A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Individual Differences in Musical Reward

Music is an important source of pleasure, yet sensitivity to the rewards of musical experiences varies greatly across individuals. The Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire (BMRQ) is a frequently used scale to assess individuals’ sensitivity to musical reward. While the BMRQ has been translated into seven languages to date, its five-factor structure has not yet been compared across cultures. Here we compared musical reward sensitivity and its relationship with music training in 1,333 Chinese participants and 1,433 United States (US) participants based on self-report survey data. Our findings showed that the Chinese group reported less tendency to dance with music, but more tendency to sing than the US group. Although both groups showed four clusters of items in the musical reward sensitivity network, network analysis revealed distinct motifs of Sensory-Motor facet in reward sensitivity between the groups: the US group showed a single Sensory-Motor cluster, whereas dance separated from music-induced spontaneous movement and vocalization in the Chinese group. We also found that music training was strongly related to Social Reward in the US group, whereas in the Chinese group it was primarily associated with Music Seeking and Sensory-Motor. These results underscore the importance of culture and music training in contributing to individual differences in musical reward sensitivity.