Personality traits in musicians

Abstract

background Performing music is a complex creative activity which in addition to professional skills requires phantasy, a sense of aesthetics, cognitive involvement, intellectual curiosity, perceptual sensitivity, mental flexibility, but also discipline, motor precision and speed, attention endurance, emotional expression and communication. Many of these characteristics are also reflected in personality traits such as Openness, Extraversion, Conscientiousness and to some degree Neuroticism. Previous research has investigated the differences between personality traits amongst musicians, but there are few studies that compare personality characteristics between musicians and non-musicians