Jun 03, 2015 08:10 PM EDT By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

New research suggests that a person's musical likes and dislikes can say a lot about their social class.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia reveal that social class continues inform cultural attitudes and their musical taste.

"Breadth of taste is not linked to class. But class filters into specific likes and dislikes," Gerry Veenstra, study author and professor at UBC's Department of Sociology, said in a statement.

For the study, researchers conducted nearly 1,600 telephone interviews with adults in Vancouver and Toronto, who were asked about their likes and dislikes of 21 musical genres.

They found that many of the poorer, less-educated people they interviewed tended to like country, disco, easy listening, golden oldies, heavy metal and rap. Their wealthier and better-educated counterparts preferred genres such as classical, blues, jazz, opera, choral, pop, reggae, rock, world and musical theatre.

Based on their findings, researchers concluded that wealth and education do not influence a person's breadth of musical taste. However, "class and other factors -- such as age, gender, immigrant status and ethnicity -- shape our musical tastes in interesting and complex ways."

What people don't want to listen to also plays a key role in creating class boundaries.

"What upper class people like is disliked by the lower class, and vice versa," Veenstra said.

"For example, the least-educated people in the study were over eight times more likely to dislike classical music compared to the best-educated respondents. Meanwhile, lowbrow genres such as country, easy listening and golden oldies were disliked by higher-class listeners," he said.

The findings are detailed in the  Canadian Review of Sociology.

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