For those familiar with the Signal Patterns team, you’ll know we have a very diverse team of scientists, researchers and developers here. Most are recognized leaders in their respective disciplines but some are well known outside of science and academia and are famous with the general public.

I got the chance to see one of them last night discussing his new book…and then some. Best selling author (and Signal Patterns Science Team member) Dan Levitin was at the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble discussing his latest book, The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature. In it, Dan explores the evolution of music and the human brain over tens of thousands of years. And as the title suggests, Dan identifies six types of music that have developed over time and become a key part of our culture.

However, this wasn’t just your typical book store reading that you might catch on C-SPAN. Because in addition to leading the McGill University Laboratory for the Study of Music Cognition, Perception and Expertise, Dan is an accomplished musician, having played professionally with artists like Mel Tormé, Nancy Wilson, and members of the Steve Miller Band and Santana (as well as producing or consulting on albums by artists including Stevie Wonder, Steely Dan and Chris Isaak).

After discussing his book, Dan then played a well-received set with Nashville recording artist Rodney Crowell, highlighting how each of Rodney’s songs fell into one of his categories (like songs of knowledge or songs of comfort).

While pondering Dan’s “six songs” thesis, I kept thinking of our Music Patterns survey, Dan’s research on its underlying FUSES Model and how it all ties together. We’ve been doing a lot of work on this application based on all the feedback we’ve received and look forward to delivering some significant news on this front in the near term.

Just six songs? Guess I need a smaller iPod!

What’s your favorite style of music? Classical or Jazz? Rap or Dance? Salsa or Tango?

The music research we’ve been doing here at Signal Patterns indicates that people’s preferences for music genres tend to group together. In other words, people who really like a particular style of music, say classical, tend to also like certain other genres, like jazz and world music.

So far, it looks like preferences for a large assortment of music genres can be grouped into five music dimensions. Those dimensions spell the acronym FUSES:

• Forceful (described as loud, distorted, and energetic, and includes heavy metal, rock, alternative and punk),
• Urban (described as rhythmic, percussive, and funky, and includes rap, dance, techno and electronica),
• Sophisticated (described as intelligent and inventive, and includes classical, jazz, and world),
• Earthy (described as melancholic and real, and includes country, folk and bluegrass) and
• Smooth (described as relaxing and gentle, and includes R&B and soul).

One of the reasons we’re interested in people’s music preferences is because we believe (as we suspect do most of you) that the types of music people like reveals information about their personalities. To be sure, we’ve compared your responses to our Music Patterns preferences survey with your responses to our Personality Patterns survey. And the results are in…

Forceful music fans tend to be thrill-seeking, rebellious, haphazard, at ease, and self-indulgent.

Urban music fans tend to be outgoing, friendly, confident, warm, and generally happy.

Sophisticated music fans tend to be imaginative, reflective, creative, quick-witted, intellectual, and private.

Earthy music fans tend to be nice, understanding, honest, sympathetic, and nurturing.

Smooth music fans tend to be cooperative, friendly, conventional, rule following, hard working, and empathic.

So there you have it; there are connections between the styles of music people like and their personalities, many of which seem fairly intuitive and may be in line with any stereotypes you have about types of music fans. And that raises another interesting question: Do we listen to music that fits our personalities, or do we acquire personality traits that fit the music?

The Signal Patterns scientific team is spread between Eugene (Oregon), Montréal (Canada), Cambridge (England), and Brooklyn (New York). Even though we work together every day, it’s a not often that we get everyone get together at our Pleasantville HQ the same time.

A couple of weeks ago we had the opportunity to meet together again for what we internally call a “research summit” - a few days of brainstorming about new research directions and syncing up on the different science tasks. It was great to put the ongoing stuff aside and for a couple of days go back to research-mode and focus on the things we will do beyond the horizon.

Here’s a “band” slide show of the team. From left to right: Dan Levitin, Jason Rentfrow, David Rosen, and the Lew Goldberg.

Personality assessment is based on the “study of individual differences“. But how different are people actually? Well - very different. Old school personality tests provide results in the form of a “type”: You may be a “gentlemen” or a “thoughtful leader”, or a “stressed out couch potato”. These old assessment instruments divide the human population into a small number of “buckets” and tells you what bucket you’re in. The Myers Briggs test, for example, uses 16 different possible personality types. That’s not very unique . Facebook currently has about 70 million active users and MySpace about 200 million. Assuming people are evenly distributed between the 16 types, you and almost 13 million MySpace users are the same type…

The scientific method Signal Patterns uses are “trait based” - they capture what characterizes people based on data collected from a large number of individuals. The Big Five personalty assessment framework captures the degree to which a person exhibits five main dimensions of personality. The Signal Patterns personality survey extends that level of detail to 45 traits, capturing subtle differences even between very similar individuals. It’s a long tail filter into the ocean of people that are online today.

