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Thursday 23 July 2015 5:12 am

Analytical minds prefer complex music – here’s the ultimate Spotify playlist for people working in finance

By: Sarah Spickernell

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The way you think determines your taste in music, according to a new study published in Plos One, and for analytical financial minds this means a preference for punk, heavy metal, and avant-garde jazz.
 
Read more: North vs south London: Whose music tastes come out on top?
 
Researchers at the University of Cambridge found that “systemisers” – those who think analytically and like identifying patterns – prefer intense, complicated music types, opting for songs such as Metallica's Enter Sandman. 
 
Read more: Spotify data identifies musical middle age and a musical mid-life crisis when you start listening to Taylor Swift
 
By contrast, people who have an empathetic way of thinking are more likely to chose mellow, low-energy types of music, such as R&B, soft rock and folk.
 
The researchers identified the pattern by asking 4,000 people questions to determine whether they fell more into the “empathiser” or “systemiser” category, such as whether they are interested in the construction of car engines and how good they ware at understanding people’s feelings. 
 
They then asked them to listen to 50 short pieces of music belonging to 26 different genres and rate them on a scale of one to 10. 
 
As the City is brimming with analytical, financially-focused minds, here's our list of top songs for you:
 

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