A new study published in the journal Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, has found a correlation between intelligence and a preference for instrumental music.

In their paper Intelligence, music preferences, and uses of music from the perspective of evolutionary psychology, researchers Elena Račevska, a PhD student from Oxford Brookes University, and Meri Tadinac from the University of Zagreb, combined “the approaches of evolutionary and social psychology to investigate the relationship between intelligence, music preferences, and uses of music,” collecting data from 467 Croatian high school students.

David Robertson and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Photo © Christie Brewster

“I first became interested in this topic while working on a project looking into the relationship between personality traits and musical preferences,” Račevska told PsyPost. “At the time, I was studying evolutionary psychology and became familiar with Satoshi Kanazawa’s Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis.”

“After reading Kanazawa’s papers, one of which was on the relationship between intelligence and musical preferences, we decided to further test his hypothesis using a different set of predictors — namely, a different type of intelligence test (i.e. a nonverbal measure), and the uses of music questionnaire,” she said. “We...