Here is Signal Patterns scientist David Rosen’ take on this:

In my previous post, I identified three types of influencers that Malcom Gladwell discussed in The Tipping Point: Mavens, Connectors and Salesmen. Finding these alleged influencers has been the subject of many snake-oil salesmen and marketing companies since Gladwell’s book came out. Now, Pollara’s study has corroborated what some marketers have feared all along: that influencers aren’t necessary to reach millions of people, and that other factors, such as family suggestion and randomness, actually have far more of an impact on the propagation of trends.

These approaches are not necessarily irreconcilable. There is great variability in how we treat the opinions of family and friends. If I were interested in the best poker website, I’d ask Justin, who can tell me about the competition, the rake, and the interface of any site out there. He’s a Maven when it comes to online poker, and he’s also a friend that I trust—the latter doesn’t disqualify him from being the former. Another Maven might have a popular poker blog, but I wouldn’t trust it if I wanted the best information. So pitting “friends and family” against “Mavens or popular sources of information” sets up a false dichotomy. Pliny the Younger (pictured) was sought out by family members and strangers alike, but among his family members, he had a large influence.

Connectors, too, can be found among friends and family—in fact, if anyone’s likely to be counted among friends, it’s a connector. Finding that friends and family are more influential in purchasing decisions still doesn’t help delineate which friends and family have the most impact. Since I’d rather get advice from someone in my social network, I’d go to the Connector in my network if no one in my immediate circle could be trusted as an expert.

The same line of reasoning applies to salesmen, although the process would be less of a conscious one. Who are we persuaded by among our family members? The outgoing, enthusiastic ones who love what they do—Gladwell’s salesmen.

To sum up, it may be important to find Mavens, Connectors and Salesmen because they spread influence among their social groups, not because they have massive clout in the flat, online world of social networks. They have friends and families too, and may impact those groups accordingly. The influence that people have may vary in both quantity and quality, and both of those facets are important; imposing distinctions between friends and family as compared to wide, non-personal influences manages to ignore distinctions between the two facets. It’s certainly possible that online “influencers” have a greater quantity of influence (in the sheer number of people that they reach), but family members will have influence that’s of a higher quality—and more likely to influence behavior. It is still the influencers among that group, however, that may have the biggest impact.

Gavin O’Malley recently wrote about a study that found that people were more likely to try a product that was recommended by friends and family than they were to buy a product recommended by a well-known blogger. His conclusion is that “so-called ‘influencers’ might have less clout than some marketers think.” The authors of the study, the Pollara research firm, reach a similar conclusion, “Marketers might have to reconsider who the real influencers are out there,” according to the article. This flies in the face of over 50 years of thought on the issue. But if friends and family are most influential, should marketers give up on finding social influencers? I’ll explore this issue in a series of posts.

Before we get to the issue of how important these influencers are, let’s think about who they are thought to be. In Malcom Gladwell’s 2002 book The Tipping Point, he writes about Mavens, Salesmen, and Connectors, each of whom plays a role in spreading social phenomena and critical information.  Mavens collect information about the marketplace, often to the point of obsession. They remember specifics, down to specific prices. They also want to share the information with others, and to help others find good deals—helping is one of their primary objectives. They continually teach and learn, but don’t try to persuade.  Connectors are interested in connecting others—they are primarily responsible for introducing people to other people. They are action-oriented: They don’t sit around and think about things, but rather they do things. They are curious, self-confident, sociable, and energetic.  Salesmen are persuaders. Their enthusiasm allows others to trust them. They are energetic, likable, optimistic, and emotionally expressive. They love being the center of attention.

These people sound as if they might have a big impact when it comes to the spread of social phenomena, but O’Malley and Pollara seem to think that you’re more likely to seek advice from your loved ones than you are to seek it from experts, social butterflies, or persuaders. In my next post, I’ll discuss whether “so-called influencers” are still worth targeting.

The new year has brought a lot of excitement here at Signal Patterns. In addition to moving to new, larger digs to support our growing team, we’ve launched a new website. But don’t get too comfortable w/it just yet!

Over the last year, we’ve spent quite a bit of time on the engineering and design front, based on our research team’s work and all the volunteers who’ve helped us. So shortly, we’ll be launching a major self-discovery and social networking product across our site that we believe you’ll find quite compelling and innovative. You’ll be able to learn a lot more about yourself but also use that information to engage with your existing friends as well as develop new ones.

In the interim, we invite you to sign up on our Facebook page to become part of the Signal Patterns community.

And for those who’d like to participate in our research and help beta test our upcoming products, please sign up on our contact list.