Who Attends the Arts and why? Examining the Role of Personality Across Two Distinct Samples.

Abstract

Previous research in psychological aesthetics has already highlighted the influence of personality on the experience and appreciation of art. And yet, the question of whether personality can manifest itself in arts attendance behavior remains far from settled. We therefore aimed at examining whether personality-measured with the Mini International Personality Item Pool-is linked to arts attendance motivations as well as to the art forms people choose to attend across two distinct samples of 1398 Greek and 408 German students. Results of both studies revealed that all the Big Five traits contributed differentially to arts attendance motivations, implying that people with different personality traits have different reasons for attending the arts. Logistic regression results further suggested the relevance of openness to experience and-to a lesser extent-extraversion to arts attendance, with openness to experience contributing to attendance at several art forms in the Greek sample. We might therefore assume that people do attend the arts to satisfy their personality-related needs or, to put it another way, the experience of art lies in the eyes of the beholder.