The Relationship between Multicultural Effectiveness and Artistic Preferences

This research explored students’ artistic preferences for musical and visual arts (paintings) from different world cultures, outside the dominant Western European and Anglo-Saxon art field. The main goal of the research was to examine the possibility of predicting these preferences based on multicultural personality traits, within the concept of multicultural effectiveness. A total of 427 participants took part in the study. The following instruments were used: General Data Questionnaire, Multicultural Personality Inventory, Musical Preferences Questionnaire, and Painting Preferences Questionnaire. The results indicated a significant correlation between age and musical preferences, as well as between artistic experience (attending theatre productions and art exhibitions) and musical/painting preferences. Among the multicultural personality traits, only open-mindedness and cultural empathy positively correlated with artistic preferences. Results of regression analysis in which preferences were used as criteria showed that, after demographics of participants and their artistic experience have been controlled for, open-mindedness positively predicted musical and painting preferences, while both open-mindedness and cultural empathy proved to be significant positive predictors of painting preferences. Other significant predictor for both preferences was attending art exhibitions. Musical preferences were related with older age, while vocational high school education predicted higher preferences for paintings. Although predictors explained relatively small amount of criterion variance, the obtained results confirmed that multicultural personality dispositions have little, but significant contribution to world artistic preferences.