The way we enjoy music is partly heritable, according to a study published in Nature Communications. An international team led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, found genetic factors that influence the degree of music enjoyment specifically, and which are different from genes influencing enjoyment of other activities.
Music plays an important role in human expression and social bonding. Listening to music certainly ranks amongst the most enjoyable activities, but why and how do people enjoy music? “The answer to this big question has the potential to open a window into more general aspects of the human mind, such as how experiences become pleasurable,” says first author and PhD candidate Giacomo Bignardi. “We wanted to understand whether genetic differences between individuals can result in differences in the pleasure that people derive from music and what these differences can tell us about human musicality in general.”
To find out if genetic factors influence music enjoyment, the team used a twin design to compare similarities between identical twins and fraternal twins. In simple terms, genetics should play a role if identical twins are more similar than fraternal twins.
In collaboration with the MPI for Empirical Aesthetics in Germany and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, the team compiled data from more than 9,000 twins on aspects such as general reward sensitivity and their ability to perceive musical features such as pitch, melody, and rhythm.
It turns out the ability to experience pleasure from listening to music is partly heritable: using the twin design, the team estimated that 54% of the variability is associated with DNA differences between individuals.
In addition, genetic influences on music reward sensitivity are different from reward sensitivity for other activities (the ability to enjoy other non-music related activities), as well as music perceptual abilities (talent to learn music). Curiously, distinct genetic pathways can influence different facets of music enjoyment, such as emotion regulation, dancing along with a beat, or playing music with others.
“These findings suggest a complex picture in which partly distinct DNA differences contribute to different aspects of music enjoyment,” concludes Bignardi.“Future research looking at which part of the genome contributes the most to the human ability to enjoy music has the potential to shed light on the human faculty that baffled Darwin the most and which still baffles us today.”
Giacomo Bignardi, Laura W. Wesseldijk, Ernest Mas-Herrero, Robert J. Zatorre, Fredrik Ullén, Simon E. Fisher & Miriam A. Mosing (2025). Twin modelling reveals partly distinct genetic pathways to music enjoyment. Nature Communications. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-58123-8