesis. However, that was only 3 of the
9 p-values we were able to calculate, the other 6 p-values did not reject the null-hypothesis. Also
our data shows that most students who chose authoritative parenting seemed to prefer the neutral
genres significantly more than the conservative genres which we predicted the opposite in our
hypothesis. As of now there is no connection or correlation between a parent's parenting style
and a childs development of music preference. By creating a more specific and easy to read
survey and allowing a greater sample and population to be tested we will most likely find a more
definitive answer, but for now a style of parenting will most likely not affect a childs musical
preference.

References:

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Baumrind, D. (1967). Child care practices anteceding three patterns of preschool behavior.
Genetic Psychology Monographs, 75(1), 43-88.

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Zdzinski, Stephen, Dell, Charlene, Gumm, Alan, Rinnert, Nathan, Orzolek, Douglas, Yap, Ching
Ching, . . . Russell, Brian. (2015). Musical Home Environment, Family Background, and
Parenting Style on Success in School Music and in School.Contributions to Music Education,
40(1), 71-90.
Simon Frith. (2008). Why Does Music Make People so Cross? Voices: A World Forum for Music
Therapy, 8(3), Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy, 01 November 2008, Vol.8(3).
Georgiou, S., Fousiani, K., Michaelides, M., & Stavrinides, P. (2013). Cultural value orientation
and authoritarian parenting as parameters of bullying and victimization at school. International
Journal of Psychology, 48(1), 69-78.
Gold, C. (2015). Music and development (MAD).Nordic Journal of Music Therapy, 24(3), 185186.
Lamborn, S., Mounts, N., Steinberg, L., & Dornbusch, S. (1991). Patterns of Competence and
Adjustment among Adolescents from Authoritative, Authoritarian, Indulgent, and Neglectful
Families. Child Development, 62(5), 1049-1065.
Steinberg, L., Lamborn, S., Darling, N., Mounts, N., & Dornbusch, S. (1994). Over-Time
Changes in Adjustment and Competence among Adolescents from Authoritative, Authoritarian,
Indulgent, and Neglectful Families. Child Development, 65(3), 754-770.

Appendix

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