How Good Is This Song? Expert Versus Nonexpert Aesthetic Appraisal

Some research suggests that experts and nonexperts appraise aesthetic products differently. In this study, potential differences in song appraisals were investigated via interrater reliabilities and frequency distributions of ratings. As predicted, for 100 randomly selected songs, professional critic ratings from the Rolling Stone website were not correlated with the ratings of any of 27 undergraduates (average r = −.0009), although 54% of these nonexpert pairs (n = 352) showed positive correlations with each other. Critic ratings of the 100 songs tended to follow a mound-shaped rating distribution, with most of the songs given medium-high ratings and very few given very high or very low ratings. In contrast, some undergraduates showed extremely non-normal rating distributions. Nonexperts tended to rate more generally familiar songs and musicians more highly than less familiar ones, whereas expert ratings were unrelated to general song or musician familiarity. These results suggest that at least two different taste cultures exist, partly based on whether or not songs or musicians are popular.