Only morons listen to Nickelback. Radiohead is for pretentious geeks. Playing Mozart for your kid will make them a genius. Whether we want to admit or not, we naturally correlate a person’s taste in music with their intelligence.
But is there really a relationship between someone’s grades and what they have in their iTunes library? Controversial US software developer Virgil Griffith thinks so.
In fact, he knows so. “It doesn’t matter what I believe. The data says there undeniably is a connection between what students report is their favorite music and the selectivity of the school they attend,” writes Griffith in the FAQ of his latest project, Musicthatmakesyoudumb.
Having already charted the correlation between a person’s intelligence and their taste in books, Griffith has now applied the same principles to music. After plucking the average SAT scores (American for ENTER) of various American colleges from an online database, Griffith then gleaned the musical tastes of each college by looking at the bands their respective student bodies like on Facebook.
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For example, students who attend the prestigious California Institute of Technology have an average SAT score of 1520 (for those playing at home, that’s very good). Looking at those students’ Facebook likes, Griffith was able to determine that Radiohead really is music for pretentious techno-geeks – they were the single most popular band at Cal Tech.
But as much as an outlier as the indie legends are, they pale in comparison to the intellectual might of Beethoven fans. As readers can see below, students in the upper, upper SAT echelon can’t get enough of the iconic classical composer.
So, how smart are you? Well, if you’re into Sufjan Stevens, Bob Dylan, The Shins, and Counting Crows (yes, really), then you’re one clever cookie. Though as Griffith’s roommate put it, “I don’t want to be smart if I have to listen to Counting Crows.”
Meanwhile, if your favourite artists include the likes of Lil Wayne, Beyonce, and The Used, we’re sorry to break it to you, but Griffith’s data indicates you may not be the sharpest tool in the shed. Those artists all came in at the lower end of the SAT spectrum.
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Furthermore, we can look at the favourite bands of schools that are generally regarded as the brainiest. Judging by Griffith’s chart of 158 US universities arranged by average SAT score, the bands most beloved by students attending Ivy League colleges are Coldplay, U2, and you guessed it, Radiohead.
Arranging his results by genre, Griffith found that the most intelligent hip-hop fans listen to Outkast, while the dumbest dig Lil Wayne. Aerosmith and Nickelback fans are as dumb as rock fans can get, while the brainiac rock fans are all pumping U2 and Counting Crows.
Naturally, there’s some obvious extraneous variables that could affect Griffith’s results. We can argue about how good a representation SAT scores are of a person’s intelligence or Facebook likes are of music taste till the cows come. But as Griffith so succinctly puts it, “I’m aware correlation ≠ causation. The results are hilarity incarnate regardless of causality.”
Check out the hilarious results for yourself below, but please note, we take no responsibility for any hurt feelings.
